Find a Therapist in Greenbelt, MD

As an extrovert, my behaviors and style of communication affirm my belief in establishing rapport and creating trust with clients. I consider helping others in the area of mental health my passion and purpose.

I want people to feel comfortable with me. I am good at building rapport and trust in the therapeutic environment. In sessions, we will work on objectives and goals together. I am a "hands-on" therapist who works with problem-solving and change and uses reframing of issues to build strength in people.

I counsel individuals, families, couples, and children. My specialties include depression, anxiety, trauma, self-esteem issues, relationships concerns, family conflict, and grief. My goal is to help clients better understand themselves so that they can improve their relationships and quality of life. I tailor my approach to the needs of each client, responding to their own unique challenges and personality. I do not use a one-size-fits-all approach. People sometimes struggle to understand their distress, behavior, and patterns. By offering a safe, thoughtful environment, I empower my clients to cultivate a deeper understanding of their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, enabling them to identify the issues that undermine their quality of life. We live together in the same society, but we each experience life differently, and everyone faces challenges that can make leading satisfying and happy lives more difficult. Accessing your inner strengths is possible, and this empowerment can help to resolve your pain, suffering, and confusion.

I help adults heal from complex trauma, PTSD, dissociation, anxiety, and the lasting effects of childhood trauma and adversity. Many of my clients feel overwhelmed by emotional reactivity, relationship difficulties, chronic shame, or a sense of being disconnected from themselves and others. Although they often appear to be coping on the outside, they feel stuck in survival mode internally. My approach is collaborative, trauma-informed, and paced to your individual needs. I believe healing happens in the context of safety, understanding, and self-compassion, not through forcing change before you are ready. Drawing from EMDR, Somatic Experiencing®, parts work, DBT skills, and mindfulness-based approaches, I help clients regulate their nervous system, develop greater emotional stability, deepen self-understanding, and move beyond survival toward a more connected and meaningful life.

I strongly believe in your inherent ability to grow and change-- to survive neglect, hardship, and trauma and become stronger and more resilient. I help people find their strengths and learn to accept and even love their vulnerabilities. I teach coping skills and I listen intently.

I strive to help people stop fighting their inner experience and start understanding it—building self-compassion, stability, and trust in the body and mind as healing unfolds. I am collaborative and empowering and work at a gentle pace to help people regulate, set boundaries, and trust their sensitivity rather than override it. I strive to be an emotionally attuned, trauma-informed, and nervous-system aware therapist.

Erica is licensed in the state of Virginia as a licensed professional counselor, a licensed addictions treatment practitioner, and a board-certified art therapist. She has an extensive history of working with clients suffering from co-occurring disorders. Erica feels that the therapeutic value of art has the opportunity to heal, empower, and engage those isolated due to their addiction, depression, anxiety, fears, anger, and pain.

I am a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) with 8 years of experience providing psychiatric care. My background includes inpatient and outpatient behavioral health care, as well as experience working with geriatric patients in long-term care settings. I specialize in medication management and support individuals experiencing anxiety, depression, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive challenges (OCD), personality-related challenges, and autism. I also work with clients navigating substance use, trauma, parenting challenges, caregiver burnout, and major life stressors. My goal is to create a supportive environment where clients feel heard and understood.

I help individuals with issues such as depression, anxiety, relationships challenges, childhood trauma, stress, and families navigating behavioral issues. I teach my clients communication skills that improve their relationships. Those skills boost my clients' power and voice, as well as their intimacy with their significant others. I rely on a number of approaches, including Gestalt, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, somatic experiencing, and experiential dynamic psychotherapy. I help clients dealing with traumatic stress reduce panic, pain, numbness and hyper-arousal in response to life and relationships difficulties. I combine calming and relationship skills to help children, adolescents, and young adults reduce family discord and ADHD, and increase self-efficacy. I help my clients navigate their behaviors, emotions, cognition, and physiology. I help couples and individuals explore the ways that small changes in attitudes and stances can nurture new ways of feeling, thinking, and being in the world. I help my clients find new solutions so they can connect with a sense of joy and competence.

I am a licensed professional counselor (LPC)

If you are feeling stuck, anxious, sad, weird, depressed, triggered, or just... at loose ends, get in touch. Talking helps you figure out where you are, how you got there, and where you want to go. In a collaborative process, I will help you understand your thoughts and feelings, and I will help you clarify your direction and purpose.

I help people change through developing a greater awareness for all of themselves, which allows them greater resources to deal with the struggles that they are experiencing. As clients develop greater awareness of themselves, including their wants, needs, emotions, and ways of relating to others, they tend to develop a wider range of choices in their lives. They learn to recognize what they do that keeps them from being their best selves. They also learn to tap into and use their own internal wisdom to help guide their choices, developing a greater authenticity in their lives. In relationships, couples and families develop greater intimacy and ability to use conflict to further their relationship through their greater awareness of themselves and their other family members. People I work with also learn with guidance and coaching to experiment with new ways of being with themselves and others in the world, which furthers their growth and development into more happy, fulfilled human beings. As an experienced psychotherapist and former graduate psychology professor, I have developed a wide range of expertise in helping others. I am honored and humbled by the courage and spirit of the people I work with and the struggles they face. I feel privileged to help people come to terms with pain, face challenges, and change their lives.