Veritas Counseling

I am a licensed mental health counselor in Panama City, Florida with graduate degrees in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Divinity. With a passion for helping people, I assist with a wide range of mental health concerns and spiritual matters. I offer coping skills for managing debilitating symptoms, but also have specialized training that gets to the root of symptoms in order to foster healing at the deepest levels. While I am very comfortable integrating faith into the therapeutic setting, I meet each client wherever they are coming from. I show the utmost respect for every person I'm privileged to support, listening curiously to each unique story without imposition or judgment. Regardless of your history, your present concerns, or your views, I will listen to you; I will not judge you. In this vein, I take a "non-pathologizing" approach to counseling, avoiding an over-association with stigmatizing labels. I see each client as a person with a story, not as a diagnosis to be treated. While giving a name to symptoms in the process of diagnosing can, in some cases, bring clarity and provide great relief, no diagnosis serves as our core identity. Furthermore, our symptoms - far from defining us in a negative sense - are often extremely useful in therapy. They can be compared to the warning lights in a car, indicating an issue with part of the internal system. Similarly, the symptoms that motivate us to seek counseling - the ones we might try desperately to ignore or "turn off" - can actually become our greatest allies in therapy. With enough curiosity, they will signal the way to neglected parts of our own internal systems, which can then be attended to and healed. My therapeutic approach varies depending on the presenting issues and unique client goals, but I tend to work primarily from one of the following evidence-based treatment modalities: Internal Family Systems (IFS), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Regardless of the approach chosen, we will work together to rapidly achieve your therapeutic goals while ensuring your sense of safety and ability to manage the strong emotions that can surface in therapy. I genuinely look forward to getting to know you.