About Me
Tricia Foster MS LMFT NCC
Licenced Marriage and Family Therapist
National Certified Counselor
I am confident and caring, with the skills to be firm and direct with compassion. These skills took a lot of work for me to develop. I got lost in my own avoidant tendencies throughout my 20’s and struggled with depression, social anxieties, and people pleasing. I attempted to protect myself from judgement, conflict, and family/relationship pain by isolating and escaping. But I wanted to change MORE than I wanted to be pain-free, so I worked HARD at challenging my perspectives and accepting some things about myself and my way of thinking that were only making me miserable. And you know what? I don’t regret the pain and struggle! I worked hard in my own counseling, education, spiritual growth, and family relationships. I have adult siblings that are now my best friends and we have been through years of hard work together sorting out our family wounds, breaking some family patterns, and trying to raise the next generation with intention, love, and healthy discipline. We are STILL learning through our blunders, and have accepted that we will continue evolving forever. At 37 years old, I am so grateful for the years of painful growth and uncomfortable learning, and I look forward to more growth ahead.
I earned my Masters of Science degree in Counseling from Southern Methodist University, with additional coursework and training specific to Marriage and Family Therapy. I developed my clinical skills through training and work with childhood and adolescent development, Parent Training, family and marital therapies, and trauma-informed psychotherapy. I opened up my own private practice in 2021 to provide my services to families and individuals in need. In addition to my work, I enjoy spending time with my family, friends, animals, church, music, events, and hobbies such as reading, writing, singing, and attempting to keep my plants alive!
My Approach
I approach therapy from a developmental, behavioral, and relational perspective. Our emotions usually make sense within the context of adapting to our experiences. But maladaptations lead to dysfunctions in life and love. My aim is to help individuals and families not only understand your reactions, but to challenge unhelpful habits and then practice more functional responses to distress.
I utilize governing theories such as Object Relations and Attachment Theory, Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Family Systems Therapy, Trauma Informed Counseling, and skills from Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT). I believe our self-protective responses are a result of our internalized responses to life experiences, and we can change through intentional exposure, new experiences, and repeated practice with more functional responses. I see therapy as a space of learning, preparation, and practice to understand and accept distress and anxiety and to challenge how you function anxiously around others in relationships through patterns like avoidance or control. I utilize therapy to practice shifting relational and internal patterns of thought and behavior which affect our natural emotional responses. I offer family therapy, parent training, couples counseling, play therapy, child counseling, adolescent teen therapy, and individual psychotherapy for adults with family wounds, past truama, depression, anxiety, bipolar, and life changes.
In addition to being formally trained in Family Therapies and Behavioral Parent Training, I am also a trained Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET) practitioner. NET is a mind-body technique that uses a methodology of finding and removing neurological imbalances related to unresolved stress patterns. I utilize this technique often when working with anxiety and trauma in individual sessions.
While I work with many individuals to process individual issues, I aim to engage everyone in relational sessions as well, to actively address the interactional and self-protective dynamics that arise when around the people in your life. I work with many relationship dynamics such as marriage, parent-child, siblings, friends, and more to improve the functional and relational skills of individuals and units.