A Therapist's Promise
Shelby understands that everyone who seeks therapy or treatment for their mental health is an individual, a person, and deserves to be treated as such. Shelby makes the same promise to every client: She will listen with the goal of understanding you as a person. She wants to understand how your experiences have helped to shape your reality, not only to form a diagnosis, but also to identify the root cause of any mental health or behavioral issues that have arisen. She will always be honest with you about the obstacles to recovery that she sees, and she will challenge you to use your strengths to overcome them. Put simply, Shelby will honor you as a person and make sure that you have the tools and knowledge to address and solve any issues that may prevent you from achieving greater stability in your mental health.
Therapy is a relationship, and most healthy relationships rely upon the same things: Honest introspection, a willingness to engage in difficult conversations to identify, confront, and eventually eliminate maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.
Therapy can be difficult, it can be heavy. The last promise that Shelby makes to all of her clients is that she will keep her sense of humor. She will strongly encourage you to do the same. Laughter is nature’s antidepressant, releasing chemicals in the brain that help us to work through the pain. Working together, and accepting these challenges, you will get back on solid ground mentally. This new mental stability and confidence will allow you to address, identify, and repair the foundational cracks that often trigger mental health issues in the first place. Once that foundation is strengthened and rebuilt, it will be possible to add more to your life without jeopardizing the mental health that you have worked so hard to regain.
If it sounds like Shelby may be a good fit, reach out today for a free consultation!
Qualifications
Education and Work Experience
Shelby is an experienced mental health and wellness professional, having worked in the field for over 10 years. She has always been interested in understanding and helping people, and she has worked and volunteered for several community mental health outreach centers. This experience was foundational, as on any given day she would be working with clients who were struggling with issues such as Domestic Violence, Foster Care, Addiction, Crisis Intervention, Palliative care, and more. She earned her Master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from Medaille College and interned at a local mental health and behavioral clinic. She provided crisis intervention therapy while working at a hospital and in community settings before becoming a therapist in 2018, the year she opened her practice.