Seattle Therapist | Cristien Storm, M.A. MHC

Cristien Storm, M.A., MHC | Mental Health Counselor

About Me And My Approach

BACKGROUND
One area of my expertise is working with survivors of abuse and trauma. I work with a variety of post-trauma survivors including people who are healing from domestic violence, sexual abuse, incest, and hate crimes.

I also specialize in working with addiction, which I view not as a disease, but a learned coping skill that is often a means to manage and/or numb emotional pain.

My background includes working with local and regional programs on anti-violence, social change, and human rights campaigns. I am a founding member and former Executive Director of Home Alive (a Seattle arts based anti-violence organization). I worked to develop community based anti-violence programs that address the broad scope of how oppression, violence, trauma, abuse, and secondary trauma inform the structures of our relationships, our organizations, and our progressive movements. I bring my experience working as a cultural organizer for human rights groups (with a focus on using arts and music as part of social change) into my counseling paradigm.

I work with activists and people involved in human rights addressing various issues including building resiliency, reducing burn out, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma

I am a writer and performer and believe that art is a powerful part of healing. I also work with artists, musicians, and performers who may feel stuck in their process, or want to explore areas of their work.

THERAPEUTIC STYLE
My counseling approach varies according to your needs and goals. My theoretical perspective integrates Psychodynamic, Person Centered/Humanistic, Systems, and Cognitive Behavioral therapy with a holistic mind/body orientation.

I am a registered Mental Health Counselor with the State of Washington. I received my B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and my Masters Degree in Mental Health Counseling at Washington School of Professional Psychology, Argosy University in Seattle.

I believe in a strength-based approach to therapy. Everyone has skills and abilities that we can build on in counseling. People do not live nor heal in isolation. Our families, society, personal experiences, work environments, home life, and the economic and political systems we live in all inform who we are. My theoretical orientation looks not only at individual experience when helping people meet their goals and needs for therapy, but also the interpersonal, social, and political context that forms your experience.