Areas of Treatment
More than Talk Therapy
FEEL. LEARN. HEAL. BALANCE.
Rather than passive listening talk therapy, I provide a space to be, feel and vent about all the things big and small. It's a place to learn 'why' you feel the way you do and how to process emotions, calm your nervous system, tame your inner critic, detox shame and identify core beliefs like 'I am not ___ enough.' Beliefs that cause havoc on all aspects of life.
This provides a foundation to heal and recover from anxiety, insecurities, heartbreak, depression, even abuse and trauma. Resolve maladaptive protective patterns like people-pleasing, reacting, sabotaging, procrastinating, avoiding and binging. Build your self-trust and capacity to create balanced, secure relationships. Experience results you can actually feel.
Learn
Self-Awareness and evidence-based social-emotional health skills
Neuroscience-informed skills to calm emotions and nervous system and connect with your actual Self — your actual feelings, wants and values.
Heal
From insecurities, anxiety, heartbreak, codependency, trauma and associated symptoms.
Experience healing you can actually feel with proven practices and trauma-informed therapy such as DBT, CBT, CFT, IFS and EMDR.
Balance
Self-Leadership over emotions, maladaptive stress reactions and gain secure relationship skills.
Reclaim your responsibility (power) for defining and creating your sense of worth and purpose (self-worth), and balanced, secure relationships.
I just wanted to say thank you. It is wonderful... for the first time in my life, I am seeing and feeling healing!!!!
CLIENT EXPERIENCE
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Therapies and Skills
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Hi, I'm Athena
ATHENA MCKEE, LPC, C-DBT
I provide a collaborative, engaging, educational, empowering, skills-building approach. I have 10+ years experience in clinical counseling and certified coaching, 40+ years of life experience :) and am a mom of two teens.
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Licensed Counselor
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Certified DBT Therapist
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Certified Clinical Trauma Professional
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Masters in Counseling
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MBA in Human and Organizational Behavior,
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Best of Scottsdale Counselor Awardee
Why focus on learning and skills-building?
The latest neuropsychological research shows that most emotional and mental health conditions are due to a lack of social-emotional health skills and maladaptive coping behaviors — like people-pleasing, sabotaging, obsessing, depressing, avoiding, blaming and binging. This is why understanding the 'why' and 'how' to feel better is imperative part of the therapy process
Why is emotional processing is part of the therapy process?
Unprocessed feelings — known as 'emotional constipation to neuropsychologists — are due to not having emotional health skills, which leads to self-berating and a sense of powerlessness over our own emotional nervous system state of being. When really it is the lack of awareness and skills that's to blame. We fall victim to the unawareness and powerlessness we have over our own emotions, thoughts and behaviors, grappling with shame, guilt, regret, anxiety, relational distress.
"When we resist tough emotions, they don't go away. Instead, they own us, they define us…the more we try to avoid our emotions, the more control they have over our thoughts and behavior."
BRENE BROWN, PhD
Evidenced Based
Therapy Methods
Attachment Style Focused Therapy
Gain the capacity for a secure, trusting balanced relationships by healing your attachment style, while resolving previous relational trauma, insecurities, triggers and maladaptive protective behaviors that can cause havoc in relationship.
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Somatic Attachment Focused EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy facilitates processing of trauma. After successful treatment, distress is relieved, negative beliefs are reformulated, and current day physiological symptoms such as anxiety, panic and other triggered emotions are reduced or completely resolved.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Mindfulness, Emotional Regulation
You may be surprised to learn that every emotion had a distinct message and purpose. With DBT and neurosensory skills, you gain the power to understand and process your emotions in a productive, beneficial way. Calm anxiety, anger, OCD, panic and even ptsd emotional flashback.
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IFS and Compassion Focused Therapy
Gain balanced self-leadership over your inner critic, your thoughts, emotions and maladaptive protective strategies (parts) such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc.
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Client Experiences
Feel Calmer, Think Clearer, Connect Better, Live Healthier
I just wanted to say thank you. It is wonderful... for the first time in my life, I am seeing and feeling healing!!!!
The ability to calm my nervous system with regulation is something I didn't even know existed. Learning DBT has improved my entire life.
Truly grateful for all you have done for me. I can feel such a shift. I've had dozens of therapists throughout my life, but have never felt benefits until now. Thank you!
Thank you for your help over the past several weeks. You helped me restore my self-worth and push my confidence to move forward with my life and career.
I used to have panic attacks. Now if I feel anxious I trust myself to self-soothe and feel better in a few minutes.
I hope you have a smile knowing how you are really having a healing impact on people! Thank you for helping me heal and learn to love myself.
DBT Core Skills
To be most effective, DBT is designed to learn one lesson a week, with individual guidance from a licensed therapist or DBT trained instructor, and DBT Skills group (optional) for six months. It takes time to use the skills and have them work. When they do, you will have "lightbulb moments" and actually experience results you can feel.
Mindfulness is the foundational element and starting point in therapy, providing essential groundwork for the other three skill modules.
Distress tolerance skills help you get through intense emotional pain without making the situation worse. Builds neuroplasticity 'tolerance muscles.'
