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Parenting

Claris Velez, MS

Julie Liszka
Graduate Student Intern
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Who I Work With

I support children, young adults, and parents who may be facing challenges such as:

  • Racism, discrimination, or bullying
  • Anxiety, life transitions, or low self-esteem
  • Parenting struggles, especially for parents of children ages 5–10 who feel stuck or overwhelmed in managing emotions and behaviors

What Makes My Approach Unique

My work is grounded in clinical training that is both evidence-based and flexible, allowing me to honor the unique cultural backgrounds and life experiences of each client. I take a collaborative, client-centered, and strengths-based approach, ensuring that treatment feels supportive and empowering.

The Benefits of Therapy

Through our work together, you can expect to:

  • Build confidence in expressing and managing emotions
  • Develop practical tools to cope with stress and navigate challenges
  • Strengthen parenting skills and feel more effective in supporting your child
  • Make meaningful progress toward the goals that matter most to you

 

Lauren Holmes, MA

Julie Liszka
Professional Counselor Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Are you struggling to adjust to a big life transition such as parenthood, loss, shifting values etc.?
  • Are you feeling unhappy or stressed in your relationship(s)?

  • Are you dealing with unresolved trauma from your family of origin?

I Can Help.

  • With a lot of interest and experience in big life transitions (grief, postpartum, job changes, and big moves) I have gathered a knowledge base of coping mechanisms as well as the understanding that often an empathetic ear and additional support can make all the difference in these times of change.
  • I have a deep belief that relationships (romantic, platonic, and therapist/client) are where so much growth, healing, and fulfillment can be found. Learning how to navigate difficult conversations and build healthy relationships is a must.

  • Looking back at past experiences, understanding how and why they may still be affecting us and finding new ways to cope, make sense of, and heal from them is a special area of focus for me.

What can you expect?

  • You will expand your coping skills to manage the stress and anxiety of big life transitions.
  • You will learn practical and usable tools and knowledge to help navigate and nurture your relationships.
  • You will develop new insights about the past and we will create a safe place for those parts to coexist with new parts of you.

Brianna Recklies, MS

Julie Liszka
Professional Counselor Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I specialize in:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Are you experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, or other issues that are interfering with your day-to-day life?
  • Are you looking for support in navigating major life transitions, past or present trauma, relationships, or other stressors?
  • Are you ready to explore questions around identity, gender, or sexuality?

I Can Help…

  • No person is the same, so why would I work with each client the same way? I have experience working with a variety of issues and will develop an individualized approach that meets you where you currently are so that we can work towards your goals as a team.
  • I provide a space of unconditional and non-judgmental support that builds self-worth and self-empowerment. I am queer-affirming, sex- and kink-positive, and social justice-oriented. My hopes are always to create a space where clients feel safe to show up authentically and fully be themselves.
  • Sitting and talking alone does not work for most people, so I enjoy using creative and somatic interventions in my work. You are the expert of your own life, so we will work towards your goals in a way that best suits your needs, interests, and values.

What can you expect?

  • My goal is to support and empower you so that you can navigate challenges, stressors, and difficult life situations with more confidence and greater ease.
  • I see connection as one of the most important aspects of our lives and the foundation for effective therapy. We will build a strong and genuine therapeutic relationship together that strengthens your ability to connect with not only others in your life, but with yourself as well.
  • Through our work together, you will increase self-awareness, self-acceptance, and feel more confident so that you can be more present and authentic in other relationships and aspects of your life.

Jimmy Boyda, LPC

Julie Liszka
Licensed Professional Counselor
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Heal, grow, and create the life that aligns with your values.

Does this sound familiar?

  • Experiencing conflict or stress in relationships?
  • Ready to heal from past trauma?
  • Exploring questions about gender or sexuality?
  • Looking for greater meaning and direction in life?

I Can Help.

With a background in family therapy and education, I support children, teens, adults, and couples navigating family conflict, mood disorders, relationships, trauma, and gender/sexuality concerns. I provide compassionate, evidence-based guidance, helping you understand yourself, recognize your strengths, and build a life aligned with your values.

What can you expect?

  • Greater confidence, self-awareness, and self-acceptance
  • Practical tools for healthy relationships and conflict resolution

  • Increased resilience to handle life’s challenges and stressors

Let’s work together to create the life you want.

Nooshi Ghasedi, MA, NCC

Julie Liszka
Professional Counselor Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Does this sound familiar?

  • You’ve experienced emotional trauma and want to process it in a safe environment.
  • You’re navigating depression, anxiety, and life stressors.
  • You want to grow through life’s challenges while honoring your individual and/or cultural values.

I can help.

  • I offer an authentic and relatable style to create a space where you can feel safe to be fully yourself.
  • As a bicultural second-generation immigrant and woman of color, I understand the impacts of being “othered” and will validate your lived experiences.
  • My approach is collaborative, person-centered, and offered through a feminist lens of reduced power dynamics. YOU are the expert on yourself, and I am here to offer support along your journey.

