Whether I am working with a small child or an adult, I believe that the healing process is a journey of returning home to the authentic self with the therapeutic relationship as a vehicle supporting the exploration. My name is Kayla and I hope to walk along with you on this path, offering compassion, co-regulation, and a little bit of neuroscience psychoeducation along the way. I believe that, when we can lean into the understanding of our own neurobiology and how our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and sensations have come to be, we may also begin to explore where we may have gotten stuck and how we can have a renewed access to the wisdom and assets that our bodies and nervous systems naturally possess. This information is not only an invitation, but an opportunity to redefine what connection to yourself means and looks like by tuning into the body’s and the nervous system’s intuitive ways of healing.

​

What this can look like varies from person to person, as I strive for each therapeutic experience to be tailored to you. I use a variety of mediums to accomplish treatment goals depending on what feels right in the moment and for your particular style, including play therapy, sand tray/play therapy, creative expressive art activities, movement activities, and talk therapy. Concerning my theoretical orientation, while I am integrative in terms of the modalities that I strive to have available and in my incorporation of the neurorelational sciences, at the core of my professional belief system, I am humanistic and psychodynamic. I believe that our experiences within the context of our earliest relationships influence our socioemotional and psychological development and, through engagement in a fundamentally accepting therapeutic relationship that feels safe and secure, those experiences can be confronted and integrated.

​

I also practice as an LGBTQIA+, kink, poly, BIPOC ,and neurodiversity affirming therapist. Our culture primarily centers on one type of lived experience with all others being perceived as a deviation from the norm. In my role, my hope is to see you as yourself with all of the facets of yourself and your identities acknowledged and honored. In this way, if desired, a space can be fostered where the experience of marginalization can be explored.

​

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC-18802) with the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners, a National Certified Counselor (#871175) with the National Board of Certified Counselors, and a Registered Play Therapist™ (T6253) through the Association for Play Therapy. I am a member of the American Counseling Association, the Association for Play Therapy, and the Infant Toddler Mental Health Coalition. I received my Master’s of Counseling from Arizona State University in 2017, as well as my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Bachelor of Science in Family and Human Development with a minor in sociology in the Barrett’s Honors College at Arizona State University in 2015. I am passionate about lifespan human development, so I enjoy working with infants/toddlers and their important adults, children through all phases of childhood, adolescents, parents, adults, and couples/families. I have seven years experience working in community mental health, specifically within integrated care settings, so I am comfortable and eager to participate in coordination of care and to support integration between myself as a behavioral health provider and medical/psychiatric providers. I strive to see you as a whole person.