Emotional regulation involves understanding and processing your emotions, and choosing how to express and respond.
Interpersonal effectiveness help you be more effective at listening and communicating your wants and needs to ensure you feel respected, supported and cared for.
"Emotional pain changes relative to how you react to it. When you move toward it in an adaptive way, pain shrinks. When you move away from it, pain grows. If you flee from it, pain pursues you like a monster in a dream."
Tony Fahkry
Four Stress Reaction Types
Get Unstuck from Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn
Understanding your stress types, associated symptoms and maladaptive coping methods (maladaptive 'protecting' reactions and 'getting' behaviors) is the first step. Our Attachment Style, childhood and adulthood experiences, adaptations, personality, birth order, trauma, and genetic predispositions impact how we develop stress types.
Flight Type
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Anxiety, Panic
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OCD, Hypervigilant
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Impulsivity, Binging
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Busyaholic
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Perfectionism
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Achievement Addict
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Fawn Type
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People-pleasing
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Compliant
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Inner Critic
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Sacrificing / Resentful
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Anxious Attachment
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Hero/Helper Addict
Freeze Type
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Depression
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ADD, Dissociation
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Substance Use
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Fatigue
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Avoidant Attachment
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Achievement Underminer
Fight Type
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Outbursts
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Controlling
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Outer Critic
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Shaming / Blaming
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Abusive (Unintentional)
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Personality Disorders
A current event can have only the vaguest resemblance to a past situation and this can be enough to trigger the psyche’s hard-wiring for a fight, flight, fawn or freeze response.
Pete Walker, MA
Complex-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Heal Your Insecure Attachment Style
The latest research shows 50% of adults in our society have an Insecure Attachment Style. This also results in chronic nervous system activation.
When you understand Insecure Attachment Styles (Anxious, Avoidant, Fearful-Avoidant) everything suddenly clicks. Stemming from childhood and influenced in adulthood, our attachment style effects:
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How we feel about ourselves and others
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Thoughts, emotions and behaviors
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Nervous system and neurochemicals in each moment
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Mental, emotional and physical health
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Responses to stress and vulnerability, both adaptive and maladaptive
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Foundation of self-worth and sense of lovability
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Self-care consistency to align with personal values, wants, needs, safety, connection
Fortunately, our attachment style isn't set in stone. It can change, evolve and is treatable. Through learning, we can develop more secure patterns and secure sense of self.
Impacts All Areas of Our Lives
Attachment Style also predicts the quality and duration of relationships and directly correlates to how we interact with others - family, friends, coworkers, community, and even how we view the world at large. Attachment style also correlates to our sense of purpose, career, values and ability to align with our genuine values and accomplish personal goals.
Sense of Self
Health
Self-Trust
Neurochemicals
Partner
Intimacy
Trust
Love
Helps Save Time & Money
Family
Friends
Parenting
Safety
Helps Save Time & Money
Career
Financial Health
Goals
Purpose
Four Attachment Styles
Secure and Insecure Types: Anxious, Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant
Even though we all tend to have some traits and tendencies of each style at some point in our lives, we tend to default to one more than the other, along with associated triggers, assumptions, core beliefs and maladaptive reactions that cause can havoc on our lives.
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Secure Self-Worth and Resolving Inner Critic
Inner Criticism without Self Leadership Leads to Chronic Stress and Associated Mental, Emotional and Physical Health Conditions
This is complex and transformational work. With IFS Parts Work, DBT and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) gain awareness and learn to balance and mentor your inner critical thoughts with Wise Mind.
We all have an Inner Critic influenced by our childhood, adulthood, attachment style, core beliefs and expectations from culture, family and friends, and fueled by social survival needs (connection needs, sense of belonging, purpose, value, etc). Inner Critic uses shame, guilt, and self-berating. It results in a slew of maladaptive protective stress reactions trying to 'get' connection or 'protect' from punishment or rejection.
Our Inner Critics are unique, however there are seven common types
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Perfectionist berates you with impossible standards
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Taskmaster drives you to work and achieve at all costs
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Inner Controller controls and shames like a dictator
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Guilt Tripper unrelenting regret and shame, refusing self-forgiveness
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Inner Destroyer attacks your self-worth (worthiness to even exist)
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Underminer minimizes your accomplishments and strengths
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Molder / Conformist people-pleasing, self-shaming, self-rejecting
My Credentials
Licensure
Licensed Professional Counselor: Arizona / LPC-23927
Certifications and Awards
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Best of Scottsdale Award, Best Counselor 2019
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Certified Relationship Coach / 08101704
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Certified Clinical Trauma Professional / IAPT
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IFS-Informed Therapist (Parts Work) / IFS Institute
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Level 1 Gottman Method Therapist
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Certified Dialectical Behavior Therapist
Education
MASTER OF SCIENCE PROFESSIONAL COUNSELING
2019
Grand Canyon University / Phoenix, AZ
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (MBA)
Human and Organizational Behavior
2012
Grand Canyon University / Phoenix, AZ
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN BUSINESS
ECONOMICS
2005
Arizona State University / Tempe, AZ
