Kristen Kaveloh, LAC | Compassion Focused Counseling in Tucson, AZ
Compassion Focused Counseling in Tucson for Adults, Children and Teens
Compassion Focused Counseling
KRISTEN KAVELOH, MA, LAC
Compassion Focused Counseling
Hello and welcome! My name is Kristen Kaveloh and I’m a licensed associate counselor providing mental health counseling for adults, teens,and quirky kids.
I offer clients a therapeutic space filled with compassion, nonjudgment and acceptance so you can process your current and past life circumstances, explore your emotions, address mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression, and learn coping strategies to improve functioning. I see each client as completely unique and strive to deeply attune to your life, worldview, and circumstances so you can feel seen and known.
I am accepting new clients in person at Joshua Tree Counseling on Oracle Rd in Tucson, AZ. You can book easily online – the process is simple and paperless.
Are you or is your teenager struggling with perfectionism?
Do you have a strong urge or desire to be perfect or do things to an incredibly high standard? Do you give up before you start if you know you can’t do it perfectly? Do you strive to avoid making mistakes or worry how others will perceive or evaluate your efforts?
Perfectionism can result in anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, stress and burnout, procrastination, strained relationships, and even self-harming thoughts and behaviors. If can feel obsessive, all-consuming, and never-ending. Perfectionism might be driven by fear, caregivers who set impossible standards in childhood, an overbearing boss, spiritual abuse, or things like the need to avoid conflict or internal distress. The impact of perfectionism can overshadow your life satisfaction, your relationships, your work, or your academic success.
Working with clients towards freedom form perfectionism without losing the desire to strive for excellence is a special focus area of mine. If you or your teen struggles with a bent towards perfectionism, we may be an ideal therapist-client team.
Other Focus Areas
TEENS STRUGGLING TO FIT IN
The teen years are tough. Feeling out of place can manifest as stress/anxiety and result in things like being bullied, lack of motivation, perfectionistic tendencies, depression, or thoughts and feelings of worthlessness.
COUNSELING FOR QUIRKY KIDS
Quirky kids may be hyperactive, neurodivergent, or they may just be into different things than their siblings or peers. Quirkiness can sometimes result in social challenges, like having a hard time making or keeping friends; difficulty staying on task, starting something new, or transitioning; big, overwhelming or expressive feelings; ineffective communication skills; or attachment or connection issues with the adults in their lives.
Hi! I'm Kristin.
I’m glad you found me. My name is Kristen Kaveloh (“cave-low”). I am a licensed therapist in Tucson who provides compassion focused counseling for adults, teens, and quirky kids. While I dearly love the mountains and waters of the Carolinas, Tucson has a funny way of bringing us home and I am settling back into the desert with old friends, a new career, and a growing extended family.
I think you’ll find that I am an intuitive and compassionate counselor with a passion for helping people find hope and healing through psychotherapy. Compassion is a word that truly captures my heart for the hurting. We are all in need of genuine human compassion and I prioritize this in counseling. I am intentional about the models and interventions I use with each client so you feel like you have an attuned and completely unique counseling experience.
EDUCATION
MA – Master of Arts
in Christian Counseling
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
BS – Bachelor of Science
in Family Studies & Human Development
University of Arizona
On a more personal note...
Coming soon…
Services.
I offer in-person, compassion focused counseling for adults, teens, and children at Joshua Tree Counseling. I draw from a variety of counseling models, theories, and approaches to help you or your child resolve symptoms, achieve goals, and move forward in life.
Treatment Models/Approaches
- Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
- Parts Work
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Play Therapy/Sand Tray
- Somatic Psychology
- Christian Counseling
- Attachment Theory
- Trauma-Informed
- Compassion-Focused
Focus Areas
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Stress and Burnout
- Coping Skills
- Perfectionism
- ADHD
- Neurodivergence
- Bullying
- Self-Esteem
WHAT IS PARTS WORK or INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS?
“Parts work” describes a therapeutic approach that views an individual as an collection of parts. You may already use this language to identify internal conflicts: ‘part of me wants to go out for dinner tonight with friends but part of me wants to stay home and each take-out.’ A parts model like Internal Family Systems (IFS) works with these conflicts by getting to know each part, how that part helps, their unique traits and characteristics, and then increase compassion and decrease the conflict among parts. Parts work is helpful for everything from anxiety and depression to trauma and dissociation. IFS believes that it is important not to pathologize our parts – “no bad parts” – so that we can approach our parts with curiosity and compassion, and really take time to explore our inner worlds. You can learn more about Internal Family Systems here.
