Olivia Outlund (She/her/hers)

My experiences have been largely working with college-aged students struggling with life transitions from moving out of the home for the first time, living in a new city, starting a new school, choosing classes and a course of study, and a changing social support network. Many students at this age also need support in understanding their developing sexual identity and sense of self outside their family unit.

My experiences also consist of working with those who suffer from depression. In today's world many people struggle with feelings of isolation, not measuring up, feeling hopeless, and a lack of motivation. In my experience, people benefit from talking to someone in a safe space and gaining a deeper understanding of the processes of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that may contribute to depression and learning techniques to develop new ways of coping that reduce depression.

In my counseling experiences and personal life, I have found there are many forms of anxiety and ways we use to cope with anxious thoughts and feelings that sometimes lead people away from their goals and values. If this is the case for you, we can team up to better understand how your coping strategies function in your life, experiment with new ways of coping with your anxiety symptoms, and put you on a path to living life less bound by anxiety and all its manifestations.

I have taken multiple trainings and courses on CBT methods and used a variety of techniques with clients. I attempt to tailor each session to the client but it helps to start by understanding each clients process of thinking, feeling, and behaving and how it operates in their lives. If the client is interested in homework between sessions, I have experience creating exercises to help the client continue their work outside of our sessions.

I have taken training courses on mindfulness and have been incorporating mindfulness exercises in my practice with the guidance of my supervisors. I often use mindfulness exercises to build upon the cognitive therapy practices and introduce clients to different ways of connecting to the present moment.

I have taken training courses and read books geared toward therapists on how to best incorporate ACT into sessions. Depending on the client, we may incorporate aspects of ACT into therapy or take a strictly ACT approach to our sessions. I have experience leading clients in an exploration of their values, how their current strategies work in their lives, and how to gain psychological flexibility in order to reach their goals.

I completed level 1 training on EMDR and completed 20 hours of consultation and have had more than 2 years of experience incorporating EMDR into my practice. I typically use EMDR for PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

If you are high-masking autistic, ADHD, or a highly sensitive person the world can feel pretty overwhelming. Together we can work to understand your nervous system and how to recover from burnout and increase your vagal tone. I also take a perspective that the world is typically not accommodating to neurodivergent people and often times burnout can be a symptom of that reality. I take a systems perspective and look at the bigger issues that contribute to burnout. I use a neurodiversity paradigm.