Where do I even begin? I’ve been a therapist, of sorts, just shy of 20 years. I started in 2007, working as a support staff in a group home for teens. If I go back even further, I was lifeguarding since 2002. What?! Me… save lives?!

Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to help others. I received my Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling and practiced in the field from 2012 until 2025. During all my time practicing, I primarily focused on Cognitive Behavioral Approaches (and the plethora of other related approaches). For the psychology nerds out there, these are your ‘top-down’ approaches to psychotherapy. Essentially this means that the client would unpack and dissect their conscious thoughts, belief systems, and patterns of behaviors. The emphasis of this treatment is learning to restructure unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that will then influence emotion and behaviors. These approaches always felt a bit too ‘Easy-Peasy’, if you will. However, I was comforted by the evidence that backed up the top-down approaches. Often, the APA (I’ll get more into that later) encourages CBT to be the first line of treatment for many mental health diagnoses! On top of that, I witnessed hundreds of clients getting better using these approaches! They Do Work! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how these approaches also helped me with a gnarly eating disorder and wicked anxiety! More on diagnosis later…

I have not been a practicing therapist since September 2025. This blog post is not intended to be used as treatment for any mental health difficulties and should not be substituted for psychotherapy. This blog post is my attempt at sharing information that I wish I knew a year ago.

If you are a past client of mine, this blog post is for you. I think of you often. I hope these posts will resonate. I also apologize for missing what I didn’t yet know during our time together!

Stay Tuned! …. sending big hugs!

Emily