Parts work is creative, client-centered, and introspective. Identifying and working with our thoughts, emotions, defenses and impulses with a parts model, like Internal Family Systems (IFS), helps reduce internal distress/conflict, increase self-compassion and self-understanding, better regulate emotions, heal past trauma, and shift negative core beliefs. Parts work is helpful with kids, teens and adults.
THERAPY FOR ADULTS
What is Mental Health Counseling?
Mental health counseling, also known as psychotherapy, is a professional service offered by a licensed therapist with a masters degree who adheres to a set of ethical, legal, and industry standards. Counseling with a mental health professional can address depression, anxiety, panic, stress, grief, anger, trauma, toxic relationships, life transitions, and much more. Therapists provide you with support, tools, and guidance to address a wide range of issues, life experiences, symptoms, and relationships so you can navigate life with greater resilience.
How Therapy Can Help You
Therapy can help you explore emotions, change negative thought patterns, develop healthy boundaries, shift your perspective, improve relationships, build confidence and self-esteem, solve problems, heal trauma, develop or deepen your self-awareness, improve your quality of life, and reduce symptoms of mental health disorders (Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Prolonged Grief Disorder, etc).
Privacy and Confidentiality
Mental health counseling with a private pay therapist like me, allows you a high degree of privacy and control over you protected health information. What you share in counseling is always confidential (some exceptions apply based on legal obligations to report child/elder abuse or act in your best interest if you have a plan and intend to take your life or someone else’s). I keep a digital record of the treatment I provide, according to legal and ethical industry standards. When insurance is used as payment for mental health treatment, you are essentially granting the insurance company review of any progress notes created in order to ensure adequate progress is being made in a timely manner. You must have a mental health diagnosis to use your health insurance for mental health care (or submit superbills). When you private pay for counseling, your notes aren’t released to anyone without your written permission. A diagnosis is not required unless beneficial to you. You can rest assured that your counseling experience and the record of that experience stays completely private.
PLAY THERAPY FOR CHILDREN IN TUCSON
To work with children, it’s important to use their natural language of play. This helps children feel safe and comfortable in counseling and helps builds a strong therapeutic relationship with the therapist. A strong therapeutic relationship allows the therapist to help them “do the work of therapy” in the context of something that makes sense to them. Play therapy is used as a therapeutic tool to process and explore life events and experiences in a less threatening way than talk therapy. It involves things like games, toys, art, dress-up, sand tray storytelling, and other creative activities. It is child-centered, non-directive, nonjudgmental. Play therapy can facilitate self-exploration, change, and maturity.
Through play therapy, I can help your child:
- Develop a strong therapeutic relationship so counseling feels safe and enjoyable
- Identify emotions and learn strategies to regulate their emotions
- Identify problematic behaviors and develop and practice new ways of behaving
- Identify difficulties in communication and practice healthy communication skills
- Process social and relational experiences and build a tool box of coping skills
- Learn what anxiety, depression, grief, shame, anger, or trauma feel like in the body so they can notice and manage these experiences in the moment or seek proper support
COUNSELING FOR QUIRKY KIDS
Quicky kids are those kiddos who tend to think, behave, and socialize a bit differently than their peers. You might notice these kids focus on or say different things; they might have trouble picking up on social cues; or they might seem spacey, impulsive, or stuck in the zone; or they may have really big, expressive or explosive emotions. Quirkiness in kids is something to be celebrated and it can also lead to frustration by teachers or adults who are trying to get a child to follow the rules, complete a task, or transition without issues. The brain of a bright and quirky kid tends to function a bit differently — perhaps they fall into the ADHD range of brain functioning or maybe in the high functioning range of the Autism spectrum. I find quirky kids to be extraordinary and captivating and enjoy working with them in a counseling setting and partnering with parents to shift from surviving to thriving.
Counseling for quirky kids gives them a safe, encouraging and professional space to discover the unique ways they function in the world and how to thrive in the world without compromising their individuality or pizazz.
TEEN COUNSELING
Counseling helps teens explore emotions, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, social constructs, independence and identity in a safe, professional and judgement free zone. According to Erikson, a well known psychologist who studied child development, adolescents in their teens years are searching for their identity; questioning their beliefs, perspectives and relationships; and seeking greater amounts of independence. They tend to be asking themselves the question, “who am I?” They look to parents, peers, culture, social media, siblings, and sometimes their faith to answer these questions.
