Training and Modalities
The tools I use, and why I keep collecting them.
I love to learn, always. Not because credentials look nice on a wall, but because different THINGs need different ways through. Here's what I'm trained in, what each thing actually is, and when I reach for it.
My credentials
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC). My clinical license, held in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
National Certified Counselor (NCC). A national board certification through NBCC, with its own training, examination, and ethics standards beyond state licensure.
Registered Play Therapist (RPT). A credential through the Association for Play Therapy requiring extensive supervised hours and specialized training. Play is the language kids think in, and honestly, adults do some of their best work there too. Expressive and playful approaches show up in intensives when they fit, because sometimes play says what talking can't.
20+ years as a school counselor before private practice. Two decades of walking alongside kids and families through anxiety, grief, ADHD, big feelings, and hard seasons. It's the foundation everything else is built on.
Modalities I use (click on the links to learn more)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. A brain-based therapy that helps the nervous system reprocess experiences that got stuck, using bilateral stimulation while you hold a memory lightly in mind. Backed by decades of research and recognized by major health organizations for trauma treatment. I reach for EMDR when there's a clear stuck point: a memory, an event, a belief your system latched onto and won't release.
Training: Certified in Brainspotting
A quieter, more body-led cousin of EMDR, built on the observation that eye position connects to where the brain holds experience. Where you look affects how you feel. Certification means training beyond the basics plus consultation hours. I reach for Brainspotting when the thing is more felt than storied, when there aren't words yet, or when EMDR feels like too much structure for what your system wants to do.
Internal Family Systems-informed Parts Work/Ego States is work that starts from something you already know from the inside. The names differ, the heart is the same: the different parts of you get curiosity instead of judgment, the ones stuck in old jobs get to update, and you reconnect with the steady self underneath. It weaves through almost everything I do.
Training: SSP Provider
A listening-based intervention built on Polyvagal Theory, using specially filtered music to help the nervous system find its way toward safety and regulation. Polyvagal Theory runs through how I work in general; it's a fancy way of saying I take your nervous system's word for it, pacing everything to what your body says is possible rather than what a treatment manual says is scheduled. I reach for SSP itself when a nervous system is too braced for other work to start, or as a foundation that makes everything else more effective.
Sandtray
A hands-in-the-sand, symbols-and-scenes approach that lets the brain show what it knows before words arrive. Not just for kids. Some of the most profound adult sessions I've witnessed happened at the sandtray, and yes, it shows up in intensives when it's the right tool.
Attachment-based work
Less a technique, more a lens. Attachment work looks at the earliest templates you built for connection and safety, the ones formed long before you had a say in them, and how those templates still run your closest relationships now. It shapes how I understand what shows up in the room, whatever else we're doing.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
In partnership with Journey Clinical
For appropriate clients, ketamine can soften the defenses that guard the hardest material. All medical care, evaluation, prescribing, dosing, and payment for those services, belongs to Journey Clinical, a separate medical practice. The therapy before, during, and after belongs to me.
How they fit together
I'm fully trained in every modality I use, and I mix and match, because you're not a protocol. A session might be Brainspotting with Parts Work woven through, or EMDR that pauses for the sandtray, or SSP laying groundwork for months before the deeper work begins. The plan is built around your nervous system and individual needs and goals.
Curious what this could look like inside an intensive? Book a free consultation.
Finally, come up for air.