Who May Feel at Home in My Office

You may find that we work well together if you are:

• An individual carrying the effects of trauma or PTSD and you are interested in EMDR. 
• A teen or adult referred for our comprehensive DBT Program as I believe in the value of DBT skills. 
• Interested in exploring a variety of modalities including art therapy, sand tray therapy, or family systems.
• A youth, teen, or adult who feels overwhelmed, stressed, and struggles with anxiety, or depression.
• A youth or teen with emotional reactivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and/or conflict with parents or peers. 
• An individual adult who notices self-sabotaging patterns and difficulty managing emotions. 
• Someone who desires to know themselves better and to heal from unhealthy relationships or to feel from free from a pattern of trauma-bonding.
• An individual or family affected by addiction or navigating recovery alongside a history of trauma or emotional pain.
• An individual recovering from a relationship with a narcissistic partner or wanting to leave an unhealthy relationship but feels unprepared and needs support and skill building.
• A couple interested in Gottman therapy, who loves one another but keeps getting caught in the same painful cycle.
• A couple experiencing high conflict, disconnection, betrayal, addiction, grief, or a major transition.
• Someone grieving a significant or traumatic loss.
• A parent and adult child trying to establish a healthier relationship.
• Someone who has been through therapy before and is ready to look more deeply at childhood wounds or unresolved trauma.

You do not need to have everything figured out before beginning therapy. Sometimes understanding the deeper need is where change starts.

How I Help

Relationships can be some of the most meaningful parts of our lives—and sometimes the most painful.

Couples and families may find themselves repeating the same arguments, becoming increasingly disconnected, or struggling to understand how they arrived at a place that feels so far from where they began. Individuals may carry similar patterns internally, particularly when trauma, grief, addiction, emotional intensity, or difficult family experiences have shaped how they relate to themselves and others.

My work is about slowing those patterns down enough to understand what is happening beneath them.

Rather than deciding who is “right” or “wrong,” I help clients become curious about the patterns, experiences, and needs that may be keeping them stuck. Together, we work toward healthier communication, clearer boundaries, greater emotional safety, and relationships that can adapt as people and circumstances change.

For individual clients, this same process may involve understanding how past experiences continue to influence present relationships, emotions, choices, and beliefs about oneself.

Trauma, PTSD & EMDR

Trauma does not always stay in the past. It can influence relationships, emotional reactions, self-worth, trust, attention, physical responses, and the ways we learn to protect ourselves.

I provide EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) as part of my work with adults who have experienced trauma or continue to struggle with the effects of painful experiences.

I also work with individuals experiencing PTSD, personality challenges, emotional dysregulation, relationship difficulties, and complex family histories.

These concerns do not always exist separately. Trauma, grief, neurodivergence, relationship difficulties, and substance use can overlap in complicated ways. Therapy can provide a place to begin understanding those connections without reducing a person to a diagnosis or a collection of symptoms.

Couples & Relationship Therapy

I especially enjoy working with couples, including those who feel stuck in problematic cycles or who are experiencing significant conflict.

Some couples come to therapy because they are struggling to communicate. Others are facing betrayal, addiction, parenting disagreements, family-of-origin issues, grief, major transitions, or years of accumulated hurt. Sometimes the question is how to repair a relationship; other times, the work begins simply by helping two people understand what has happened between them.

I bring calm strength, warmth, and acceptance into the room while also being willing to help couples address difficult issues directly.

For couples who want more concentrated time to work on their relationship, I am also developing Couples Therapy Intensives at Harmony Harbor. Intensives allow couples to spend an extended block of therapeutic time exploring patterns and working through issues that can be difficult to address within a traditional weekly session. If this may interest you, please let me know once we meet or when you speak with one of our Client Care Coordinators to get scheduled.

Families & Parents of Teens or Adult Children

Families evolve. Children become teens and then young adults. Parents age. Roles change. Marriages shift. New partners enter families. Old wounds sometimes resurface. And boundaries that once worked may no longer fit.

I enjoy helping parents with their child, teen, or their adult children navigate these transitions with greater clarity and healthier boundaries.

My family therapy experience has also included traveling throughout the country to work with families within their own environments, allowing me to understand family dynamics not simply as ideas discussed in a therapy office, but as patterns that unfold within everyday life.

My goal is not to create a “perfect” family. It is to help families understand one another more clearly, establish healthier ways of relating, and adapt when life asks something new of them.

Addiction, Recovery & the People Who Love Them

Addiction rarely affects only one person.

I have significant experience working with individuals and families impacted by substance use and recovery. This work may include supporting someone in recovery, helping family members establish healthy boundaries, addressing the effects addiction has had on a marriage or family system, or exploring the trauma and emotional pain that sometimes exist alongside substance use.

Recovery also holds personal meaning for me. My own experience has given me deep respect for the courage, accountability, vulnerability, and ongoing growth that recovery can require.

I understand recovery not as a single destination, but as an evolving process of learning how to live differently—with ourselves and with the people we love.

Grief, Loss & Learning to Live With What Has Changed

Grief can fundamentally alter the landscape of a person’s life.

In 2023, my husband and I experienced the death of our youngest adult child from an alcohol, drug, and fentanyl overdose. I share this because profound loss has deepened my understanding of something I had already encountered throughout my professional work: grief cannot simply be “fixed,” and there is no single correct way to carry it.

Therapy after loss can offer a place to speak honestly about what has changed, make room for complicated emotions, and gradually discover how to continue living while honoring what—and whom—has mattered deeply.

I welcome individuals, couples, and families navigating bereavement, traumatic loss, addiction-related loss, and the many ways grief can reshape relationships.

More About Giovanna

I have spent much of my career helping people understand who they are, what they value, and how they want to move through an often complicated world. Therapy has always felt like deeply meaningful work to me. I listen carefully, ask questions, offer perspective, and help clients consider possibilities they may not have been able to see from inside the problem.

Over the course of my career, I have worked independently, provided family therapy in communities throughout the country, and served as an adjunct psychology professor at Misericordia University in Pennsylvania, where I developed and taught courses in Rehabilitation Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy.

After years of independent work, I missed the collaboration that comes from practicing alongside other thoughtful clinicians. Harmony Harbor’s emphasis on integrative, evidence-based, whole-person care—and the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across specialties—felt like a natural next chapter.

Education: 

Giovanna earned her Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling from the University of South Florida in 2006. 

She received her first professional counseling license in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2009 and was subsequently licensed in Utah from 2014–2020. She was also a Nationally Certified Rehabilitation Counselor from 2006–2011.

Her professional experience includes individual therapy, couples and family therapy, rehabilitation counseling, addiction and recovery work, trauma treatment, and university-level teaching.

Outside the Therapy Room:

My husband and I have shared more than 35 years of marriage and raised three children together. Like most long relationships and families, ours has included seasons of joy, change, challenge, growth, and profound loss.

Outside of work, I practice yoga, find restoration in nature, enjoy historical fiction, and am always willing to explore a good yard sale or thrift shop in search of something interesting.

I value humor, authenticity, connection, and the ongoing process of learning when to hold on, when to adapt, and when to let go. Perhaps more than anything, my life and my work have taught me that being human can be complicated—and that we do not have to navigate the complicated parts alone.