Phyllis Hawks
CMHC, Primary Therapist
Through her holistic based therapeutic approach, Phyllis has been successfully treating adolescents for nearly 15 years. She is licensed as a Clinical Mental Health Counselor with specific training in dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), psychodrama, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Phyllis has completed advanced EMDR trainings geared specifically towards working with children and adolescents. Her training is specialized in complex trauma, dissociation, attachment and a somatic-based approach.
In her own words, “I find EMDR helpful with a variety of mental health struggles outside of trauma. I personally use the resourcing phase of EMDR to teach students skill development. Using EMDR bilateral stimulation while a student is connected to positive experiences enhances the strength of that experience. I also utilize techniques that I learned from my somatic-based training during group therapy sessions with students. I find that these techniques help students to slow down hyper-arousal of their nervous system and stay present with what they are experiencing emotionally. EMDR techniques help students break down walls of resistance and allows them to feel vulnerable and open. “
Phyllis has experience working with a variety of clients and has provided them all with quality treatment and helped them reach their personal therapeutic goals. Some areas of specialty include treatment resistance, complex trauma, attachment, anger, aggression, anxiety, depression, substance use, ADHD, and working with transgender adolescents.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Utah Valley State College in 2005, where she studied Behavioral Sciences with an emphasis in Social Work, Phyllis began her therapist career as a Counselor at Slate Canyon Youth Center. Her career continued as a Probation Officer with the Utah State Courts and earning her master’s degree in Counseling in 2007. After receiving her master’s degree, Phyllis accepted a position as a therapist at Cottonwood Treatment Center in 2008. In 2013 she began working as a therapist at Elevations RTC. In her free time, Phyllis enjoys the outdoors, traveling, going to movies, reading, art, and spending time with her family.
We had Phyllis Hawks as Connor’s therapist while he was at Elevations. It is difficult for me to put into words exactly the impact that Phyllis had on our family and lives. She was someone that all of us quickly bonded with and fell in love with. Phyllis is someone that continues to stay in contact with us to this day and it is really touching. She is probably the single person who has had the most impact on all of our lives to date. At Thanksgiving, she is someone that comes up that we are incredibly thankful for. This is coming from having had many other therapist experiences. It was incredibly important to Connor to see Phyllis again and thank her in person for all she did for us (and that did happen this past Spring). So I guess the one word would be - Impactful.
Gratefully,
- Laureen
I hope you, Phyllis and the rest of the Elevations crew are doing well. I'm sorry for the delay in my response, but I'm happy to share our thought about Phyllis.
The words Kyler, Kevin and I came up with to describe Phyllis are as follows: caring, empathetic, invaluable, intuitive, perceptive, insightful, compassionate, and gently direct. (Sorry we couldn't decide on just "a word.")
Kyler said that Phyllis was the most empathetic staff member there. He felt she really understood his struggles in a way that his former therapist hadn't and she offered some great advice for overcoming them.
From my perspective, Phyllis was just what our family needed. She quickly homed in on the biggest challenges our family had, pointing out some aspects no other therapists had noted. She was compassionately direct when she needed to be and shared very perceptive insights about how our actions, and even our way of being, impacted each other. She somehow managed to do this in a way that didn't make any of us feel like we were the worst son/parent in the world. She recommended some great books for us to read to deepen our understanding of what she was referring to and answered plenty of questions in a prompt and thorough manner. Phyllis even took the time and effort to reach out to a former patient who shared some challenges similar to what our son was struggling with and arranged for that young man to speak our son. She was also great about encouraging our son, and us, to use DBT skills/worksheets to work through tough thoughts /emotions and to plan for challenging events. We were grateful, as well, that, after our son was discharged, Phyllis was willing to respond to emails we sent her and to provide a couple of therapy sessions for our son.
Our son did not complete the program because he essentially signed himself out of treatment near age 18. While the first few months of his return home were quite bumpy, he knows his strengths and weaknesses and how they impact him and his life so much better than he did before working with Phyllis, and, over one year later, we are now seeing glimpses of our son's use of some of the skills he learned from her at Elevations. The lasting impact of what we learned from Phyllis about each member of our family and how we relate to one another significantly helped us survive the challenging transition of our son's return home and is still helping us navigate the evolving parent/adult-child relationship.
- Thanks, Claren