About Anissa
What it’s like to work with me
My approach is creative, artistic, intuitive, relational, and trauma-informed.
I focus on the immediate, surface layer of our thoughts and feelings as well as look deeper beneath our conscious awareness. In my work, I weave together cognitive techniques with experiential practices to access the intuitive wisdom of the body. I value slowing the pace down and moving out of our heads and into the many layers of beliefs, sensations, feelings, and memories stored in our body and nervous system.
With a background in both the arts and sciences, I bring a strong neuroscience and research focus into sessions as well as utilize more creative, artistic, and imaginative techniques designed to access parts of our mind and brain that communicate better through images and sensations rather than words. I am passionate about incorporating neuroscience and psychoeducation in sessions, as having a clear and specific understanding of exactly what is happening in the brain and nervous system can lead to deeper awareness, which is the first step towards change. Knowledge can often be the best prescription.
I am here to listen with kindness and curiosity, and I strive to create a space free from judgement and shame.
My Education & Professional Credentials
I completed undergraduate studies in Classical Music and English Literature before pursuing post-baccalaureate coursework in Psychology, during which I also worked as a research assistant in a psychological research lab. In 2020, I completed my graduate degree in Clinical Social Work from the Smith College School for Social Work, where my studies focused on psychodynamic theory and clinical practice.
A significant contributor to my work and education is my own lived experience with a very wide variety of chronic pain and illness symptoms. Click here to learn more about my illness journey.
Having studied many different approaches to psychology and psychotherapy, I would call my approach quite eclectic. My work is primarily grounded in an integration of three theoretical frameworks: contemporary relational psychodynamic theory, attachment theory, and contemplative theory. My approach is strongly influenced by Buddhist teachings on working with the mind, particularly the teachings of Pema Chödrön. I also draw from mindfulness practices, exposure therapy, expressive arts, and applied polyvagal theory. I have received extra training in Internal Family Systems, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Written Exposure Therapy.
I hold a Clinical Social Work Candidate permit to practice in the state of Colorado (SWC# 98). I am under the supervision of Bethany Raab, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Approved Clinical Supervisor (LCSW #1534).
Foundational Beliefs of my Approach
It’s not what’s wrong with you. It’s what happened to you and how what happened to you was encoded into your nervous system.
I respect and trust you as the expert in your own healing and as the authority in your own experiences.
I view current stressors and symptoms with respect. I see them not as signs of weakness or pathology but rather as valuable signs or signals. I understand them as having an important function, a purpose, and something to communicate. Therapy often involves learning to listen closely to what the sensations in our body have to tell us and what they may need us to do differently.
The only difference between a weed and a flower is judgment and perception. When we shift our perception, the plant itself changes in our eyes. And if that plant isn’t thriving, we adjust the environment — because there is nothing wrong with the plant.
Sometimes the only ingredient needed to activate the healing process is the cultivation of a relationship defined by genuine authenticity, care, and collaboration.
Social Justice - Person in Environment Lens
What makes social workers unique is how they pay extra attention to the complex relationships between what’s happening within a person and what’s happening within their family, community, and larger social environments. I think of my work as holding a lens that goes from the microscopic (what’s happening inside ourselves at the most immediate layer of thoughts) all the way to the macroscopic (what’s happening in our larger socio-cultural, economic, and physical environments). I pay attention to how our experiences and identities in the social world (such as those related to race, culture, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, sexuality, gender, ability, class, etc.) intersect with each other and impact us.
I am influenced by liberation psychology, which means that I view many mental health and relationship challenges as survival strategies for an unwell society rather than as symptoms of an unwell individual.
We tend to internalize what society tells us about people who look or act like us. To break free of these messages and the cycles of pain that often accompany them, we may need to step out of the therapy room and work with our community towards advocacy and healing.
