I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Clinical Supervisor for the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AZBBHE), and the owner of Valor Counseling. I have been licensed for 19 years working with children, families, and adults. I’ve earned two Master Degrees, one in Counseling in 2005.  

How I view my therapeutic work:

Any relationship that can provide you with a relational home, a place where you can heal from what is painful or broken is a therapeutic one. A therapeutic relationship is simply an alliance, a working together on a common goal. The most important work I can do is through attunement. Together we attend to the story and the work that needs to be done. You have found an ally.

My work is grounded in being trauma-informed. What this means with adults is, I use narrative therapy because we organize and understand our lives by rendering them into story form. I use somatic experiencing therapy, a body-centric approach that works on releasing stress, tension and trauma in the body. I am also trained in EMDR. EMDR is based on the premise that the brain inherently knows how to heal on its own, given the opportunity to properly store information.

With children, my therapy sessions are filled with sand tray therapy, expressive art therapy and child centered play therapy (CCPT).  These modalities often keep children from glossing over painful feelings and memories. In art and sand tray therapy, we are accessing the non-verbal to expose what needs to be processed and regulated. We are healing the brain from the bottom up. When a child has experienced trauma in early childhood it affects the development of their brain. Sand tray therapy works with the neuroplasticity of their brain and processes through the traumatic memories from early childhood. Since our brain develops from the brain stem up as we mature, we also have to work with the brain from the earliest developmental period. CCPT, Sand tray and art therapy also build safety and attachment so that the child’s body feels the safety and security that is needed to be able to delve into behavioral work and healing.

Contact Adrienne: 480-296-6412 Email: valorcounselingaz@gmail.com