Our Approach

Life throws us difficult challenges, but that is how we change, evolve and grow. Often times, the strategies we have used to survive crisis or trauma end up not serving us in our present lives. Therapy is a way to discover what is working and to have support in letting go or changing what is not.

Our goal at AVOS Counseling is to provide down to earth, honest, integrative, compassionate, educational and at times, humorous therapy to get you out of pain and back to your inner badass self. After all, therapy is hard work, but we at AVOS believe the process should be fun too. Although we recognize the difficulty of healing from past hurts and current transitions, our clinicians are inspired by the empowering process of people make healthy changes in their lives and we are honored and humbled to be a part of your journey.

Specific Expertise

Our entire team is trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) which is a powerful treatment for trauma recovery; We are also informed by Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which is a mindfulness-based treatment for helping to develop stress tolerance, emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness skills. Erica is trained in Becoming a Love and Logic Parent® curriculum and use this in combination with attachment and mindfulness-based parenting strategies to offer support for those struggling with parenting challenges. We also recognize the impact of social and racial injustice and believe that the goal of therapy should never be to make one “okay with oppression,” but to help heal from the trauma that oppression can cause so that we can still create lives worth living.

Our Specialties

Counseling specialties include working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer-identified populations, as well as trauma and sexual abuse and spiritual abuse survivors.  Our team also have experience and interest in working with individuals that meet the criteria for bipolar disorders, personality disorders, anxiety, depression, addiction disorders and post traumatic stress disorders. 

Although we recognize the value of diagnoses, we believe that individuals’ humanity come first and foremost.  People are more than just a label or a diagnosis. In fact, most people have met the criteria for a mental health concern at some point in their lives. Sometimes, we need a little extra support, care and/or push in our change process and therapy is one way of gaining that.