MINDFULLY ENGAGE AND EMPLOY YOUR STRENGTHS IN GROWTH AND HEALING
About Me
Passionate, Empathetic Counselor and Healer from the LGBTQ+ Community
I created Mindfully Resilient Counseling with all of my training and experience in mind to help best support and serve those seeking to grow and heal to live their best lives and be their best selves. I have been working in the mental health field since 2013, and am very passionate about empowering and supporting clients in their journey of growth, healing, and self-discovery. I have experience with all sorts of clients and presenting struggles, and I truly love the work that I do. I am formerly a full-time Program Director at a Community Reintegration Center for adults that have had a brain injury(ies): Seattle BrainWorks. In my time there, I worked 1-1 with our roughly 75 active clients in individualized goal setting, anger management, and much more. I also ran all of the 80 groups/month (creating most of them myself), directly managed all client plans and profiles, and helped community partners, caregivers, and family in ensuring collaborative goals and care. I completed my Internship with SOUND, in which I was an Individual Primary Therapist, as well as a group facilitator for both an LGBTQ+ Support Group and a Chronic Pain and Illness Support Group. Lastly, I have been independently contracted with a couple of group practices, and have worked primarily with neurodiverse, queer folx with various kinds of trauma toward empowerment, anti-oppressive growth, and healing.
I also am a member of the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities myself, with a trauma history of my own. Counseling has been a wonderful, healing tool in my life and experience, and I want to be a part of providing that safe, nurturing space for others in their growth.
I am impassioned by supporting folks as they are exploring identity expansion. I have experience with new and fluid members in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as exploring religious trauma and spiritual curiosity. I am also well acquainted with brain injuries and resulting life changes, and in helping folks navigate, grieve, and empower themselves in changing levels of functionality and accommodations. As well as working with neurodiverse clients to navigate unmasking safely and empowering themselves to thrive. Using inherent strengths and resiliency built into your experience, I hope to help empower you in your journey, while also listening and caring for your body and its needs.
My Approach
My therapeutic approach is primarily informed by Trauma-informed Neurocounseling and Strengths-Centered Resiliency Counseling, and supplemented by Attachment Theory, Somatic Work, and Bowenian Family Systems in understanding how your environment and relationships have contextually informed your experience.
INSPIRATION
“It's about becoming safe to feel what you feel. When you're traumatized you're afraid of what you're feeling, because your feeling is always terror, or fear or helplessness. I think these body-based techniques help you to feel what's happening in your body, and to breathe into it and not run away from it. So you learn to befriend your experience.”
-- Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Childhood Trauma Leads to Brains Wired for Fear
“Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care.”
-- Bessel van der Kolk, MD, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Land Acknowledgment
Mindfully Resilient Counseling acknowledges that we occupy the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, specifically the Tulalip, Snohomish, Stillaguamish, and Sauk-Suiattle Tribes. We know that they have hunted, fished, gathered, and taken care of these lands long before colonial interference. We are committed to being better listeners, learners, and to lifting indigenous voices. (Image via https://usdac.us/nativeland)