We’re so glad you found us. We hope you’ll stay awhile and learn more about Joshua Tree Counseling and the dedicated professionals ready to help you move from hopeless to healing.
Joshua Tree Counseling is a faith-based group counseling practice, home to a collective of counselors and coaches committed to your mental health and well-being. We offer both Christian counseling and traditional, non-faith based counseling depending on your preference. As individuals, we are are educated and trained differently and uniquely, all with different experience, interests, skills, gifting’s, specialties, and approaches. As a collective, we are compassionate and dedicated counseling and coaching professionals dedicated to your healing and bonded together by our Christian faith. What is faith isn’t a priority for you? Totally okay! Read more about this here. Looking specifically for telehealth counseling? Read about our telehealth options for older teens, adults, and couples.
The Joshua Tree building is cozy, with living room-like furniture and low lighting. When you arrive we hope you’ll make a coffee or tea and grab a snack before sitting in our comfortable waiting area. Soft piano music plays and gentle essential oils scent the air. Each office is uniquely decorated so you’re more likely to feel like you’re sitting in a living room than an office.
We want you to think of Joshua Tree as a home-base for your mental and emotional health needs. We’ve created a private, home-like setting where you can come and work with a licensed therapist or pastoral counselor towards your goals for growth, healing, and well-being. If in person counseling isn’t for you, we offer telehealth counseling and coaching options.
Life Coaching is a great option when you have a specific problem or issue you want to tackle and want to prioritize immediate change with a professional who has ‘been there, done that.’
Not sure whether you need counseling or life coaching?
A life coach will help you:
Terry Smith and Marybeth Steigenga are certified professional life coaches at Joshua Tree Counseling. They offer Christian life coaching when this is important to you.
Terry is direct and results-driven with a unique interest in helping professionals, leaders, and people stuck in some aspect of their professional life. Terry only offers telecoaching and faith-based coaching when requested by clients.
Marybeth is emotion-focused and has a unique interest in helping people stuck in their relationships, grief, or a faith-related issue. Marybeth offers in person and telecoaching options.
The Joshua Tree team is comprised of licensed professional and associate counselors, licensed and master social workers, counseling interns, certified life coaches, and certified pastoral counselors. Our team is here for you and also here for each other, which is why we’ve gathered a group of really dynamic, mature, funny, awesome Christians – so we lean on each other, sharing our joys and burdens with fellow believers, so we can show up as our best selves for you. If your Christian faith is your most important determining factor in your search for a counselor, we encourage you to read all our team bios to find the right fit for you since all our counselors are mature believers who can integrate Biblical principles and worldview into the counseling experience. If faith is not or never been important to you (or you’ve been wounded by the church or a religious family/upbringing), we want you to know that you’ll receive professional counseling without judgment, bias, or any religious weirdness; we encourage you to read the team bios of our licesned counselors.
Licensed counseling is focused completely on your needs, goals, and the counselor looks at the world through your eyes and from your perspective during counseling. If you want to talk about faith of any kind, great – we’re right there with you. If you say no way, none of that Christian stuff, we respect that and you’ll find we honor this with integrity. Pastoral counseling, on the other hand, is intended for clients who specifically want the integration of faith, Biblical principles, and a Christian worldview into counseling. Our pastoral counselors intentionally wear the lens of Scripture when they hear your counseling concerns and goals and strive to provide counseling from a God-honoring, soul care perspective. Finally, if you are in need of coaching through a life or professional issue – rather than mental health counseling – you’ve got you covered too with life and professional coaching!
Are you hoping to work with a cousnelor towards your goals for healing or mental and emotional well-being? Joshua Tree has a team licensed counselors who are held accountable to a code of ethics set forth by their profession and the rules and statutes set forth by the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. Even though we are a team of Christian counselors, our licensed counselors work with clients of all faiths, backgrounds, cultures, and genders. Professional counseling involves the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental, emotional or behavioral disorders found in the DSM-5.
