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 1998.
Specialties
I work with individuals, couples, families, and do group therapy. 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 orientation, class, ability, caste, power/privilege, etc.)
- Problematic or out of control sexual behavior for individuals and couples
- Anxiety and depression
- Emotional awareness, 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 with individuals, couples, and families I focus on: compassion, strengths, hope, values, meaning & purpose, vocation, growth and development, knowing and accetping self, emotion awareness regulation and maturity, possibilities for change, skills strategies and structures for change, real progress, effective communication, genuine dialogue, transformative experience, and lovingly embracing acceptance of 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, the real challenges and possibilities, that individuals and relationships face in their life journeys. The joy and honor of my work is being a witness to the lives, relationships, stories, growth, hopes, and change of those who consult me.
In my work I utilize these theories and models: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness practices, Narrative Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Differentiation of Self (Bowen/Snarch/Finlayson-Fife), Gottman principles, Discernment Counseling, Positive Psychology, and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. I am thrilled to be the founder and a part of this unique group practice.
I am a straight cigender member of the LGBTQ Affirmative Therapists Guild of Utah (Pogressive 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 the Past-President on the Board of the Mormon Mental Health Association (was President 2019-2022), and a founding MMHA Board Member since 2014.
I assited in founding and developing the Couple and Family Therapy: A feminist and social justice informed MS training program at North Dakota State University 2003-2006. A COAMFTE acredited program that has since been discontinued.
I keep a wait list for people to see me in-person in Orem (Mon-Thu), or in SLC (Fri only), or teletherapy for anyone in Utah.
