Struggles are everywhere.
I believe that everyone would benefit from meeting with a counselor at some point during their life.
This is not because I believe everyone “is messed up or full of issues,” but rather we’ve all experienced hard times that can rock us to our core.
Everyone over the age of two has experienced life struggles, pain, and sorrow – you and I are not excluded. From the outside these events range in severity, but to you it was the worst possible situation to live through.
From the teenager’s heartache in high school, to the death of a spouse of 40-plus years, it is all the worst imaginable to you. As a trauma-informed counselor, I provide you a safe space to work through this traumatic experience. Judging situations is not the business I am in.
JudgEment is not on the menu.
Don’t trust or listen to anyone, personally or professionally, who greets your struggles with judgment. There is a beautiful thing that happens at holiday dinners when those around the table don’t know each of your insecurities.
Trust me, I speak from personal experience on this one. The turkey dinner always tastes way better without a side of a vulnerability hangover.
Family parties and Friendsgiving celebrations are more enjoyable without the power struggles that can exist because you overshared while you were in pain needing help.
Plus, as our family and friends always mean the best, they do not always have the best advice or without bias. These people love you but are not professionally trained and paid to ensure they always have your best interest in mind.
I know how to help.
Let me help you work through these emotions and past struggles. Then you can focus on making positive memories with your loved ones.
Allow yourself to be present with your family and friends, enjoying their company, rather than up to your ears with how to manage these negative emotions.
When you create these healthy boundaries among personal and professional relationships, you can enjoy life more fully. You become an example of how to truly live wholeheartedly. You become a survivor from the pain and a warrior of your fight.
Your worst of days can be behind you.
Since 2011, I have helped protect and support children and adults facing their worst days. From the children whose parents abused and neglected them, to adolescents and adults who have lost hope believing ending their lives was their only option.
I know what the darkest moments in life without hope look like in someone’s eyes from a decade of crisis mental health work. For years my office was in the passenger seat of my deputy partner’s police car, and my uniform included wearing a bulletproof vest to go out in the field to help those in pain find some relief. I have held the hands of parents, sisters, brothers, and best friends wailing in pain to provide some comfort after finding their loved one just successfully ended their life.
I have shared meals with deputies after a CPR call or horrible car accident turned into a fatality, where we equally tried to help do all we could to save someone.
I have walked with people into the emergency room to voluntarily get help, when they’ve started to lose hope, but through our interaction they’ve decided to trust my belief that there is more for them in this life than today’s pain.
From this experience, I know suffering does not discriminate among class, gender, age, or race. We all go through hard times that knock us down. As your counselor, I am here to help you stand back up, stronger than before.
My goal is to equip you with the tools needed to tackle what you’re today. We will fill up your toolbox with skill so you do not need me in your life forever. My goal is to equip you to weather the next storm. Together we will make this hardship only a chapter, rather your whole life story.
Reach out today, and let’s get to work. You deserve to find peace and balance to your story.
About Me
I received my master’s in Social Work from Northwest Nazarene University in 2011. Since then I have worked with very diverse populations, sexual orientations, severe mental illness, and trauma in all shapes and sizes.
While in my graduate program, I worked over 1500 hours in child protection and co-facilitated healthy relationship groups with men who were convicted of domestic violence charges.
Following this for over a decade I worked in crisis mental health ranging from crisis centers, hospital emergency departments, and in the community partnered with law enforcement. For three years, I wore a bulletproof vest, riding around in the passenger seat of my police officer/county deputy’s car responding to 911 mental health calls helping people on their worst days.
In 2018 I transitioned to running my private practice full time where I’ve helped teenagers, men, and women through different mental health struggles such as: trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, health relationships, regulating emotions in a healthy way, grief, sexual assault, processing child abuse now as an adult, eating disorders, and coping with life transitions.
Support is the key.
From all this experience, I realized the biggest connection between a person on their worst day and wholehearted living is the amount of support a person has in their life to thrive past the pain.
Years ago, when I opened my private practice, I vowed to be a strong support to my clients in need of more in their lives. Still to this day that is my top priority because through support comes strength, knowledge, growth, survival and triumph.
My life outside of work.
When I am not working with my amazing clients I, too, focus on always improving my own self care through working out, eating healthy, journaling, growing my spiritual relationship, and meditation, when I remember. My personal goal is to always live up to the saying of “Lead by example,” and fight against, “those who can’t, teach.” The best humans I know and look up to walk their talk rather than the latter so I strive to do the same.
Outside of this I love spending time with my wonderful husband and two amazing young sons. I enjoy dance parties in the living room with the boys, family walks, traveling the world together, and laughing loud enough to fill up a room with my closest girlfriends. As my boys are little, small pockets of my time consist of reading for pleasure, enjoying a delicious sugar free peppermint latte, and getting a good night’s rest.
I look forward to connecting with you and helping you achieve everything you want out of life. Call me at (971) 319-1613 or email me today at joey@sparksflycousnseling.com.