What can you expect?

  • Achieve a deeper understanding of yourself and your patterns to create more self-awareness and the ability to foster the changes you seek.
  • Create a lifestyle where your needs are spoken and honored through intentional relationships (including with yourself!) and solid boundaries.
  • Identify your strengths to cultivate resilience to navigate life’s challenges with confidence and self-compassion.

I believe that self-awareness and self-compassion are the foundations to finding more emotional peace. Counseling is a partnership between therapist and client where we will explore conscious and unconscious patterns to find more emotional balance. I take a person-centered, trauma-informed, and feminist approach to therapy, and I draw from a variety of frameworks like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Strengths-Based perspectives. Therapy with me involves exploring and untangling the patterns keeping you stuck, so you can create a life that feels more balanced, intentional, and meaningful.

August Smith, MS

Julie Liszka
Marriage and Family Therapist Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Struggling with your or a loved one’s gender identity, sexuality, or level of self-acceptance?
  • Experiencing difficulty in discussing, exploring, or engaging with intimacy, pleasure, or sex tied to shame, trauma, or relational distress?
  • Grappling with current, past, or generational trauma, seeking a safe space to process and utilize coping tools to expand your emotional capacity?

I Can Help.

  • I utilize integrative trauma-informed Narrative Therapy, DBT, and Polyvagal Theory to guide clients through understanding their internal beliefs shaped by early life experiences and how those foundations impact tolerance, behavior, and relational dynamics in adulthood.
  • I believe therapy can assist clients in unlocking their internal resources needed to promote individual and systemic growth, leading to meaningful change.
  • I implore a liberatory approach by analyzing the client’s context within the systems theory framework and the effects of interpersonal interactions on the client.

What can you expect?

  • I work on an individual and relational level to build clients’ innate resources, fortify distress tolerance, promote understanding of behavioral functionality, and fine-tune awareness of interacting communicative patterns.
  • My notable clinical interests include sex therapy, trauma processing, and identity exploration involving gender & sexuality, collectively framed by liberatory practices and systemic thinking.
  • As a queer and transgender therapist, I have experienced facets of systemic oppression and witnessed its impact on other marginalized communities, driving my own goal to expand the accessibility of mental health services and aim to provide a safe and inclusive therapeutic environment to support client’s mental health regardless of cultural or personal identities.

Rita Melnikova, MA

Julie Liszka
Marriage and Family Therapist Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Does this sound familiar?

  •  Experiencing a lack of accessibility, responsiveness and engagement in your relationship?

  • Feeling out of control and driven by strong and confusing emotions

  • Experiencing a sense of disconnection within oneself and with others?

I Can Help.

  • So much of what impacts us on a daily basis has roots in relationships; our relationships with people around us but also with ourselves. I seek to understand clients’ needs in the context of their individual lives, experiences and relationships.

  • I am direct and efficient in my use of my models, utilizing Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with couples and Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) with individuals.

  • I know that life can get really messy, relationships can take many forms and sometimes the history people share together can seem too complicated to be understood. I am here to hear your story, follow your lead as the expert in your own life and support you in the changes that you want to make.

What can you expect?

  • Clients will walk away with more clarity about what they want for themselves and in their relationships, gaining skills in identifying, understanding and expressing their emotions.

  • Individuals participating in couples therapy will begin to express themselves more fully to their partners, while feeling supported and understood by them.  They will find new collaborative ways to handle situations which have previously led to conflict and disconnection.

  • Clients will find themselves adopting an US vs. the PROBLEM stance more often than the ME vs. YOU stance when finding themselves in conflict with their partner.

  • Individual clients will experience a newfound sense of clarity in understanding their own emotions and where they come from. They will feel an increased sense of control in their lives and feel empowered to respond to life’s stress in a way that tends toward growth, calmness and security.

Brendan Moore, CSWA

Julie Liszka
Clinical Social Worker Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Are you or your teen navigating questions around identity (such as gender, culture, race, disability)?

  • Are you struggling with repetitive relationship or career conflicts that don’t make sense?

  • Are you trying to adapt to and make meaning out of a painful event (breakup, divorce, illness, death, or other loss)?

I Can Help.

  • I work with clients to identify and change how unconscious patterns from the past show up painfully in the present

  • My advanced training in psychoanalysis, literature, and feminist theory have taught me to focus not just on symptoms, but on the life story of the person in front of me

  • Culture and structures of exploitation contribute strengths and vulnerabilities to every person’s life, and I strive to welcome these concerns into the consulting room in a spirit of humility

What can you expect?

