Professional Highlights
I received a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Iowa State University (`04), MS in MFT from Purdue Calumet (`98), and BS in Psychology from BYU (`94). I am the owner of Progressive Paths Therapy and I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Utah. I’ve been working as a therapist since completing my MS in 1998. I am thrilled to be the founder and a part of this unique group practice.
In my work with individuals, couples, families, and group therapy I focus on: compassion, strengths, hope, values, meaning & purpose, cultural humility and seeking to be culturally informed, vocation (what you feel ‘called’ to), growth and development, knowing and accepting self, emotion awareness, possibilities for change, skills strategies and structures for change, real progress, effective communication, genuine dialogue, transformative experience, and lovingly accepting and embracing what is. I love to see and to affirm the goodness, strengths, and wonder in each person and each relationship. I work to explore in depth both the hopes and fears as well as the real challenges and possibilities that individuals and relationships face in their life journeys. The joy and privilege of my work is entering into the real, messy, beautiful complexity of people’s lives and relationships, and to be part of their journey toward understanding, hope, reconciliation, wholeness, and greater love.
Specialties
I strive to have my work research-informed, best practices informed, highest ethical quality. My specialties focus on:
- Mormon faith crises, transitions, expansions for individuals and couples. Intersections of LDS/Mormonism background and mental health.
- Social justice-informed therapy (addressing discrimination and systemic oppression of minoritized groups and individuals around race, gender, sexual identity, class, caste, ability, power/privilege, etc.)
- Problematic or out of control sexual behavior for individuals and couples
- Anxiety and depression
- Emotion awareness, regulation, maturity, intelligence, and emotional intimacy development
- Couples and marriage therapy
- Discernment Counseling
- Divorce and Co-parenting therapy
- Sexual issues and sex therapy
- Premarital therapy
- Promoting adult growth & development (differentiation of self, interdependence, career/vocation, identity, relationships)
- Healing from trauma/abuse
- Family therapy (parent(s) & teen, whole families, parent(s) and adult children, intergenerational)
In my work I utilize these theories and models: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness practices, Narrative Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Developmental Model for Couples (Bader), Differentiation of self (Bowen/Schnarch/Finlayson-Fife), Gottman principles, Discernment Counseling, Positive Psychology, and Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples.
I am a straight cisgender member of the LGBTQ Affirmative Therapists Guild of Utah (Progressive Paths Therapy is an Agency member of the Guild), and I am a Board Member of Encircle Therapy (2019-present).
I am an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, AAMFT member, and UAMFT member. I am a Past-President of the Mormon Mental Health Association (President 2019-2022), and a founding MMHA Board Member in 2014. I assisted in founding and developing the Couple and Family Therapy: A feminist social justice informed MS training program at North Dakota State University 2003-2006. A COAMFTE accredited program that was discontinued in 2018.
I am taking new clients for my wait list. I work in-person in Orem Mon-Thu, and in SLC Fri only, or teletherapy M-F for anyone in Utah.
