About Mary Ellen

Mary Ellen, the founder of DenverCAC, is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor and has over a decade of experience working with children, teens, adults, and parents. She is passionate about helping her clients gain freedom and empowerment through the therapeutic process.  

Mary Ellen specializes in working with children as young as 3 performing play therapy and also works with teens, and adults. Mary Ellen first began working with children and teens in 2006 at Lost Valley Ranch in Buffalo Creek Colorado.  After years of working with youth, she decided to end her time as the Teen Program Director to pursue her master’s degree in counseling. In 2013, she received her Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health from Denver Seminary, a CACREP accredited school. Mary Ellen also served on the Colorado Association for Play Therapy board from 2012-2015 as she worked toward her certification to become a Registered Play Therapist.

Mary Ellen previously worked as a family therapist and trauma specialist at The University of Colorado. In her time at the University, she received her certification as an Advanced Trauma Practitioner through The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children. She currently offers sensory based trauma curriculum for survivors of trauma and stressful life events.

 Mary Ellen  sees the teens years as this unique time where teens are becoming more independent and parents are equally grieving the change of their child moving into adulthood.  While a children moving toward independence in their teen years is healthy and appropriate,  Mary Ellen understands this can also be a tricky time and hard on both parents and their teen, which is why she  enjoys empowering  teens and their parents to improve their communication skills and develop stronger, healthier relationships in this new season of life.

Mary Ellen also works with adult individuals navigating dating, relationships, and social anxiety.   Mary Ellen works with her clients to identify and understand their attachment styles, value systems, and relationship patterns. This allows them to address blocks that might be holding them back from obtaining and maintaining healthy relationships. One of her favorite parts about the work that she does is seeing her clients gain confidence in themselves and learn to trust their intuition. 

Mary Ellen’s treatment specialties include: anxiety, depression, trauma, dating and relationships, self-esteem, social anxiety, performance anxiety, school and academic challenges, attachment, highly successful people, parenting, and educational and vocational anxiety.

 Mary Ellen believes in integrating several methods and theories of counseling to cater to her clients’ needs. Some of her most commonly used methods of treatment are: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interviewing, Sensory based trauma interventions, Attachment Therapy, Internal Family Systems(IFS) / Parts Work, EMDR(eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) Gestalt, Theraplay Techniques (an attachment based model of therapy for children), and both directive and non-directive experiential play therapy. 

Mary Ellen is a Christian and will gladly integrate faith into counseling upon request, however, she also respects her client’s decision not to integrate faith into their therapeutic process.