Bachelors in Counseling from Marshall University

Master of Divinity from Azusa Pacific University

Master of Clinical Psychology, emph. Marriage and Family Therapy from Azusa Pacific University

Training & Experience

In addition to completing my education, I have focused on working with mood disorders, particularly depression and anxiety. These are the two areas which I have built experience treating, with now over five years helping teenagers and adults with anxiety and depression learn how to thrive. Specifically, I focus on treating mood disorders from the lens of psychodynamic therapy and have developed that focus while working at Sync Counseling Center, a training institute for contemporary psychoanalysis, in Sierra Madre, CA.

What this means is that there is a special emphasis on helping clients discover the unconscious patterns of thought, relational engagement, and emotion that shape their experience of anxiety or depression. At the start of treatment, I may focus first on helping a client develop coping skills to manage their symptoms, but ultimately, I am interested in going deeper to help a client make conscious those patterns I mentioned above, and begin to actualize new patterns that support a vibrant, relationally connected and unblocked life.

In addition to the above experience, I focused on developing expertise in working with couples from a emotionally focused lens. What this means, in short, is that for many couples, breakdowns in their relationship are tied to attachment difficulties where each partner’s way of responding to conflict actually activates the other person’s pain, and these interaction patterns then set the stage for escalation into more blame, anger, defensiveness or withdrawal. Sometimes, these breakdowns can even lead to further betrayals as the partners become disconnected from each-other. In my couples work, I am listening closely for how to help a couple interrupt those negative cycles and ultimately reconnect in a healing and mutually supportive way.