Heather McKenzie MS, LCMHCS, BC-TMH

You are smart. You try hard and you work hard. You want to do your best. And yet… You can’t turn off your brain from the constant over-thinking, the doubt, and the worry that you are not good enough, not likable enough, not attractive enough, not doing enough… NOT ENOUGH. You might dread Sunday nights and the start of a new work week, put off important or necessary conversations, not say what you really want and need, live in a constant loop and fear of "what if..." and avoid people and situations that are just too uncomfortable. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the gold-standard form of therapy for anxiety-related concerns. It's a highly effective and well-researched form of treatment. CBT involves looking at the links between our thoughts, our emotions, and our behaviors and identifying ways to modify the links when they are not helpful. The thing is....if you are alive, you have anxiety. We all have it and we just need to know how to wrangle it so that we stay in control.

You are smart. You try hard and you work hard. You want to do your best. And yet… You can’t turn off your brain from the constant over-thinking, the doubt, and the worry that you are not good enough, not likable enough, not attractive enough, not doing enough… NOT ENOUGH. You might dread Sunday nights and the start of a new work week, put off important or necessary conversations, not say what you really want and need, live in a constant loop and fear of "what if..." and avoid people and situations that are just too uncomfortable. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the gold-standard form of therapy for anxiety-related concerns. It's a highly effective and well-researched form of treatment. CBT involves looking at the links between our thoughts, our emotions, and our behaviors and identifying ways to modify the links when they are not helpful. The thing is....if you are alive, you have anxiety. We all have it and we just need to know how to wrangle it so that we stay in control.

Let’s be honest. Many of us did not have great role-modeling about what healthy relationships look like or how exactly to pull that off. And also…You have a basic human drive to be in relationships and connected with friends, family, co-workers, and romantically. It’s crucial to your survival and happiness. And of course you want to be in relationships where you feel understood, safe, loved, and able to communicate easily without frequent fighting or feeling uncertain. But instead, you end up feeling hurt or misunderstood. You don’t feel comforted or supported in the ways that you need. You don’t feel as close to others as you want to feel. Little issues end up turning into big fights and hurt feelings or maybe you avoid bringing things up because you don’t want an argument. Gottman Method Couples Therapy (GMCT) is based in over 40 years of research into what makes relationships work and what destroys them. GMCT helps improve communication and increase closeness and intimacy.

I am a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Intensively Trained Clinician through Behavioral Tech (an affiliate of the Linehan Institute). I helped start a brand new comprehensive DBT program from the ground up in 2015 and led a team of 8 clinicians teaching up to 5 DBT classes and serving 70 clients at a time.

I have been practicing CBT since my graduate internship and have attended multiple in-depth training institutes on how to apply CBT to with special populations and issues (such as OCD, personality disorders, panic disorder, substance use, etc).

I completed Gottman Method Couples Therapy Training Level I and Level II in 2011 and have been practicing it since that time.