My Approach: Where Faith Meets Evidence-Based Care
As a Christian, you might feel a hidden pressure to believe that if your spiritual walk is strong enough, you shouldn't struggle with anxiety, painful memories, or the disappointment of a life that looks different than you expected. When worry or distress show up, you might wonder if you are doing faith “wrong.”
But experiencing pain is not a sign of weak faith. A genuine relationship with Jesus can easily coexist with struggles stemming from biological vulnerabilities, traumatic stress, difficult life circumstances, and the complex, protective ways the human mind and body respond to hardship.
My approach to therapy brings your faith and clinical science into the same room, without judgment or simplistic advice. As a licensed clinical psychologist, my role is distinct from and complementary to the essential work of pastors, biblical counselors, and spiritual directors. My practice is built on the belief that God is the ultimate source of healing, and that structured therapy is a practical way to lean into what He is doing in your life. In our sessions, we focus on your mental and emotional health. Together, we work through the hurdles that keep you from living out your deepest convictions, helping you connect what you believe with how you actually live.
What to Expect & How We Collaborate
Our sessions focus on turning insight into real-world change. We move at a steady, manageable pace to keep you actively engaged without feeling overwhelmed. Our time together is designed to help you:
Build practical tools for daily challenges: Learn to relate differently to what is happening inside, like uncomfortable emotions or racing, anxious thoughts.
Engage honestly with hardship: Remain steady in the midst of difficult feelings instead of ignoring or being overwhelmed by them.
Shift unhelpful patterns: Learn to evaluate your behaviors and internal obstacles (such as chronic avoidance, fear, overthinking, or self-criticism) with curiosity and compassion.
Make intentional decisions: Move forward from a posture of faith, wisdom, and conviction rather than worry, avoidance, or self-doubt.
As we work on these skills week to week, our overall time together generally moves through three distinct phases. We start with Gaining Clarity, looking closely at your history and current distress to build a targeted plan. From there, we move into Active Practice & Adjustment, where we build resources in session and practice them between appointments, regularly reviewing your progress. Finally, we focus on Moving Forward, equipping you with the emotional steadiness to handle life's challenges long after therapy is complete, collaborating on a transition plan that fits your readiness.
What Faith Integration Can Look Like
Integrating your beliefs into therapy does not mean following a rigid template or a performance checklist. Because everyone's relationship with God is unique, how we bring your spiritual life into the room is tailored entirely to your comfort and goals.
Whether you have followed Christ for decades, are newly returning, feel unsure of where you stand, or are walking through a season of doubt, you are welcome here, exactly as you are.
Depending on your goals, practical faith integration can look like:
Quiet Grounding: Knowing that therapy is built on a Christian understanding of suffering, growth, and daily life, even if we do not explicitly discuss your faith regularly in sessions.
Spirit-Attuned Awareness: Learning to quiet the noise of anxiety and distress in session, practicing an intentional pause to discern the steady, non-condemning presence and direction of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer and Scripture: Incorporating prayer and reflection on the truths of God's Word directly into our sessions when desired and appropriate. Rather than using Scripture as a surface-level band-aid, we focus on connecting foundational truth with the actual, messy details of your day-to-day experiences.
Addressing Spiritual Shame: Openly naming and learning to relate differently to the hidden, self-critical rules that tell you a Christian should not experience emotional pain or psychological struggles.
Evidence-Based Therapy Approaches
Your Christian faith and therapies with a strong evidence base can work together to support your healing. I draw from research-supported methods to help you step out of patterns that feel hard to change. We will collaborate to choose the framework that best fits your history, your current distress, and your goals.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Instead of spending your energy trying to fight, ignore, or control difficult thoughts and feelings, ACT helps you relate to them differently. In our sessions, we practice stepping back from the loud, demanding thoughts that try to run your day, while building acceptance skills to make room for painful emotions instead of constantly wrestling with them. This grounding allows you to clarify what matters most and make intentional choices based on your deepest values.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): This approach looks closely at the connection between what you think, how you feel, and how you react. In our sessions, we work to identify and gently examine automatic, unhelpful patterns of thinking, helping you build a steadier, more balanced way to respond to difficult situations.
Trauma-Focused Therapies for PTSD: As a specialist in PTSD and trauma recovery, I draw from specialized treatments, including Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), Written Exposure Therapy (WET), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Rather than leaving you to face overwhelming memories alone, these methods offer a safe, gradual way to process what you went through, helping painful past experiences settle so they may have less impact on your daily life.
DBT Skills and Mindfulness: These tools help you break out of automatic, reactive habits and respond to daily stress with more intention. Practicing mindfulness can help anchor you in the present, while concrete skills give you the ability to manage intense emotional waves, get through painful moments without feeling overwhelmed, and clearly communicate your boundaries in relationships.
Ready to take the next step?
If this approach to faith-integrated, research-supported care resonates with you, I invite you to schedule a brief phone consultation. During this 15-minute call, we can talk through your needs, answer your questions about my practice, and explore how we might work together.