About Barbara Stephan

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Barbara Stephan (formerly Barbara Santana) is a Registered Mental Health Counseling Intern who is passionate about helping clients take steps towards freer and fuller lives through the healing and growing work of counseling. She acknowledges the courage, vulnerability, and trust involved in therapy and prioritizes creating a safe environment to allow fruitful work to be done, striving to hold her clients and their stories with gentle compassion and the utmost respect.

Barbara carefully considers the uniqueness and complexity of each client and draws from a variety of counseling perspectives to provide care that is tailored to their specific needs. Her approaches run the gamut from cognitive to experiential, enabling clients to both understand their struggles in their minds and experience deep healing in their hearts. After helping clients lay a foundation of restoring a felt sense of safety and awareness of the present moment, Barbara helps clients explore the deep-seated effects of past experiences on current patterns and then reshape their impacts in ways that allow clients to heal, grow, and thrive in all areas of life.

Barbara is particularly passionate about working with adults and adolescents walking through trauma but is also enthusiastic about and experienced in working with clients through anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, anger, grief, racial and ethnic identity and experiences, spirituality, and histories of physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse. 

Barbara holds a Master's degree in Counseling from Reformed Theological Seminary and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University and strives to use all her training, experience, and continuing education to provide effective care. Barbara is fully bilingual and offers care in both English and Spanish.

In her free time, Barbara enjoys connecting with friends and family, nourishing her inner foodie with experiments in the kitchen, and relaxing at home with her husband.