Heather Peterson, LMSW

Heather Peterson, LMSW is an outpatient therapist with 17 years of experience working with diverse children, adolescents and families. Heather has earned her Master’s in Social Work degree and is currently licensed as a Master’s Clinical Social Worker (LMSW). Heather also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice.

 During Heather’s internships she worked in a special education facility for severely emotionally impaired students and the Center for Women in Transition in which she worked as a Children’s Trauma Therapist where she implemented individual and group therapy to children who had an exposure to violence in the home using Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. 

Heather has also been intensively trained in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) by the Linehan Institute and worked for three years with a team that kept high risk adolescent girls out of residential settings. Heather has also received training in Motivational Interviewing and has provided Intensive Outpatient Services for addiction.

Heather has a passion for teaching mindfulness to children and adolescents and specializes in working with children from age 4-18 with multiple diagnoses. Heather is known for her high energy level, creativity, and sense of humor. Heather loves a challenge and one of her recent adventures is training her dog Luna to become a therapy dog to help the children she works with learn emotional regulation skills.

Heather believes that self-acceptance is an important component in emotional health and our inability to truly accept ourselves prevents us from achieving happiness. True self-acceptance is accepting all parts of ourselves; good and bad. Self-acceptance teaches us that we should love ourselves no matter what. This means we have value even when we yell at our kids, lose our job, or act selfishly toward a friend. Our worth is not tied to someone else’s opinion of us. It is based on who we are, not what we’ve accomplished.