Beata Lazaro

Beata started in the helping services field as a Foster Care Caseworker, providing case management, visitation monitoring, and psychosocial support to children, adolescents, and teenagers in the foster care system.  She saw quickly that at such young ages, these individuals experienced adversity and trauma beyond what many could fathom.  In spite of their circumstances, these youth met their adversities with resilience, hope, and gumption.  Beata was inspired to gain more clinical, intervention-based skills to better serve clients as they work through their adverse experiences.

 

Since obtaining her Master’s degree in 2011, Beata has provided therapy services in an outpatient setting to a vast array of clients, including children, adolescents, teenagers, adults, and families, as well as clients in foster care and adoptive settings.  In 2018, Beata re-connected with her start in the field: working with children who have experienced trauma, as well as exhibited at-risk/in-risk behavioral and/or emotional difficulties.  As a School-based Therapist, Beata provided trauma-focused and cognitive behavioral therapy services to inner-city youth, ages 5-11.  She employed a variety of interventions, including art-, play-, relaxation- and mindfulness-based therapy services.  Beata additionally ran a fifth-grade girls' group to foster healthy relationships, via facilitating boundary-setting, conflict resolution and self-compassion skills.  Beata worked closely with teachers and other school staff to understand their experiences in coping with their own vicarious trauma, co-facilitating an after-school support group.

 

Beata works to maintain a best-practices, process-oriented approach.  She aims to meet clients at their respective point of readiness and motivation in their journey.  Beata believes that it is the client who "steers the ship"- with the client taking the lead in navigating the therapeutic terrain, as the counselor supports, encourages, and actively facilitates a dynamic space for the client to actualize their inner resources.  Beata finds that a key goal in the therapeutic process is to help clients to replace ineffective, distorted or hindering belief systems that may be blocking their self-actualization.  Furthermore, she seeks to help clients to consolidate more adaptive beliefs, thought and behavior patterns, in order to promote increased self-efficacy and quality of life.

 

Beata focuses on establishing a strong therapeutic alliance with each of her clients: one centered on trust, unconditional positive regard, warmth and empathy.  She works from a mindset that the effectiveness of any intervention or therapeutic modality, goes hand-in-hand with the quality of the working relationship.  Beata uses a growth mindset, to both connect and motivate her clients to notice, work through, and manifest their individual potential, with increased insight from the therapeutic process.  She is oriented to exploring the client's individual strengths and interests, customizing a treatment plan sensitively attuned to the client's personality, life experiences, and needs.

 

Beata enjoys utilizing a creative, collaborative and dynamic approach in her work with clients.  She also finds humor can be a helpful tool in destigmatizing and normalizing a client's experience, making otherwise uncomfortable or distressing life experiences more palatable.  Beata appreciates helping clients explore and revise self-narratives that may no longer be effective, with a more empowered narrative.