My Story

For the past 10 years I have been on the path to clinical licensure as a licensed psychologist. Educationally I have a Bachelor's in Human Development and Psychology, Masters in Forensic Psychology, and an addiction certification. Currently, I am Doctoral Candidate, finishing off a PsyD in Psychology. I got to the point of collecting supervision hours for licensure and my course got corrected in a way that honors how my brain works when I switched to coaching and consulting. After spending internships in case management, volunteering with several nonprofits in homeless services, trying a semester of social work, and being an addiction counselor through a global pandemic I knew I was headed for a life out of sync with my values.

After seeing my addiction clients make significant personal momentum in sessions then return to places and people that kept them in cycles of sickness I understood the most effective support for them was needed outside the four walls of therapy. Through my time as an addiction counselor I became certified in ASAM Levels 1 and 2 which allowed me specific training on administering the Bio Psycho Social Assessment to clients. This equipped me with the skillset needed to make appropriate recommendations for level of care placement and coordinate referrals. The American Society of Addiction Medicine provides national guidelines for assessment and treatment standards for all credentialed substance abuse professionals. Considering my extensive education in psychology I quickly identified the addiction clients were also dealing with undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues and trauma.

Creating Hope Reignited Consulting allowed me to build a platform for women to honor the way their brain works and re-write their social reality in a way supports their needs and goals without pressure to be like everyone else.

My Faith

I was raised in a Christian home, went to church, served in various capacities in outreaches and mission trips, as well as had a Christian education. I wanted to choose a Christian college for my Bachelors in Psychology because I needed to include faith in my understanding of people. I have never been the type to push Christianity or faith on people because I know faith is deeply personal and harm has been done to people in the name of religion. Other humans have messed up experiences of faith for many people I have encountered in my adult life and I never want to put anyone in a situation where they feel the need to be guarded or afraid.

As an addiction counselor I got to live out my faith through action instead of conversation. I build a friendship or professional rapport with people so they are clear I am in their life because of who they are not what they do, what they give, or what I gain by being in their world. I create safety for people to be themselves without fear of social retaliation and hardship.

For people interested if faith has shaped my business, the answer is yes. I connected verses to the Focus 4 Approach. The themes in my business have biblical origins. I do keep people in prayer even though I am not providing spiritual or pastoral guidance or consulting.

The verses are as follows:

(1) Self Advocacy - Ephesian 6:10-17

(2) Somatic Peace - Psalm 91

(3) Dignity Preserving Conflict Resolution - 1st Corinthians 12:12-31

(4) Emotion Regulation and Expression - Romans 8

These verses have served as my framework for how I build, keep, and create new relationships with others in my personal, social and professional life. These have been at the heart of most of my advocacy and public education efforts. I do believe everything I have been through provides me with the opportunity to relate in theme to others even when the details do not match. I believe sharing my healing journey will give others struggling in secret hope and some clarity about the direction they need to take in their own life.

My Pathway

My Autism diagnosis in 2018 took me on a self-discovery journey. It was throwing grief, acceptance, relief, and joy in a blender. I was thankful for a diagnosis because I had names for my experiences. After experiencing seizures, panic attacks, and Autism in the same life time I absolutely see similarities when it comes to experiencing overload and the body feeling out of control. Since I was not diagnosed until after college I spent years not knowing why I was different. Alcoholism also impacted family dynamics most of my life so that provided what I would call a second baseline for my beliefs, behaviors, and patterns. The first baseline being undiagnosed Autism.

After going through and reporting dating violence in middle school started by coercion and difficult social realities, I had a full set of PTSD and started a ten year on and off journey of psychiatric medication. In seventh grade, I was perfectly fine with my best friend leaving to join the school bully because I rationalized why she is a better fit for friendship and just tolerated it having full belief that life would work itself out and that she would come back to me. This is high empathy but also believing the best about people. Both of these are actually a big part of Autism and neurodivergence in general that gets socially applauded as a super power.

Since I never walked through life with additional intentions, it was quite difficult to cope with when I experienced people in my life manipulating me. All through school I never stuck with a friend group, I included people that were left out and in high school my best friends were a grade above me and they did not really fit the social mold either in their own way.

