Personal Information

My faith has played a huge role in my life. I grew up in a Christian home, that unfortunately like so many others, did not protect me from tragedy that would play a hand. My belief in the strength and love that Jesus offers, along with the support of others, carried me through some very dark times. I’ve worked in different areas of ministry including serving on a church staff, on a college campus and serving for a year on the mission field in Bulgaria. If interested, I’m more than glad to navigate the counseling experience from a faith-based perspective. This is part of who I am, however it is always your choice of whether you want faith to play a role in counseling or not.

What to Expect:
Having a background in athletics, as a player and coach, I am very goal oriented. This contributes to the way that I approach counseling. In our first session, we will go over paperwork, discuss confidentiality, and begin to hear your story. The focus of the second session will be to continue to hear your story and discover potential areas of strength and improvement. We will then look at the goals you would like to accomplish – where you would like to be when counseling is completed. The sessions after this will be time to report on and work further towards meeting those goals.

Qualifications

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC #8776) in the state of North Carolina, and I am also a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC #289261) and a Board Certified Telemental Health Provider BC-TMH #349).

As a Christian counselor, I approach each client and their presenting problems with both a clinical and biblical worldview.

Specialties & Issues

We specialize in working with people in transition. Much of our time is spent with college students, young professionals and others who find themselves in a season of adjustment to new and challenging circumstances. This can bring up many questions and/or stresses. Making sense of these and moving forward through this natural process is often helpful navigated with support. That’s where we come in. Many of these areas include, but aren’t limited to:

• Transitioning into or out of college
• Adjusting to living away from home or moving back home
• Transitioning into or out of a career
• Adjusting to a new job or loss of job
• Transitioning into or out of a relationship
• Adjusting to a new relationship status (coupled or single)
• Transitioning onto or off of the Mission Field
• Adjustments to a new culture/Reentry adjustments
• Third Culture Kid Adjustment
• Transitioning into Parenthood
• Adjusting to a new family member
• Transitioning into retirement
• Adjusting to a new role in life
• Transitioning into a new season of life

OTHER TREATMENT TOPICS INCLUDE:

• Anxiety & Depression
• Career Counseling
• Christian Counseling
• Conflict Resolution
• Deployment/Reintegration
• Grief and Loss
• Parenting Support
• Stress Management

TREATMENT APPROACHES/INTERVENTIONS:

• Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
• Strengths Based
• Problem Solving
• Coaching

Approach

The approach that most resonates with me is the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy model. This approach focuses on solution building rather than problem talk. It looks to what resources you have now and builds on these to move towards your future hopes rather than focusing more on past problems. I was trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and utilize this approach as desired by clients. The basic premise of this approach is that the way we interpret events in our lives directly impacts how we feel and what we do. Meaning that the same event can happen to two different people. One is spurred on towards greatness by how they interpret what this means for them, while the other is paralyzed by their interpretation. By catching and shifting this negative thinking we can move towards more positive thinking and positive change.

Insurance

Insurance is an agreement between you and your insurance company as to how counseling will be paid for. Depending on your current health insurance provider or employee benefit plan, it is possible for services to be covered in full or in part. Please contact your provider to verify how your plan compensates you for psychotherapy services. We recommend asking these questions to your insurance provider to help determine your benefits:

Does my health insurance plan include mental health benefits?
Do I have a deductible? If so, what is it and have I met it yet?
Does my plan limit how many sessions per calendar year I can have? If so, what is the limit?
Do I need written approval from my primary care physician in order for services to be covered?

We will be happy to assist you in any way we can. We are considered in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield and MedCost Insurance companies and can file these for you. For all others we will be considered an out of network provider and you will be able to submit these yourself. We can provide you with all the information you will need to file.

Most insurances want you to be diagnosed and sometimes dictate how many sessions and what type of therapy you can have. If you want to access your insurance, we can talk about what these stipulations may be and mean for your care.