As a writer and counselor, and a person who has undergone a variety of struggles in multiple and diverse areas, helping others to find guidance, through their encounters and interactions, embracing the uniqueness of the narrative, and emphasizing the meanings that people construct through experience, I support insight and understanding through personal stories. Stories can often heal and replenish emotional and mental wellness, as well as being empowering, inspiring, and restorative. 'The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.' - Marcel Proust.
Within the last 12 years, Nicole Dunn, MA, LPC, NCC provided support in the field of counseling to nurture and empower the potential for beneficial progress, enriching life, both individually and within relationships. Nicole is motivated in her efforts towards using skill-building approaches, as well as passionate about using a systemic focus, providing understanding of people both individually, as well as within their relationships with others, and within other systems and communities, helping others towards positive growth and adjustment, mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, and physically. Nicole has worked with individuals, children and adults, and families, in Butler, Mercer, Venango, and Allegheny counties for many years, inspired by the concept that individuals relate to a context, one that is shaped and reshaped in social situations, influencing how people see themselves and their roles in relation to the larger world, as well as how they interpret and interact with that world. Nicole has focused on utilizing approaches that help with anxiety, mood disorders, depression, trauma, stress management, and relational conflict, among other areas, seeing individuals as capable of building change, empowered by collaboration within the therapeutic relationship, nurturing and unlocking the potential towards progress and success. Nicole is originally from New Orleans and has lived in Pennsylvania since 2000. Nicole is currently working on a Master of Writing degree at SUNH, and also seeks to bridge the understanding and processing of internal experience associated with movement through the outside world, whether related to stress, trauma, anger, or anxiety, through the power and release of writing.
Historically, Nicole has completed her service through Americorps, helping diverse populations in various settings, as well as working in behavioral health settings with children, adolescents, teenagers, and their families, focusing on the myriad of developmental stages of life. Nicole has also worked, through behavioral programs, with children diagnosed with autism and also through PARC, with individuals diagnosed with intellectual disabilities. Nicole has earned her Master of Counseling degree at SRU, through a CACREP-accredited program, proceeding to completion of the requirements for acquiring PA licensure in professional counseling, as well as earning certification in both multisystemic and family-based therapies. Nicole specializes in individual therapy, working with children, adolescents, teenagers, and adults, as well as providing family therapy. Her areas of expertise and eclectic foci include narrative and solution-focused therapies and postmodern social constructivist therapies, structural and strategic family therapies, as well as multisystemic therapy, REBT, behavioral therapy, cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and dialectical behavioral therapy, among other approaches. Nicole collaborates with individuals, couples, parents, and families, encouraging viewpoints through wider, multiple lenses when considering issues, and nurturing others toward envisioning holistic healing and change.
Nicole is committed to empowering clients with the tools, training, and knowledge to foster optimal growth in the journey forward. Through the use of eclectic and evidence-based strategies, she is able to effectively help her clients with a variety of skills, facing and addressing struggles and challenges, towards developing and solidifying confidence and resilience.