According to the AZBBHE Statutes (32-3251.10), professional counseling means the professional application of mental health, psychological and human development theories, principles and techniques to: (a) Facilitate human development and adjustment throughout the human life span. (b) Assess and facilitate career development. (c) Treat interpersonal relationship issues and nervous, mental and emotional disorders that are cognitive, affective or behavioral. (d) Manage symptoms of mental illness. (e) Assess, appraise, evaluate, diagnose and treat individuals, couples, families and groups through the use of psychotherapy.
Curious about the differences between licesned counseling and pastoral counseling?
Trauma comes in many forms, past and present. Childhood trauma for you may have included physical, emotional, verbal and/or sexual abuse. You may not recognize childhood neglect as a trauma because, “I wasn’t hit.” If you were alone and left to care for yourself or your siblings as children, this may be a form of trauma. When things are difficult for children and they can’t make sense of circumstances and relationships because they are confusing, abusive, or unpredictable, children can shift the blame to themselves and adopt the message, “I’m the problem” and then work to solve ‘the problem’ by being better, quieter, smarter, or anticipating a caregiver’s needs to avoid conflict.
We approach trauma gently and with great skills, and move through it at your pace. The first priority is always to establish a safe and trusting relationship. Rachel, Shari, and Natalie all work with complex trauma and dissociative disorders, and are trained in EMDR therapy. Rachel has a passion for helping client struggling with suicidal ideation, and dissociative disorders. Shari has a passion for coming alongside clients wading through the deep waters of depression. Natalie has a passion for joining young women on their journey through adulthood or parenting.
Maybe you’re reading all this realizing it isn’t really mental health counseling that you need but a kick in the butt and accountability towards your life or career goals. You might just need some good old fashioned life coaching with a professional who calls herself a “wisergeezer” – having the life experience of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right without being a know-it-all. A coach is different than a counselor, coaches take a present-future focus on specific issues in life or your professional life that are keeping you stuck. If you’re unsure about how to move your career or relationship to the next level or you’re wondering how to make a major life decision, Terry and Marybeth can help you identify where you’re stuck and take actionable steps forward. They help clients make wise decisions, understand and manage stress, dig out of compassion fatigue, be a better boss, be a better employee, manage and resolve conflict, learn healthy boundaries and much more. Learn more about life coaching.
Is the Christian faith foundational to who you are? Are you hoping to address your social, emotional, relational, or faith struggle with an intentional integration of faith and counseling? Maybe you’ve already worked with your pastor and they have recommended additional support with someone who has more specialized knowledge.
Pastoral Counseling, or soul care, is a unique focus at Joshua Tree. Tammy and Marybeth are both ordained (chaplain and minister) and have extensive training and experience in helping people work through issues from a Christian perspective/worldview. Tammy offers soul care for trauma, sexual abuse/brokenness, and spiritual wounding, as well as other concerns; she works with adults. Marybeth offers pastoral care for engaged couples, older teens, and adults struggling with grief/loss, life transitions, relational conflict/narsassistic abuse, and spiritual wounding/growth. Both approach pastoral counseling from an attachment and trauma-informed perspective. Watch a video of Tammy and Marybeth talking about pastoral counseling.
Marybeth and Tammy are not licensed counselors – they are ordained members of clergy who, as part of their ordination, provide the intentional integration of Biblical principles, Scripture, and the Christian faith into pastoral care and counseling. They do not provide psychotherapy, diagnoses, or treat mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders.
Do you wonder if there is really freedom from addiction? Do you have a chemical or behavioral addiction or love someone who does? Dana is a licensed professional counselor who is passionate about working with addicts and people in relationships with an addict. From a Trauma Model perspective, addiction isn’t the problem, it’s the solution to the problem. Addictions work because they distract, numb, and help avoid the wellspring of emotions that haven’t been expressed. You can solve the problem of addiction by solving the underlying problem that led to the development of the addiction. There is a life free from addiction!
