DBT is one of the foundations of my work—and teaching DBT is something I genuinely love.

Over the years at Harmony Harbor, I have led and co-led DBT Skills Training Groups for teens, parents, and adults, sometimes facilitating three DBT groups in a single week. There is something powerful about watching someone move from simply learning a skill to realizing, “Wait—I can actually use this in my life.”

DBT teaches practical tools for mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and relationships. I bring these principles into individual therapy as well, particularly for clients who experience intense emotions, impulsivity, anxiety, relationship difficulties, ADHD, or difficulty getting regulated again once something has knocked them off balance.

For neurodivergent clients, DBT skills don’t have to be taught as rigid rules. We can adapt and experiment with them so they are realistic for the person actually using them.

I have completed Foundations Training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy through Behavioral Tech® and have additional training in DBT for Children (DBT-C), an adaptation of DBT designed to support children experiencing significant emotional and behavioral dysregulation while actively involving their parents and caregivers.

One of my favorite parts of this work is helping parents learn these skills too. When the adults surrounding a child better understand validation, mindfulness, emotional sensitivity, and effective responding, change can begin to happen throughout the family—not just within the child.

Kids and teenagers usually know pretty quickly whether an adult is being real with them.

I don’t believe children or teens need another adult sitting across from them telling them what they are doing wrong. They need a relationship where they can feel safe enough to be themselves while gradually developing the skills to understand their emotions, communicate what they need, and navigate difficult experiences.

My years working with youth began before joining Harmony Harbor and include experience in residential treatment. That work gave me a deep appreciation for the complexity and resilience of children and adolescents, particularly those experiencing significant emotional or behavioral challenges.

I especially enjoy working with neurodivergent children and teens, including young people with ADHD who may have heard far more about what they need to improve than about what makes their brains interesting, creative, energetic, perceptive, or uniquely theirs.

I combine that experience with DBT, DBT-C, mindfulness, trauma-informed therapy, ART, expressive arts, creativity, and playfulness.

That may look different from one young person to another—and that’s the point.

Some kids talk. Some draw. Some create. Some need movement. Some need skills. Some need humor. Some need something for their hands to do while we talk. Some need time before they are ready to tell us much of anything at all.

Meeting them where they are is part of the work.

Trauma can leave people feeling disconnected from themselves, their bodies, their emotions, or their sense of safety.

My approach to trauma treatment begins with helping clients feel grounded in the present rather than pushing them to tell their story before they are ready.

Mindfulness can help us learn to notice thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and internal experiences with greater curiosity and less judgment. For neurodivergent clients, mindfulness does not have to mean sitting perfectly still with an empty mind. We can find accessible ways of practicing awareness that work with different bodies, attention styles, and nervous systems.

Over time, that awareness can create more space between what we feel and what we do next.

For clients who are ready to work more directly with traumatic or distressing experiences, I am a Master-trained clinician in Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART).

ART is a trauma-focused therapy that uses imagery and eye movements to help the brain change the way distressing memories and sensations are experienced. Clients do not necessarily have to describe every detail of a traumatic experience aloud, which can make ART appealing for people who find traditional trauma processing overwhelming.

My goal is never to force healing into a particular formula. It is to help each client find approaches that feel safe, effective, and genuinely useful to them.

Not everything we experience can be neatly explained with words.

Creative expression can give us another language.

I enjoy incorporating art, imagery, creativity, movement, metaphor, and other forms of expressive exploration into therapy, particularly with children, teens, neurodivergent clients, and people who experience intense emotions.

Creative work can help externalize something that feels overwhelming internally. It can make an abstract emotion visible. It gives us opportunities to experiment, play, problem-solve, and sometimes understand ourselves in ways that conversation alone doesn’t quite reach.

For ADHD and neurodivergent clients in particular, creativity can also be a strength. Therapy does not always have to happen through fifty minutes of uninterrupted conversation while sitting still in a chair.

And no—you do not need to consider yourself artistic.

There is no artistic talent requirement for therapy.

ADHD is about much more than being distracted.

It can affect executive functioning, emotional regulation, motivation, time awareness, working memory, sensory experiences, relationships, organization, self-esteem, and the ability to begin or complete tasks—even when those tasks genuinely matter to you.

For many people, particularly women and mothers, ADHD may not have been recognized earlier in life. Instead, they may have learned to work extraordinarily hard to compensate, mask their struggles, or internalize the belief that they are lazy, scattered, too emotional, inconsistent, or somehow failing at things everyone else seems able to manage.

I have both professional training and lived experience with ADHD, and that combination deeply informs how I approach this work.

Therapy isn’t about turning an ADD/ADHD brain into a neurotypical one.

Instead, we can work toward understanding your patterns, recognizing your strengths, developing realistic supports, improving emotional regulation, reducing shame, and finding ways of living that work better with your brain rather than constantly fighting against it.

For children and teens, this also means helping families see beyond the behavior. A child who is struggling with impulsivity, transitions, emotional intensity, task initiation, or frustration may need skills and support—not simply more reminders to “try harder.”

Parenting does not come with a universal instruction manual—and neurodivergent families rarely fit neatly into generic parenting advice.

Sometimes a parent with ADHD is raising a child with ADHD. Sometimes multiple people in a household have different sensory, emotional, organizational, or communication needs. Sometimes everyone is overwhelmed at exactly the same time.

That changes what “effective parenting” may need to look like.

Through my training in DBT-C and DBT, I help parents develop practical strategies for validation, emotional regulation, boundaries, communication, and responding effectively when emotions are running high.

I also help parents become curious about what may be happening underneath a child’s behavior. Difficulty with transitions, impulsivity, forgetfulness, emotional intensity, task initiation, sensory overload, or frustration may look oppositional from the outside while reflecting something very different internally.

Supporting a child often means supporting—and understanding—the nervous systems of the people who love that child, too.