Kristina desires to join with others in their path to greater healing and wellness. She specializes with Maternal Mental Health (infertility, pregnancy, prenatal, and postpartum,) trauma, attachment disorders, anxiety, and depression. Her therapeutic approach is person-centered, working with the client to establish feeling seen, understood, and supported within the therapy relationship first and foremost. Kristina often includes approaches such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,) IFS (Internal Family Systems)/ego-state work, narrative therapy, education to facilitate a better understand how your brain and body process stress, and body-based approaches based upon training as a Trauma Conscious Yoga Instructor. She also has thorough training and experience with integrating the Christian Faith in the counseling process.

Life can get overwhelming sometimes, and everyone has an opinion on how you should manage it. No matter what you’re dealing with, someone always suggests a quick fix— anxiety: “just calm down;” depression: “just be happy;” or disordered eating: “just eat.” The reality is, if it were that simple, we would all be perfect people and never struggle with anything in our entire lives. That’s just not human nature. So if that’s not the answer, how do we grow and change? How do we resolve the deepest, most wounded parts of ourselves?

There’s a quote by Christine Langley-Obaugh that I love, which says, “We repeat what we don’t repair.” We have to sit with those uncomfortable parts of ourselves—our anxiety, depression, disordered eating, grief—and figure out when and why it showed up. What is it trying to tell us about ourselves and our experience?

That’s what the therapeutic space is for. We put other pieces of our lives on hold for an hour, to sit and listen and process. From there, we can establish a different way for the brain and body to communicate with one another; a way that allows for expression without overwhelm. It’s a process that can take some time, but it is oh so worth it.

As a therapist, Michelle is committed to supporting her clients as they identify the changes they would like to make. With your personal goals in mind, she will work with you to discover the best positive solutions to the challenges you are facing. Michelle believes that counseling is not just about talking out problems and crisis issues, but about building self-confidence, resilience, and meaning.