In response to the ongoing Covid pandemic we offer both telehealth and in person appointments. All in person work is done with proof of up to date Covid vaccinations.

Welcome to the Art of Validation and Change (AVC).

At the AVC we strive to provide services that not only give you the acceptance and understanding you need to feel confident and safe enough to change, but we offer the tools you need to make those changes.

We are a mental health psychotherapy clinic serving many issues. These include anxiety, attention deficit disorder-polar disorder, confidence and self-esteem, depression, impulsivity, interpersonal problems, intimacy struggles, life transitions, parenting, personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic experiences, self-harm and suicidality, and more. Please see each provider’s description to find a more detailed list and to see who may be your best fit.

The AVC also specializes in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). We have both Individual DBT and Group DBT, and we offer it to both adolescents and adults. We pride ourselves on following the DBT model as it was written. Kristen Lund, the owner of the AVC, has been providing DBT for over 25 years. She has been Intensively trained, and is currently applying for state and national certification for the AVC. Please see our pages on DBT for more information.

Our mission at AVC is to truly help clients make the changes they want. We chose the name “Art of Validation and Change” for my new group practice because it truly embodies what I feel clients need to make changes possible.

The first step to progress, however, is to truly accept oneself with all your strengths, weaknesses and the place where they exist in your lives without self-judgement. As psychotherapists, our first step is to give clients the experience of being truly, seen, heard and understood. This is the baseline of healing work.

Second, clients need to understand themselves better. They need to be able to answer the question, “What makes sense about my seemingly irrational emotions, thoughts or actions?” This step is no small feat.

After progress in these areas, our next area of focus is learning how to change. In our opinion at AVC, this “how” question has been the missing link in many therapeutic endeavors. For example, clients need to know how to deal with palpable sensations of emotions in their bodies. People need to know what to do with emotions i.e. how to reduce them, keep them from occurring so frequently, how to tolerate them, or sometimes how to feel them in the first place.

Our clients need to learn how to set goals and take actions that will get them there, despite what their emotions are telling them. In many ways, this is why we stand so fully behind DBT. It offers so many tools to help clients change their lives. It answers the how questions, with the bonus being the clients themselves get keep all those tools, once they have been learned, as their own.