Kristy Garry

After earning a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work at GVSU with a focus on Human Behavior in Social Environment, I began my career by providing psychosocial skills for mentally ill nursing home residents. After working in the nursing home setting, I further explored my passion of working with children, families, and individuals with a wide range of struggles such as addiction, trauma, and abuse in the child welfare field for 10 years. After earning a Masters in Social Work in 2009 from GSU with a focus in communities and families, I earned my Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 2012. Since earning my LCSW, the past 14 years of my practice has included; psychiatric consult liaison in the emergency room, psychotherapist in outpatient intensive treatment, discharge planner on an inpatient psychiatric unit, and a social work coordinator at a Trauma 1 Level hospital.

As an LCSW, I am passionate about working with individuals in crisis, childhood abuse, substance abuse recovery, healthcare workers, and first responders experiencing the effects of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. My primary approaches include DBT, CBT, psychodynamic therapy, and motivational interviewing.

Providing a safe, secure, and non judgmental environment for clients to be present with their emotions and thoughts is often my approach to working with clients. Using motivational interviewing and reflective listening to empower clients to find clarity, peace, and happiness within themselves and their primary relationships is often the focus. Reframing, restructuring, and reviewing health coping skills using DBT, CBT, and Trauma based approaches are three of the specialties I use.

Goals are established collaboratively with clients and outcomes are embraced as learning opportunities or celebrated.