As a teen wrestles with their identity and feeling comfortable in their own skin, he or she may encounter confusion, strong feelings that come out of nowhere, or low self-esteem. They may be unhappy with their body, weight, or some specific body feature. They may have anxiety, depression, or even thoughts of self-harm or suicide. He or she could begin to withdraw, clam up, and prefer to spend time alone than with others. He may have thoughts of wanting to die or self-harm.
Teen Counseling can help:
- Boost confidence and improve mood
- Expand emotional capacity and help develop coping skills
- Clarify values, life goals, and discover a healthy sense of self-identity
- Increase communication skills and teach healthy boundaries
- Develop a healthy mind-body connection
- Improve relationships with parents, siblings, and peers
- Decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, manage stress, overwhelm, and burnout
- Increase self-compassion and decrease the intensity of an strong inner-critic
TEENS STRUGGLING TO FIT IN
There are a myriad of reasons a teen might not fit in – their brain might work different than their peers; they may have interests that aren’t mainstream or gender-normed; they may look different than their peers and feel self-conscious about their body, appearance or stage of development; you may be homeschooling and they want to be in public school (or the reverse); they could have strong faith beliefs and experience bullying as a result; or their grades may be superior or fall below their grade level.
Counseling for teens struggling to fit in gives them a safe space with a professional who can look at the world through their eyes and then help expand their perspective.
PERFECTIONISM IN TEENS
Perfectionism is a funny thing with teens. It may actually look like laziness or defiance when it reality, a teen may be so afraid that something won’t be perfect that they just don’t do it at all. Some teens express perfectionism as a hyper-focus on something like getting A’s or making varsity or finding a peer group where they belong that they become stressed, irritable, sleep-deprived, moody, or engage in unhealthy people-pleasing behaviors.
Counseling for teens struggling with perfectionism can stop a pattern from being developed and improve their ability to move successfully into adulthood.
Christian Counseling Option
Including a Christian Worldview and Biblical Truths into Counseling (if requested)
Many Christians prefer to receive mental health counseling from someone they know aligns foundationally with their faith. Even if faith components (prayer and Scripture) aren’t intentionally integrated into counseling, knowing we share the same Biblical foundation and worldview might bring you a sense of comfort and safety in the therapeutic relationship. This can be especially true if you are parent seeking counseling for your child or teen.
It’s important to know that as a licesned counselor, I cannot impose my value system on you or your child, you must open the door to this option and request Christian counseling. I will clarify with you what is and isn’t important at the beginning of therapy. When requested, I can help you look at and address your mental health symptoms through a Christ-centered lens and incorporate any faith components that feel comfortable to you. If faith-based counseling is not your preference or you do not hold the same beliefs as I do, it’s also important to know that I provide the same quality of counseling to all and you will find that I honor and respect your belief system and values. I strive to provide highly ethical mental health counseling to clients from all walks of life and faith backgrounds.
Schedule
Every Other Monday 1:30-7pm
Tuesday 1:30pm-7pm
Wednesday 1:30pm-6pm
Thursday 10:30am-5pm
Friday 11am-4:30pm
Every Other Saturday 9am-2:30pm
Location
Joshua Tree Counseling
6891 N Oracle Rd #155
Tucson, AZ 85704
(520) 308-4999 office (text/call)
(520) 844-8139 fax
Client Portal
Secure Messaging
FEES
Private Pay $100/hr
I accept all major credit cards including HSA cards. I do not accept insurance, however superbills are provided which you can submit to your insurance as part of your out-of-network benefits and request reimbursement.
Superbills for Out of Network Benefits
I do not accept insurance. I can provide superbills which you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. A superbill is an itemized statement of services that includes all the information an insurance company would need to set me up as an out-of-network provider as well as the type of service you were provided (psychotherapy), fees paid, and your diagnosis. Essentially you pay for therapy at the time of service, submit an itemized statement of fees paid, and, if you are eligible, your insurance company reimburses you after deductibles are met. A diagnosis is required to submit superbills.
Good Faith Estimates
Under a law that passed in January 2022, called the No Surprises Act, health care providers must provide clients who don’t have insurance or who do not plan on using insurance an estimate of the bill for requested services. If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your most recent Good Faith Estimate (GFE), you can dispute the bill. At Joshua Tree Counseling, GFEs are provided through your secure client portal. For questions or more information about your right to a Good Faith Estimate, visit www.cms.gov/nosurprises or call 1-800-985-3059.
Contact.
Send Me a Message
The first step if you’re interested in counseling with me is to find a day and time that works for you for a first session. You can book an appointment completely online. I do not offer phone consultations.
You can alsp send me an email or use the form below.
