Big Ideas, Real Therapist who helps you bring them to life.

ADHD Expertise & Family-Centered Support

Nicole’s work with ADHD is grounded in specialized clinical training, extensive experience working with children, teens, young adults, and families, and a practical understanding of what ADHD actually looks like in everyday life.

Her clinical foundation includes specialized ADHD-focused training through the University of Southern California (USC), with emphasis on assessment, intervention, executive functioning, child development, and the emotional and behavioral challenges that frequently accompany ADHD. Nicole has continued to expand this expertise through ongoing education and direct clinical work with neurodivergent children, adolescents, young adults, and their families.

What distinguishes Nicole’s approach is her ability to look beyond the diagnosis and understand how ADHD shows up differently in each person and across environments. Difficulties with organization, motivation, emotional regulation, impulsivity, task initiation, time management, school performance, friendships, family relationships, and self-esteem can all be connected—but they require individualized support rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Nicole helps clients understand their ADHD while developing strategies that are realistic, practical, and sustainable in their actual lives. Her work is strengths-based and individualized, with an emphasis on helping clients build executive functioning skills without making them feel as though they are constantly being corrected, criticized, or asked to function like someone they are not.

ADHD Support for the Whole Family

A particular area of Nicole’s expertise is family-centered ADHD treatment. ADHD rarely affects only one person—it can influence communication, expectations, routines, school functioning, sibling relationships, parent-child conflict, and the overall emotional climate of the home.

Nicole works closely with parents and caregivers to help families:

  • Develop a deeper and more accurate understanding of ADHD

  • Distinguish ADHD-related challenges from intentional defiance or lack of effort

  • Reduce repeated conflict, criticism, and misunderstanding

  • Strengthen communication between children, teens, and parents

  • Create structure and routines that are realistic for an ADHD brain

  • Improve consistency, boundaries, accountability, and follow-through

  • Build executive functioning and emotional regulation skills

  • Identify and reinforce each child or teen’s individual strengths

  • Help young people develop greater confidence, independence, and self-understanding

Nicole’s goal is not simply to manage ADHD symptoms. It is to help children, teens, young adults, and their families understand how their brains work, develop tools that genuinely fit their lives, and move from frustration and overwhelm toward greater confidence, connection, and success.

ADHD

Anxiety, Panic & Phobia Expertise

Nicole specializes in the treatment of anxiety, panic, phobias, and fear-based avoidance, with more than 3,000 hours of direct individual client experience. Her work goes beyond simply teaching clients how to “calm down.” She helps clients understand what is happening in both the brain and body, identify the patterns maintaining their anxiety, and develop practical strategies for responding differently.

Nicole works extensively with:

  • Generalized anxiety and chronic worry

  • Social anxiety

  • College and young adult anxiety

  • Panic disorder

  • Panic and anxiety attacks

  • Medical phobias

  • Dental anxiety

  • Specific phobias and fear-based avoidance

  • Performance and sports anxiety

  • Anger connected to anxiety and emotional overwhelm

  • Low self-esteem and confidence

  • Body image concerns

  • Fear of losing control, becoming sick, or dying

Understanding Anxiety vs. Panic

One of Nicole’s strengths is helping clients understand the difference between anxiety and panic—because although they frequently overlap, they are not always experienced in the same way.

Anxiety can feel like becoming trapped in your thoughts: overthinking, anticipating what might go wrong, replaying situations, seeking reassurance, freezing, or struggling to turn your brain “off.”

Panic can feel intensely physical and immediate. A racing heart, dizziness, shaking, shortness of breath, nausea, feeling disconnected from your surroundings, or a sudden fear of losing control or dying can make the body itself begin to feel unsafe.

Nicole helps clients learn to recognize these responses without becoming increasingly afraid of them. Using real-life examples, experiential exercises, visual learning, grounding, cognitive restructuring, and nervous-system regulation, she helps clients understand what their mind and body are doing—and what they can do in response.

Specialized Work With Fears & Avoidance

A major focus of Nicole’s clinical work is understanding the relationship between fear, panic, and avoidance.

Avoidance can provide immediate relief, but over time it can reinforce the brain's belief that a situation is dangerous or unmanageable. Nicole works with clients to identify these patterns and gradually build greater confidence and tolerance around feared situations.

She has extensive experience helping clients navigate fears involving:

  • Doctors, hospitals, and medical environments

  • Medical procedures, equipment, and healthcare professionals

  • Dental appointments and procedures

  • Flying and air travel

  • Sports games, competitions, auditions, and performance settings

  • Evaluation or high-pressure environments

  • Small or enclosed spaces and claustrophobia

  • Fear of physical sensations associated with panic

  • Fear of losing control, becoming ill, or dying

Rather than treating every fear the same way, Nicole works to understand what the individual is actually afraid will happen, how that fear developed, and what behaviors may unintentionally be keeping it powerful.

A Relational & Highly Individualized Approach

Nicole’s approach integrates:

  • Cognitive reframing and cognitive restructuring

  • Grounding and nervous-system regulation

  • Experiential and real-world interventions

  • Relational therapy

  • Intentional and clinically appropriate self-disclosure

  • Education about anxiety, panic, avoidance, and the mind-body connection

  • Individualized strategies that can be used outside of the therapy room

Nicole also brings lived understanding of anxiety and panic into her clinical work. When therapeutically appropriate, she uses intentional self-disclosure to reduce shame, strengthen connection, and help clients feel that they are speaking with someone who genuinely understands how consuming anxiety and panic can feel.

The goal is for clients to feel understood—not analyzed—and to leave therapy with a clearer understanding of themselves, greater trust in their ability to tolerate difficult sensations and situations, and practical tools they can actually use in everyday life.

Ultimately, Nicole’s work is about helping clients move from “I can't handle this” to “I understand what is happening, I know what to do, and I can get through it.”

Anxiety and Panic Disorder

Narsissistic Personality Disorder

( Family and Relationship Dynamics)

I bring extensive hands on experience working withtin these compex systems including:

  1. 900 + hours of supporting high conflict family cases, including separation and co-parenting

  2. Supporting ages 25+ in navigating romantic relationships with a partner that is showing signs of possible narcissism

  3. Focused work with children and teens impacted by emotionally unstable or emotionally immature caregiving environments

Self Confidence and Self Worth in Teens

I specialize in working with teens and young adults and have over 3,000 hours of relational, individual client work with a consistent full caseload supporting individuals during some of the most critical years of identity development.

As a younger therapist, I naturally connect with teens — especially those who feel resistant to therapy, have had negative past experiences, or are unsure about opening up. My style is warm, vibrant, and highly relatable, which helps create a space where teens feel safe enough to engage authentically.

My work centers entirely around the teen. I prioritize their voice, their pace, and their experience, which often allows them to feel a sense of control, safety, and trust in the process.

I use:

  • Cognitive reframing to challenge self-critical thinking

  • Motivational interviewing to build internal drive and autonomy

  • Pattern recognition to help teens identify cycles of self-sabotage and negative beliefs

With a strong trauma-informed approach, I support teens struggling with self-worth, identity, and confidence by creating a space that is steady, supportive, and never rushed. We move at their pace, especially when there has been damage to self-esteem or identity.

I also incorporate movement and sports-based elements into therapy, helping teens feel engaged and comfortable — not like they are being interviewed, but understood in a way that fits their world.

My goal is to help teens not just cope, but build a stronger sense of self, confidence, and direction that carries into adulthood.