Kristin leads with a personal touch, seeking to form a collaborative connection with others by normalizing the human experience of pain and suffering as something that is common to all of humanity. Joining with you on this common ground, Kristin validates, empowers, and encourages in a way that helps to facilitate healing in your life.

Kristin believes in focusing on strengths and giving proper emphasis to "what is right with you" instead of "what is wrong with you." She acknowledges your positive qualities, affirms what you are already doing well, and helps you apply these things to successfully problem-solve circumstances in your life. When you feel deeply discouraged, it can be difficult to climb out of the despair, see a different way, or make a change, but when you are aware of your positive qualities, skills, and strengths, you are more able to feel empowered to confront and resolve a difficult situation.

Kristin's counseling approach is also rooted in her origins of study and and training in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy and its influence of Systems Psychology, which examines human behavior and experiences within the context of relationships like marriages, families, communities, and other types of groups, or "systems."

Throughout her years of practice, Kristin has recognized that nearly everyone is affected by trauma. Sometimes this trauma is a single big life event, but more often it is the collection of various stressful things that happen to us or the absence of things we needed but never received. Whether what we experienced was too much for too long or too little for too long, if the stess of our circumstances exceeded our resources to cope, trauma is the result.

To better equip herself to help her clients recognize and resolve the various effects of trauma in their lives, Kristin eventually decided to pursue training in Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR is an extensively researched psychotherapy approach that has been proven to aid in recovery from distressful and traumatic experiences.  Upon completing the level 1 training for EMDR (the minimum training at which clinicians can call themselves "EMDR Trained"),  Kristin had way more questions than answers to feel adequately equipped to effectively apply EMDR interventions in a wide variety of complex circumstances. She pressed forward with the additional education and supervised practice required to become fully "EMDR Certified." As Kristin began to integrate EMDR into her 20 years of clinical experience, she was excited by the healing she saw her clients experiencing,  and she developed an insatiable intrigue with neurobiology--speicifically Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), which considers how the brain and mind develop in the context of relationships and interactions with other minds, and Polyvagal Theory, which considers the ways a person's autonomic nervous system operates when the drive to survive competes with the longing to connect with others. Kristin began practicing the integration of Polyvagal Theory with EMDR (PV-EMDR) and found this to be highly effective. She also developed a deeper interest in how developmental attachment wounds impact both individual and relationship functioning and how we can leverage this insight towards healing through relationship repair and the generation of healthy attachments in present relationships.

While the PV-EMDR approach inherently honors the mind-body connection, Kristin's holistic view of the human condition considers the entire person- body, mind, and spirit –with the perspective that addressing these aspects together provides the most thorough and effective treatment approach. Kristin recognizes that above all else- God is the ultimate source of healing, and she has specific experience with integrating the spriritual component via the  Christian faith for those who want this approach. However, you are not required to hold a Christian faith or belief system in order engage in counseling services with Kristin. While some people hold such faith as an integral part of their lives and want it to be central to their counseling process, other people may not acknowledge a particular religious faith or may not want to talk about that aspect of their lives as part of their counseling process. Regardless, Kristin has over 23 years of counseling experience working successfully with people from a variety of walks of life, and she remains committed to meeting you wherever you are on your own journey as she encourages you towards the discovery of "something new" in your life.