If you are tired of repeating the same patterns and think a direct yet fiercely compassionate approach is what you need, Dana may be the right counselor for you. She offers honesty, strength, and practical support. Dana is direct and validating. She brings extensive experience in chemical and behavioral addiction recovery. She helps clients understand what drives substance use, gambling, and other compulsive behaviors. She also helps family members stop organizing their lives around someone else’s addiction. Dana supports women healing from abusive or controlling relationships. In those cases, she helps clients reclaim their voice, strengthen boundaries, and develop emotional independence. She also works with anxiety, depression, OCD, codependency, anger, grief, and major life transitions. She helps clients take themselves and their choices seriously.
Dana’s clinical presence is wise, relaxed, and encouraging. At the same time, she is unafraid to be firm when needed. She listens carefully and reflects truth with compassion. She brings structure, accountability, and practical tools into sessions. Rather than telling clients what to do, she helps them recognize their options, understand their patterns, and decide what is best for them. Dana often describes herself as riding in the sidecar attached to the client’s motorcycle. She coaches and cheers while the client remains in the driver’s seat. Over time, the goal is for the client to continue forward with greater clarity, confidence, and independence.
Dana offers Christian counseling when clients request it. For those who desire it, she integrates Scripture, prayer, and biblical principles into therapy. She can also help clients process church hurt or spiritual abuse without minimizing the depth of the loss. Her approach remains practical, honest, and grace-filled, with an emphasis on progress rather than perfection.
If you are tired of repeating the same patterns and think a direct yet fiercely compassionate approach is what you need, Dana may be the right counselor for you. She offers honesty, strength, and practical support. Dana is direct and validating. She brings extensive experience in chemical and behavioral addiction recovery. She helps clients understand what drives substance use, gambling, and other compulsive behaviors. She also helps family members stop organizing their lives around someone else’s addiction. Dana supports women healing from abusive or controlling relationships. In those cases, she helps clients reclaim their voice, strengthen boundaries, and develop emotional independence. She also works with anxiety, depression, OCD, codependency, anger, grief, and major life transitions. She helps clients take themselves and their choices seriously.
Dana’s clinical presence is wise, relaxed, and encouraging. At the same time, she is unafraid to be firm when needed. She listens carefully and reflects truth with compassion. She brings structure, accountability, and practical tools into sessions. Rather than telling clients what to do, she helps them recognize their options, understand their patterns, and decide what is best for them. Dana often describes herself as riding in the sidecar attached to the client’s motorcycle. She coaches and cheers while the client remains in the driver’s seat. Over time, the goal is for the client to continue forward with greater clarity, confidence, and independence.
Dana offers Christian counseling when clients request it. For those who desire it, she integrates Scripture, prayer, and biblical principles into therapy. She can also help clients process church hurt or spiritual abuse without minimizing the depth of the loss. Her approach remains practical, honest, and grace-filled, with an emphasis on progress rather than perfection.
Adults
Addicts
Family Members of Addicts
Women Recovering from Abusive Relationships
Addiction Recovery
Relational Abuse
Codependency and Healthy Boundaries
Grief and Loss
Anxiety
Depression
OCD and Obsessive Patterns
Gambling & Other Behavioral Addictions
Narcissistic Abuse
Anger
Stress
Self Esteem
Rejection and Betrayal
Lonliness
Emotional Regulation & Coping Skills
Emotional Independence & Differentiation
Life Transitions
Disordered Eating
Divorce Recovery
Spiritual Abuse
Religious Abuse
Church Hurt
CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Twelve Steps
Gestalt Therapy
Psychoeducation
Motivational Interviewing
Person Centered Therapy
Mindfulness
Twelve Steps
Attachment-Based
Christian Counseling
$125/hr
7522 N La Cholla Blvd
Tucson, AZ 85741
Monday 10am-5pm
Tuesday 1pm-5pm
Wednesday 10am-5pm
LPC-13299 AZ
Licensed Professional Counselor
MA Master of Arts (Counseling Psychology)
BA Master of Arts (Creative Writing)
Qualified Clinical Supervisor
Ordained Chaplain
You may be tired of living around an addiction—your own or someone else’s. You may have spent years trying to keep the peace, prevent a crisis, or convince someone else to change. Perhaps you have survived a controlling or abusive relationship and no longer know what you want, what you trust, or how to make decisions for yourself. Dana helps adults who feel stuck at the end of their rope begin developing clarity, stronger boundaries, and a more grounded sense of self.
