Speaking, Training & Experiential Learning for Therapists, Educators & Organizations
What if what you've been taught no longer fits the people or world in front of you?
We inherit a lot of ideas about how people are supposed to learn, heal, work, communicate, lead, and behave.
But how often do we stop to ask where those ideas came from?
Is this actually true? Is it true for this person? Is it mine, or simply what I've been taught? And most importantly, does it still serve us?
I'm Laura, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, educator, speaker, and experiential facilitator with more than 25 years of experience across mental health, education, school counseling, professional training, and community work.
I create interactive learning experiences that invite people to get curious, question assumptions, and look again at the things we've come to accept as "just the way it's done."
We might explore why a traditional trauma intervention isn't working for a neurodivergent nervous system, question whether a student's "behavior problem" is actually a capacity problem, examine whether AI is supporting our thinking or replacing it, or discover what happens when a room full of very different brains tries to solve the same problem.
And yes, sometimes that means building towers out of weird objects or getting an entire team across imaginary lava without touching the floor.
Because sometimes learning happens when we hear something new.
And sometimes it happens when we finally question something old.
Speaking & Training Designed Around the People in the Room
I don't believe the same training should be dropped into every room and delivered the same way.
A group of therapists exploring neurodivergent trauma needs something different from educators trying to understand the student behind the behavior. A leadership team struggling with communication needs something different from homeschool parents questioning whether the traditional rules of education still fit their child.
My presentations and workshops can be adapted to the people in the room, the questions they're wrestling with, and what you want them to walk away understanding or doing differently.
Mental Health Professionals & Clinical Teams
Training for therapists and behavioral health professionals who want to think more deeply about neurodivergence, trauma, clinical intuition, discernment, and the assumptions we bring into the therapy room.
Topics may include:
✓ Why Traditional Trauma Therapy Fails Neurodivergent Clients (and What Works Instead)
✓ When Trauma Looks Like Sensitivity, Burnout, or "Too Much"
✓ Clinical Intuition, Discernment & Woo-Fluent™
✓ AI for Therapists: Outsource the Menial, Insource Your Mind
Schools & Educators
Professional development that looks beyond compliance and behavior to ask what may actually be happening for the student in front of us.
Topics may include:
✓ When School Is the Trauma
✓ Capacity Before Compliance
✓ Understanding the Student Behind the Behavior
✓ Executive Functioning Isn't a Motivation Problem
✓ Supporting Neurodivergent Students Without Making Them Feel Broken
Parents & Homeschool Communities
Practical, affirming workshops for parents trying to build an education around the child they actually have rather than the child a curriculum or system assumes they should have.
Topics may include:
✓ Homeschooling Without Recreating School at Home
✓ Building a Homeschool Around the Child You Actually Have
✓ Executive Functioning Without Becoming Your Child's Executive Function
✓ Neurodivergence, Burnout & School Avoidance
✓ Discernment in the Age of Too Much Parenting Advice
Organizations & Teams
Training designed to help teams better understand the humans they work alongside, particularly when different brains, communication styles, expectations, and capacities collide.
Topics may include:
✓ Different Brains, Better Teams
✓ Psychological Safety Without the Corporate Buzzwords
✓ The Invisible Workload: Burnout, Capacity & Emotional Labor
✓ Curiosity Before Conclusion: How Assumptions Shape Communication and Conflict
Experiential Team Building
Sometimes the best way to understand how a team works isn't to talk about teamwork. It's to give people something to do together and see what happens.
Drawing from my background in adventure-based and experiential counseling, I facilitate interactive challenges that allow teams to experience communication, leadership, trust, problem-solving, adaptability, and group dynamics in real time.
Yes, this may involve building something out of strange objects, solving a problem with ridiculous limitations, or attempting to cross imaginary lava without touching the floor.
The activity is only the beginning. The real learning happens afterward, when we get curious about what happened, who stepped forward, who stepped back, what assumptions were made, whose ideas were heard, how the group responded when the first plan failed, and where those same patterns might be showing up back at work.
