Stephanie Hope Alexandra Ezea, LPCC-S

Everyone is worthy and deserving of healing and I strive to create a safe and supportive therapeutic environment that will foster the conditions needed to promote positive change. I want my clients to come to session knowing they will see a therapist who accepts them unconditionally, seeks to understand their concerns from their perspective and will tailor therapy to incorporate and respect each person’s unique psychological, physical, spiritual, and cultural needs.

To me, the therapeutic relationship is the most important part of therapy because change does not occur unless we feel safe and that requires trust and vulnerability; it is incredibly brave for all patients to step into a room (or in my case a virtual waiting room) and be willing to entrust me with the things that have hurt them the most. However, as much as counseling is a relationship it is also a science. I absolutely love neurobiology. I find passion in explaining how mental illness impacts our thoughts, feelings and then, by extension our behavior and how science and evidence based therapeutic techniques can assist us in obtaining relief from some of the negative symptoms of mental illness that cause us to experience distress. So, I equally engage humanistic and evidence-based methods to create and maintain what I hope is the most healing environment tailored to each individual unique needs.

I have my Bachelor’s in Psychology and my Masters in Counseling Psychology. I have post graduate certification in forensics and spent the majority of my career working with both perpetrators and victims of sexual and violent crimes. This has exposed me to many mental health diagnoses that otherwise I do not know if I would have had the opportunity to work with in the general population. Today, I am finding that I really enjoy helping individuals who struggle with trauma, who struggle with their self-worth or with releasing themselves from guilt and shame or hold resentments, and I also enjoy working with couples. I find that I am really capable of assisting individuals who are struggling with impulsive behaviors such as ADD. In addition, I also do faith based counseling as well and I also enjoy creative and expressive counseling. I integrate music based therapy into sessions whenever possible. I am grateful now to be working with the population at Matrix.