Dana Denny, LPC is a counselor in Tucson, AZ is especially drawn to helping people affected by chemical and behavioral addictions. She works with adults struggling with alcohol, drugs, gambling, and other compulsive behaviors. She also supports spouses, adult children, and family members who have become consumed by managing, rescuing, monitoring, or reacting to someone else’s addiction. Rather than telling clients what to do, Dana helps them understand their patterns, recognize the choices available to them, and begin making decisions that support their own well-being.
Her approach is direct, wise, practical, and compassionate. Dana brings humor and warmth into the room, but she does not sugarcoat what she sees. She asks thoughtful questions, helps clients simplify confusing situations, and offers concrete skills they can practice outside of therapy. Clients who work well with Dana are usually ready to participate actively, receive honest feedback, and consider what may need to change in their own thinking or behavior.
Dana believes the relationship between therapist and client is central to meaningful therapy. She works collaboratively and often describes herself as riding in the sidecar while the client drives the motorcycle. She offers perspective, coaching, encouragement, and an honest view of the road, but the client remains responsible for the direction of the journey.
Clients often experience Dana as relaxed, open, humorous, and unafraid. Very little surprises her. She can sit with painful realities without rushing to fix them, minimize them, or search for the perfect thing to say. She is patient with the time it can take for people to become honest with themselves, while remaining firm about one principle: she will support the work, but she will not work harder than the client.
Dana uses structure, psychoeducation, practical assignments, and direct conversation to help clients gain traction. Her work draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Gestalt therapy, attachment-based therapy, Motivational Interviewing, person-centered therapy, and addiction recovery principles. She may also use genograms to help clients understand family patterns, abandonment wounds, enmeshment, and learned beliefs about themselves and relationships.
Addiction can gradually narrow a person’s world until substances or compulsive behaviors seem like the only available relief. Dana helps clients understand what their addiction is doing for them, identify the thoughts and emotions that reinforce it, and develop healthier ways of responding to distress. She works with clients who are beginning recovery, rebuilding after relapse, or trying to sustain meaningful long-term change.
Dana does not reduce addiction to poor judgment or a lack of willpower. She understands the shame, secrecy, bargaining, resentment, and discouragement that often accompany it. At the same time, she helps clients take their choices seriously and develop the consistency needed for recovery. Progress may begin with small changes practiced repeatedly rather than one dramatic breakthrough.
She also works with family members who love someone with an addiction. These clients may have spent years trying to rescue, control, persuade, protect, or keep the peace. Dana helps them distinguish compassion from overfunctioning, establish healthier boundaries, and stop allowing another person’s choices to determine the direction of their own life.
Grief does not come only from death. Clients may be grieving a relationship, divorce, physical ability, identity, season of life, religious community, imagined future, or the realization that someone they love may never change.
Dana creates room for grief without rushing it, spiritualizing it, or trying to make it more comfortable for other people. She helps clients express sorrow, anger, relief, confusion, and resentment while identifying the practical choices available in the present.
As a former competitive bodybuilder, Dana understands the grief that can accompany aging, physical change, and “aging out” of an identity or pursuit that once gave life structure and meaning. She helps clients honor what has been lost while gradually developing a vision for what remains possible.
Dana has a particular heart for adults—especially women—who have experienced controlling, demeaning, manipulative, or abusive relationships. Many have worked hard to preserve the relationship while gradually losing confidence in their own perceptions, needs, and decisions. They may recognize that something is wrong but still feel guilty for protecting themselves. Dana helps them begin separating care for others from the belief that they must sacrifice themselves to keep the peace. She also helps clients rebuild a sense of identity that is not defined by another person’s needs, moods, or approval. For many, this work begins with learning that self-protection is not selfishness.
