Education & Experience

I'm a former psychiatric inpatient hospital unit staff member (Child/Adolescent Unit as well as Adult Unit Experience). I worked in this role for two years of graduate social work school (for an MSW) which really was immeasurably helpful to my learning process in school because of the opportunities to apply knowledge and practice new skills as I learned them from school during my simultaneous 10 Month 20 hour per week clinical field work experiences (Internships) under clinical supervision at each placement. In my first internship role, I case managed and counseled as I co-led groups for anger management, parenting skills training, and child trauma processing/socialization/skill-building, groups for children. I ran therapy sessions for individuals, couples, families, and groups with those who mostly came to us through Child Protective Services Involvement and often as part of a Court Mandated counseling requirement prior to getting back their parenting rights fully. My second year placement was a clinician intern in an adolescent day treatment program and school for 12-months a year as an alternate placement to public school placement due to severe behavioral, emotional, developmental, and psychiatric impacting their functional capacity and ability to safely remain in public school while adequately learning. In this role, I co-led a team of professionals in different clinical or educational roles with students/clients whose cases we assigned to us with me case-managing and IEP social history report writing, clinical assessing and report writing, charting, diagnosing, crisis intervention and suicide/homicide threat assessments and hospitalization necessity determinations, individual, family, and group therapy sessions, and behavior modification plans and implementation coordination and training with school staff and parents. I was charged with monitoring medication effects on clients and reporting them during monthly medication meetings with the staff psychiatrist or as needed. Upon graduating with my MSW from Fordham University and passing the LSW exam, I was hired as a clinician with the lower school (preschool-early middle school) providing the same services as described above from my second internship experience with the upper school. Under clinical supervision of the program director, a PhD Psychologist) for two years I also was invited to participate regularly for two years as an unofficial member of a group with doctoral students at the Graduate School of Applied Psychology for play therapy training and supervision with a pioneering professor of play therapy and ran a private practice as well. My second internship and first two jobs in the field were for the same facility (Rutgers University Behavioral Healthcare). Once I qualified as eligible to sit for the LCSW exam, I did so and received my independent practitioner license (LCSW). I immediately opened a small evening private practice. Six months later I attended classes to receive training in providing clinical supervision to MSW students and LSW's through a course at Rutgers School of Social Work and earned a Certificate to provide these services. My 3rd job in the field was as a Federal Granted Funded Public Elementary School System counselor responsible for providing services individually and in groups to students whose IEP's called for the "Related Service" of "Counseling." I also spent a great deal of time addressing student behavioral crises running between the 5 elementary schools to which I was assigned for providing services. My role evolved over my 5 years working in the public school district where I became responsible for CST Case Management including planning, scheduling, writing, and documenting meetings, conducting and writing reports from Social History Assessments for the IEP, setting social-emiontional-behavioral goals and objectives, and conducting FBA's to create and implement behavioral plans, and provide counseling to IEP students but in just one school at this point. However, once my private practice grew to a number of clients that would sustain my ability to pay bills without the school job, and the school assigned me an additional role as the guidance counselor for regular education students as well for a year, I resigned to take on building up my private practice full time. I have been running my private practice for 19 years and it now employs a practice manager, an admin assistant who is also a neurofeedback training certified provider, and 2 now full-time former public guidance school counselors who are licensed independent practitioners one of who is also a neurofeedback training certified provider. In 2009, I trained with EMDRIA trainers to become Level 1 then Level 2 EMDR Certified. I have been using EMDR to help clients several times each work day for 13 years and participated in an EMDR peer supervision and case review group for several years. At DZ Counseling and Neurofeedback Services (DZ-Counseling.com) we provide all modalities of service and offer sessions with Neurofeedback Training co-occuring as well. We have Neurofeedback Training Systems and all needed supplies that we rent out on a monthly basis for self and or family use for at home training. We provide EMDR and other trauma therapies, Play Therapy/Sand Tray, CBT, Neurofeedback, coping and or social skills training, marital therapy, family therapy, parenting skills training, parent-child therapy, clinical supervision, school consultation and 504/IEP advocacy and support, school observations and meetings, behavioral intervention plans, recommendations and assistance, medication management and medication provider consultations, support services for life transitions like college, grief support, chronic illness support, developmental disorders support services for individuals and or their family members, use of Gottman Method for couples, Conscious Parenting, Bowenian Family Systems, and much more.