My Theoretical Orientation, Psychotherapy Model, and Treatment Approach

I am a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and New Orleans has always been my home. I witnessed the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a college student, which moved me forward on a path to understanding the intersection of collective trauma and personal trauma. As I earned my BA from Loyola University in sociology with minors in women’s studies and Spanish, I engaged in feminist activism to raise awareness of sexual violence and was a featured speaker at Take Back the Night. After earning my MSW from Tulane University, I became a domestic violence victim advocate and counselor for the Orleans Parish DA’s Office. I later worked as a community-based mental health professional at Children’s Bureau before receiving my LCSW from the Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners and entering private practice. My entire professional background is in trauma work, specializing in working with children and women who have survived physical and sexual abuse. Integrating my experience, education, and clinical training has allowed me to cultivate post-traumatic growth through the therapeutic relationship.

My treatment approach is trauma-informed and oriented in relational cultural theory (RCT). I strongly uphold the core values of social work and see growth-fostering relationships as a source of empowerment. I use an integrative psychotherapy model rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and tailored to the strengths and needs of each client. I bring my years of education and training, professional experience, personal experience, and genuine empathy to build a brave therapeutic space with you, so you can experience a deeper connection with yourself, others, and the world around you.

Built on a foundation of feminism and multiculturalism, RCT promotes intersectionality and social justice. While CBT provides therapeutic techniques, RCT provides a theory as to how individuals experience emotional distress due to unhealthy relational and cultural images. By “images,” we mean internal schemas or beliefs about an individual’s relationships and social identity. The basic tenet of RCT is that disconnection is the source of emotional distress and connection is the source of health, healing, and wellness. RCT posits context as paramount, bringing the social issues of power, freedom, and oppression into the therapeutic space. RCT helps develop insight into one’s relational and cultural images by processing past experiences, and CBT provides structured action steps we can take to promote change in the present. RCT helps identify relational images, which create and reinforce negative core beliefs that can be challenged in CBT. In other words, CBT guides us in identifying and changing what our deepest held beliefs are that are holding us back from the connection we deserve. RCT guides us in understanding how our past experiences shaped those beliefs, and how our present and future experiences can manifest alternative beliefs. By integrating the two, the therapist can validate disconnections before beginning restructuring. All the while, the therapeutic relationship itself creates a new relational image. Clients internalize that they are worthy of transformative connection.

Establishing and fostering safety is crucial to the therapeutic relationship and, in turn, crucial to therapeutic success. By being transparent and authentic in the therapeutic relationship, I hope to create new relational images and thereby reinforce new, adaptive core beliefs. This integrative psychotherapy model provides space for insight while emphasizing coping skills. I have found that through the lens of RCT, techniques from many other forms of therapy such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), existential therapy, attachment therapy, narrative therapy, solution-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), EMDR, and bibliotherapy integrate with CBT quite effortlessly and effectively. This promotes endless opportunities for growth and connection, and a coping skill set as unique and powerful as the client who employs it.

References: 

Comstock, D.L., Hammer, T.R., Strentzsch, J., Cannon, K., Parsons, J. and II, G.S. (2008), Relational-Cultural Theory: A Framework for Bridging Relational, Multicultural, and Social Justice Competencies. Journal of Counseling & Development, 86: 279-287.

Enns, C. Z. (2004). Feminist theories and feminist psychotherapies: Origins, themes, and diversity (2nd ed.). Haworth Press.

Jordan, J. V. (2010). Relational–cultural therapy. American Psychological

Miller, J. B. (1976). Toward a new psychology of women. Boston: Beacon Press.