Loving someone caught in an addiction is tough. It can feel exhausting and confusing. Maybe you feel like you’re tossed back and forth between the person you love and the stranger their addiction turns them into. Dana can help you understand the cycle of addiction and set healthy boundaries while lovingly supporting the one you love. Learn more.
Have you lost someone you love? Have you suffered a loss that no one knows about or understands? Miscarriage, abortion, empty nest, retirement, pet loss…these are grief stories that we often process differently than when someone dies. People talk about grieving as if there is a formula for it, like there is a roadmap when in reality grief is messy and feels more like a roller coaster. There is really no escaping it but no one really knows how to grieve. If you’re a Christian, it may feel confusing to both feel comforted by your faith and also anger at God. How do you move forward? How do you grieve? How do you adjust to a new normal after loss? If your grief is making you feel isolated and lonely, or you think you need to talk to someone who understand grief and has a solid understanding of faith and the Bible, Marybeth can help. Learn more about Christian grief counseling.
Marriage is beautiful; marriage is hard. It isn’t if you’ll struggle, it’s when. Whether you’re now contemplating marriage and want to get help before you struggle or you’ve been married for ions and can’t remember why you chose each other to begin with – let us help get your marriage to a place of healing and health. Joshua Tree is home to several counselors with a passion for marriages. Chet has been counseling couples for over 40 years and offers immediate and practical strategies to get you out of the loops you’re in with each other. He approaches counseling from a cognitive behavioral perspective and also looks for generational patterns and wounds that could be contributing to your issues. Watch a video of Chet explaining marriage counseling. Stacy approaches marriage counseling from an emotionally focused perspective, helping couples learn to communicate on an emotional level in order to deepen your love and understanding of each other. She also looks at any trauma each member of the couple may have experienced during their life, helping couples understand the impact and implications of this. Marybeth loves to work with engaged couples and provides Christian-based premarital counseling using the SYMBIS (Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts) assessment. Learn more about marriage counseling.
Is your teen struggling with mental health issues, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, low self-esteem, bullying, anxiety, or depression? Have you noticed you teen becoming more reclusive, withdrawn, or are their noticeable changes in their behavior or social patters? Giving the gift of counseling to a teen may help them be more a successful adult.
Your teen may need a warm and safe, neutral professional to process life situations; better cope with stress; understand and untangle their beliefs about life, others, and themselves; explore relationship and establish healthy boundaries; and build a toolbox of coping strategies. Suicide is often an undiscussed subject in families and teens may not bring it up even though they struggle with the thoughts. If you notice marks on your teen and suspect they may be cutting, therapy can help untangle issues driving the behavior. Are you aware of bullying? This may occur at school or via social media.
Several of our Joshua Tree counselors have a passion for working with teens. Elena is a telehealth therapist who work with high functioning and motivated teens who need the convenience of virtual therapy. She can work with teens who are anywhere in the state of Arizona. Marybeth is a pastoral counselor who provides grief counseling to older teens. If your teen has a strong Christian faith and they want this to be central in the helping relationship, Marybeth may be a good fit. She also integrates therapeutic art into the soul care experience. As a soul care provider, Marybeth does not work with suicidality or treat mental health disorders. Lauren is a counseling intern who meets teens exactly where they’re at without judgement and calls it like it is but with compassion, a relational approach, and humor. Not much can phase Lauren; she doesn’t shy away from suicidal ideation or teens who aren’t highly self-motivated to seek help. Learn more about Teen Counseling.
Dr. Marybeth Steigenga, BCPC is offering a Christian Grief Support group with the next group beginning in March 2023. This group is intended to be a closed group for a small number (6-10) individuals and/or couples who want support and guidance as they move through their grief journey. Marybeth is a board certified pastoral counselor with a doctorate degree in Christian counseling. She has a passion for offering groups as a source of support and healing.
There is a fee of $100 that covers all 8 weekly sessions. You can learn more about each of these groups, or reach out to Joshua Tree by phone or email or submit an interest form.
Grief is like living two lives. One is where you pretend everything is alright and the other is where your heart silently screams in pain. — Author Unknown
