Jamie Johnson Email & Phone Number

I am a licensed professional Clinical Counselor in CA and a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor-supervisor in NC (LCMHC-s). My areas of expertise include multicultural, trauma, and marriage and family therapy. The diagnosis I specialize in are depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders and adjustment disorder. I have been working in the counseling profession for nearly 10 years. I have a Doctorate in marriage and Family Therapy from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Throughout my years in school I have studied abroad in Spain, Belize and Dominican Republic, which has allowed me to provide services in not only English but Spanish as well. Also, I have completed service learning in different states within the U.S.After working in the field for many years I found a particular attraction to working with people of color. I found it more difficult to build rapport, develop trust from the family, and get the family to accept evidence based practices. In my experience of working with individuals and families of color, many times they are fearful, in pain, and feel helpless. One major difference between working with individuals and families of color and White families was that I had to work harder to show that I could be trusted. It also required more effort to get the families to believe in Counseling. It seemed that people of color were looking for reasons to not trust the therapeutic process, because of disbeliefs in the system or fear of who may get into their business. This was just one barrier to services. Another barrier was the multilayers of maladaptive coping. Through genograms I was able to see how family functioning had been passed down from generation to generation with no interventions. I saw that families would try to break generational patterns, but were unsuccessful due to lack of information. Parents are passing down the fear or discomfort they have felt to their children without their children ever experiencing the event. This is done by overcompensating or decompensating for their own traumas. Families have developed forms of functioning that is consistent with the familial pattern whether consciously or unconsciously. Ultimately, this is due to an unclear depiction of the problem. A huge part of what I do in therapy as well as as a leader in the community is deconstruct negative coping mechanisms and negative generational patterns in the BIPOC community.

Listed skills include Powerpoint, Public Speaking, Microsoft Office, Program Development, and 8 others.