  • You will derive greater satisfaction and meaning from life, work, and relationships

  • You will experience more clarity on issues of identity, love, and long-term goals

  • You will find improved resilience in the face of life’s challenges

Savannah Rigney, MA

Julie Liszka
Professional Counselor Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I specialize in:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Feeling overwhelmed by significant life changes or experiencing issues related to complex trauma?
  • Striving to build trust in yourself and secure relationships with others?
  • Are you seeking a life filled with more joy, purpose, and sense of peace?

I Can Help.

  • In our work together, I’ll guide you through a journey of self-discovery, helping you understand the connection between your mind and body, and supporting you in creating new patterns and insights that align with your personal hopes and goals.
  • I’m trained in a holistic and systematic approach, which means I consider how all aspects of your life have influenced you.
  • I approach our work with compassion and curiosity, always fostering hope and confidence in your healing journey.

What can you expect?

  • Let go of the burdens from the past, heal emotional wounds, and address the effects of trauma.
  • Enhanced self-awareness and understanding of your relationship with others.
  • Deeper access to your inner self, fostering qualities such as playfulness, connection, self-belief, and compassion.

Halle Winkler, MA

Julie Liszka
Marriage and Family Therapist Associate
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I specialize in:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Are you or your child struggling with identity or knowing who you are?
  • Does it feel hard to establish a “new normal” after things have changed?
  • Are you looking to improve your relationships with others, but aren’t sure where to start?
  • Are you constantly “in your head,” or do you struggle to trust yourself or your child to make decisions?

I Can Help.

  • I work from a systemic lens, looking to understand you in the context of the communities you are a part of.
  • My approach is trauma-integrated and attachment-based. This means that I deeply consider the impact of trauma and our earliest relationships on how we exist in the world today.
  • I am passionate about the cultivation of healthy relationships with ourselves and with others.

What can you expect?

  • I use a strength-based approach where we move at your pace.
  • You will feel a greater connection with yourself and with your body. Our bodies often know things that our minds haven’t yet processed– learning to connect with this can be a powerful tool.
  • You will gain practical coping strategies to get you feeling better so you feel empowered to tackle the big stuff.
  • I focus my work on children, teens, young adults, and their parents and prioritize whole family treatment when appropriate.

Noah Belcher, LCSW

Julie Liszka
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I Specialize In:

Finding clarity, balance, and joy in your everyday life.

Does this sound familiar?

  • Feeling stuck, lost, or directionless?
  • Overwhelmed with feelings of sadness or anxiety, making it difficult to foster happiness?
  • Struggling with a life transition?

I Can Help.

  • I have experience in both clinical and community-based settings, providing a perspective on how mental health impacts life at all levels of treatment.
  • I provide a mindfulness approach informed by evidence-based practices that are grounded in reality and tailored to the individual and their needs.
  • I use humor and irreverence to help identify strengths, skills, and goals in a genuine, supportive, nonjudgmental, safe space.

What can you expect?

  • Improved ability to cope with day-to-day stressors.
  • Greater capacity for change and identifying goals.
  • A renewed passion for connections and interests.

Lauren Updike, LPC

Julie Liszka
Licensed Professional Counselor
Current clients can book a therapy session here
I work with:
I specialize in:

Does this sound familiar?

  • Are you overwhelmed? Do stress, anxiety, depression, and unhealthy coping strategies impact your life negatively?
  • Do you need support understanding your neurodivergence and personal identity in your current environment and how these may impact your schooling, career, or relationships?
  • Are you struggling with intrusive thoughts and unproductive behaviors related to current stressors or to past or second hand trauma?
  • Are you struggling parenting a difficult child or have other family conflicts?

I Can Help.

  • I provide a safe and nonjudgmental environment by supporting a client’s values, culture, and goals (LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC safe space).
  • I offer a supportive, direct, and trauma-informed approach to encourage self-reflection, deeper personal understanding and compassion, as well as increased skills in communication, emotional awareness, self-advocating, boundary-setting, and adaptability.
  • I help families navigate conflict and emotional crises by building on strengths, system supports, collaboration, and coping skill implementation.
  • I hold multiple graduate degrees, including a Master’s Degree in Counseling through OSU and am working toward full LPC licensure in 2024. I have a background in crisis intervention as well as family and youth counseling focusing strongly on families overcoming extreme conflict and personal difficulties. My background offers me a unique understanding of many clients’ most challenging emotional struggles.

What can you expect?

  • I work with a wide range of clients, including youth, emerging adults, individual adults, and families. My clinical approach is rooted in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), yet draws on Systems and Attachment Theories.
  • As a team, you and I will work to achieve your goals which may include decreased stress, implementation of healthy coping skills, processing trauma, identity discovery, and conflict resolution. Clients tend to see an improvement in emotional regulation, personal growth, and in their relationships and family systems.
  • I value authenticity and offer a welcoming, client-centered space for you to explore troubles and collaboratively find solutions.