Dr. Ariel McKinney (she/her)

Anxiety has been central to my clinical work across every setting I've trained in — hospital, schools, community mental health, and private practice. GAD, panic, social anxiety, perfectionism, high-functioning dread that looks composed on the outside. I use EMDR, CBT, ACT, and somatic-informed approaches to address the thought spiral, body braces, and the science behind it.

ADHD in teens and adults rarely looks like what people expect — especially in high achievers who've been masking, compensating, and being told they just need to try harder. I bring a neuropsychology background and years of assessment and treatment experience to understand how ADHD actually operates in your brain, your relationships, and your daily life — and build strategies that work with it, not against it.

My experience with autism spans over a decade — ABA therapy throughout doctoral training, years of evaluations across school and clinical settings, and direct intervention work with autistic individuals of all ages. I understand autism across environments, not just in one context. That depth means you don't arrive and spend your session catching me up. We get to work.

I trained in Trauma-Focused CBT at Jewish Family and Children's Services in a role specifically funded to treat complex trauma. That wasn't general clinical work — it was concentrated, focused, and demanding. Combined with over a decade of trauma work across school, hospital, community mental health, and private practice settings, I understand how trauma presents differently at every age and context.

CBT is the backbone of evidence-based practice — and my training in it is deep. I trained at the Banner University Medical Center Anxiety Clinic and Jewish Family and Children's Services, applying CBT across anxiety, depression, and trauma populations. A decade of work across hospital, school, community mental health, and private practice settings has taught me how to adapt it — not deliver it like a protocol, but use it like a clinical tool.

I completed EMDR training through the Personal Transformation Institute and have applied it across trauma, anxiety, and stuck patterns that talk therapy alone hasn't reached. My neuropsychology background informs how I understand what EMDR is actually doing — at the level of memory processing and nervous system regulation. It is not a last resort in my practice. It is a primary tool.