As I got into high school I began absorbing the leadership roles available in my family, academic, and social life because I loved the structure of knowing what to expect. I wasn't diagnosed because I was compliant, cordial, and confident in my leadership and social caretaking strategies that kept me alive through the hardest point in my life. I had a period of three years binge drinking and a period of nine years struggling with disordered eating behaviors. Both the binge drinking and disordered eating were emotional avoidance, muting myself when I should have spoken, and coping with what I now know was overload and overstimulation.

After going through grieving the support I could have had, there was significant tear shed because I was relieved that I knew how to rewrite my narrative so I could manage situations that caused me to engage in binge drinking and disordered eating. I created my Focus 4 Approach in response to learning how Autism impacted my social reality. Continuing to work on implementing my Focus 4 Approach with my therapist has kept me out of outpatient, inpatient, or residential treatment for disordered eating. I have not binge drinking episode since 2019 because I learned how to control my narrative and implemented my Focus 4 Approach regarding alcohol.

My Focus 4 Approach Explained

Self-Advocacy

When we stick up for ourselves, voice our needs, and follow through on boundaries with others. Self advocacy is often an afterthought if considered at all for people who grew up with a chaotic and dysfunctional family dynamic. Children subjected to adult reality at an early age are typically thrust into an adult world with a child's perspective. One side of the coin is children that develop their own addictions, academic problems, and sometimes juvenile correction system. The other side of the coin are children that are secretly struggling while publicly compliant. This looks like hidden addiction because parental addiction takes the primary focus, perfectionism, people pleasing, reflexively caretaking, choosing partners and friends that need a lot of help because they don't know how to just be. Both groups need to learn self-advocacy, the silently struggling group needs learn self-advocacy even when it's socially inconvenient.

Somatic Peace

Somatic peace refers to our body becoming friends with us, we no longer experience stomach upsets, frequent trips to the restroom, rapid heartrate, shallow (throat) breathing, sweaty palms, or compulsive harmful self-soothing strategies. These strategies include but are not limited to picking skin, drinking to cope, abusing prescription, biting the inside of the mouth, restricting or binging food. Somatic chaos happens when we choose to ignore or minimize our own needs for the comfort, approval, or happiness of others. Somatic chaos can happen when we are subjected to contextual trauma such as alcoholism or addiction in the family and have little awareness, skills, or ability to make our own decisions. When we have somatic peace our body is on the same page as our mind and we are not in a state of stress.

Dignity Preserving Conflict Resolution

Dignity Preserving Conflict Resolution is a process of determining the value of the relationship, understanding the topic from different perspectives, respecting different aspects of the person's reality, and honoring personal limitations. Dignity Preserving Conflict Resolution looks like closing the relationship and finding a way to move forward when the person is unable or unwilling to make changes. It is emotionally messy and necessary to separate from people who continually require us to ignore or minimize our needs or boundaries. Of course if the relationship can continue that is ideal. Resuming the relationship after a conflict requires working towards neutrality and building trust so the hurt is intentionally healed instead of minimized, rationalized, or swept under the rug.

Emotion Regulation and Expression

In Emotion Regulation and Expression there is space for creativity, gentleness, and assertiveness to co-exist. Emotion is significantly shaped by how conflict was handled and how emotions were handled in the family of origin. If emotions were discouraged and the louder person won every argument, aggression is put on a pedestal. Once we learn self-advocacy we meet ourselves as adults. We learn how to name and process emotions such as sadness, grief, anger, hurt, disappointment, and betrayal. Since there is such a strong mind-body connection, improving our emotional awareness will have a positive impact on our physical health.

My Focus For You

People can take supplements for their mental health just like they do for their physical health. Mental health supplements are given by the social support system they create when they get intentional about committing to their recovery. Having lived as an Autistic woman with late diagnosis I fully understand how mental health issues and substance abuse can become a part of reality. It is difficult to move through the world not knowing how to embrace the way our brains work and not having any frame of reference for how to go forward.

As a mental health consultant specializing in supporting neurodivergent women, I confidently support them with the Focus 4 Approach that I have implemented in my own life. If you would like to discuss how I made peace with my body and mind in an overstimulating world, please reach out by emailing me at hopereignitedconsulting@gmail.com.