Dana helps clients name abusive and unhealthy patterns clearly. She does not blame clients for how they survived, and she does not pressure them to move faster than they are ready to move. She helps them understand codependency, enmeshment, attachment wounds, abandonment fears, betrayal, and the repeated effort to change or appease other people.
The goal is not merely to leave one painful pattern behind. Dana helps clients move toward differentiation: the ability to remain connected to others without abandoning themselves. Over time, clients can learn to trust their judgment, communicate more directly, set meaningful boundaries, and make choices based on their values rather than fear, guilt, or another person’s reaction.
Dana also works with anxiety, depression, obsessive or rigid thinking, anger, emotional dysregulation, rejection, loneliness, and major life transitions. Clients may appear capable and high-functioning while feeling overwhelmed internally. Others feel trapped in repetitive thoughts, reactive behaviors, or beliefs that leave them convinced they have no good options.
Dana brings simplicity and clarity to emotionally complicated situations. She helps clients identify triggers, challenge unhelpful beliefs, understand their emotional and relational patterns, and consider choices they may not have recognized before. Her work is practical and action-oriented, but it also makes room for deeper emotional processing and insight.
She especially fits clients who appreciate structure, homework, direct feedback, and a therapist who will challenge them respectfully. She does not tell clients how to live or expect them to make choices that please her. She helps them become more honest about what they want, what their current choices are producing, and what they may need to practice differently.
Dana offers Christian counseling when requested. Her faith integration is client-directed and grounded in the client’s goals. When clients want faith included, she can draw upon Scripture, prayer, biblical principles, and Christian understandings of grace, identity, responsibility, and redemption.
Dana is a Bible-believing Jewish woman who came to faith in Christ through the Old Testament. This background gives her a distinctive appreciation for the Jewish foundations of Christianity and for the continuity of the biblical story. She is comfortable praying with clients and discussing Scripture when invited.
Dana also works with clients who have experienced church hurt, spiritual abuse, or disillusionment with a religious community. She recognizes that religious abuse is still abuse and that the resulting grief can be profound. She helps clients name what happened without pressuring them toward a predetermined spiritual conclusion.
Clients who do not want faith included are equally welcome. Dana respects each client’s beliefs and does not introduce Christian counseling unless the client requests it.
Dana does not believe clients are broken. She believes many people are living from old ideas, limited options, or patterns that once helped them survive but no longer help them build the life they want.
Progress may look like:
Dana works best with adults who are tired of repeating the same patterns and are willing to experiment with small, practical changes. You do not have to be perfect to become happier. You do need to be willing to take yourself, your choices, and your future seriously.
Dana is a retired competitive bodybuilder who continues to train and hike regularly. Her experience as an athlete taught her that meaningful change is rarely immediate. Strength develops through consistency, honest evaluation, and repeated effort—principles that also shape her work as a therapist.
For more than 15 years, Dana has volunteered with the Gospel Rescue Mission, where she facilitates a Healthy Relationships group. She has a particular heart for people experiencing homelessness and values being part of the process through which individuals develop stability, prepare for work, and establish permanent housing.
Dana is also an accomplished quilter who has been designing and creating quilts for approximately 40 years. She appreciates the process of taking separate pieces and gradually forming something cohesive and meaningful. Therapy can be similar: the pieces of a life may initially feel disconnected or damaged, but with patience and careful work, a clearer story and stronger future can emerge.
Dana is a retired competitive bodybuilder who continues to train and hike regularly. Her experience as an athlete taught her that meaningful change is rarely immediate. Strength develops through consistency, honest evaluation, and repeated effort—principles that also shape her work as a therapist.
For more than 15 years, Dana has volunteered with the Gospel Rescue Mission, where she facilitates a Healthy Relationships group. She has a particular heart for people experiencing homelessness and values being part of the process through which individuals develop stability, prepare for work, and establish permanent housing.
Dana is also an accomplished quilter who has been designing and creating quilts for approximately 40 years. She appreciates the process of taking separate pieces and gradually forming something cohesive and meaningful. Therapy can be similar: the pieces of a life may initially feel disconnected or damaged, but with patience and careful work, a clearer story and stronger future can emerge.
