"I hold many roles: mother, daughter, sister, partner, friend, business owner, therapist, community member, and clinical social worker."
My passion for teaching and supporting others to be the best version of themselves came from growing up teaching martial arts in my family business. I did not follow the traditional student path and received my GED after my 10th grade year. I then decided to move to California with no real plan a few days after turning 18. This lead to truly living my 20's. I worked in the service industry working every position in a restaurant and bar while trying to go to school. In my 30's I owned a cleaning company, navigated motherhood, and went back to school. This is where my years of service and passion to support and empower others coalesced into my current life path.
Because I did not take a direct route to being a clinician, I gained over a decade of life experience. This was without any of the knowledge and skills my mental health journey and training has given me. I can relate to what it feels like to think you are missing something. Wondering what I am doing wrong? This experience allows me to not only offer advanced clinical training but the capacity to empathize what it feels like to start from square one.
I am in my 15th year of sobriety and I hold many roles: mother, daughter, sister, partner, friend, business owner, therapist, community member, and clinical social worker. I have spent the better part of a decade working to support children and families from daycares, home settings, schools, correctional settings, and private practice. No matter the age or the setting, it is always starts with learning to regulate.
As I progressed through my therapeutic career and began working with adults and found that I gravitated to people that had experienced severe trauma, suicidality, substance abuse, and personality disorders. I found that my adult clients were just the behavior kids that grew up without the tools and support I specialize in providing.
I was so fortunate to be trained and supported by the research out of the Arizona Trauma Institute and now have the capacity to work adults through their complex trauma. For as long as I can remember I always wanted to understand:
Why do we behave and feel the way we do?
-And-
Why can we sometimes hold it together, and other times completely fall apart?
The good news is there is an explanation and it is not as complex as you think it would be.