You used to do what?
Psychology has always been a love of mine, but I didn't make it a career until I'd spent several years as a computer engineer. (Weird, huh?) As an undergraduate I took Psychology classes for fun while getting a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science. It took me a few years to figure out that communicating with computers was a rather one-sided interaction and they were often uncooperative.
In order to feed my love of psychology and working with people, I volunteered for a mental health center after hours hotline and for my local hospice organization. Both of these experiences left me longing to do this work professionally, so I decided to go back to school to get an MA in Psychology. I was licensed by the North Carolina Psychology Board in 1995 and have loved every minute of my new career. |
Now, if you are struggling and looking for a therapist, I bet that you already know that life can be full of twists and turns. What we often plan is not reality. My story is no different. While in graduate school, I was the only person in my program focusing on end-of-life issues and grief counseling. (They teased me and called me The Death Queen!) The plan was to work for a hospice organization. Soon after I graduated, my focus changed completely when my new supervisor told me that she was going to teach a class in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I signed up not because I thought it would be a great thing to learn, but because I wanted to impress my new supervisor. That experience changed the entire course of my career. Not only that, but the clients that kept showing up for me were adolescents!
Most of my training is cognitive-behavioral which means that I assist clients who want to understand and change behaviors by helping them:
Most of my training is cognitive-behavioral which means that I assist clients who want to understand and change behaviors by helping them:
- identify ineffective behaviors and/or thought processes
- learn new behaviors and new ways of thinking
- understand how their beliefs or thoughts about themselves may interfere in the process