More Than Information. A Different Way of Thinking.
I don't want you to leave one of my trainings with a notebook full of information you'll never look at again.
I want you to notice something you didn't notice before.
Maybe it's an assumption you've been carrying into the therapy room. A behavior you've interpreted one way for years. A team dynamic everyone has learned to work around. Or a rule you've been following simply because no one ever stopped to ask whether it still makes sense.
My approach is curious, interactive, practical, and sometimes a little unconventional. We'll talk about research and theory, but we'll also talk about what happens when real human beings don't behave the way the textbook says they're supposed to.
I'll ask questions. I'll invite you to ask questions. We may challenge ideas that have been accepted as best practice, while also being willing to keep the ones that still hold up.
Because the goal isn't to replace one rigid way of thinking with another.
It's to become better at noticing, questioning, and deciding for ourselves what still fits.
What You Can Expect
✓ Research and theory translated into real-world application
✓ Neurodivergent-affirming and strengths-based perspectives
✓ Curiosity and discussion rather than one-way instruction
✓ Space to question established practices without automatically rejecting them
✓ Practical ideas people can actually use after the training ends
✓ Humor, stories, and the occasional unexpected activity
✓ A facilitator who is comfortable saying, “I don't know. Let's think about it.”
Experience Across the Rooms Where People Learn, Heal & Grow
My perspective wasn't built from one role, one setting, or one way of understanding people.
For more than 25 years, my work has moved across education, mental health, community programs, private practice, professional training, and experiential learning. I've worked with children and adolescents, parents and families, therapists, educators, and other professionals, often in the places where systems and individual needs don't quite line up.
That experience has taught me to look at a problem from more than one direction. I understand what it's like to sit with the individual who is struggling, the parent trying to help, the professional trying to make a good clinical decision, and the educator working within a system that doesn't always leave much room for individual differences.
My Background Includes:
✓ Licensed Mental Health Counselor
✓ Former School Guidance Counselor
✓ More than 25 years across mental health and education
✓ Six years working in a specialized sexual abuse treatment program with children and adolescents
✓ Nearly three years facilitating adventure-based and experiential counseling
✓ Professional presentations and training for therapists and other helping professionals
✓ Experience developing parent workshops and educator trainings
✓ Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) trained
✓ Homeschool parent with firsthand experience navigating neurodivergent learning and alternative education
✓ Creator of professional resources and trainings used by clinicians beyond my own practice
But credentials and experience are only part of what I bring into a room.
I bring curiosity, clinical judgment, lived experience, humor, and a willingness to say, “Maybe. But what else could be true?”
Because sometimes the most useful person in the room isn't the one with the fastest answer.
It's the one willing to ask the question everyone else stopped asking.
Bring Laura to Your Organization
Trainings can be adapted for your audience, goals, and setting. Whether you're planning a conference, professional development day, staff retreat, clinical training, parent event, or something that doesn't quite fit neatly into a box, we can talk about what would be most useful for the people in the room.
Available Formats
✓ Keynotes and conference presentations
✓ Professional workshops and trainings
✓ Continuing education presentations
✓ School and educator professional development
✓ Parent and homeschool workshops
✓ Staff retreats and team development
✓ Experiential and adventure-based team building
✓ Virtual presentations and workshops
✓ Customized trainings built around your organization's needs
I'm based in Florida and available for both virtual and in-person engagements, including travel.
If you already know what your group needs, wonderful. If you only know that something isn't working and you're not quite sure what the real problem is yet, that's okay too.
Sometimes figuring out the right question is where the work begins
Speaking, Teaching & Conversations
Over the years, I've had opportunities to bring conversations about mental health, sensitivity, trauma, parenting, and the ways we understand ourselves into professional trainings, podcasts, radio, summits, and community education.
Some have happened from the front of a room. Others behind a microphone. The format may change, but the questions that interest me rarely do: What are we assuming? What might we be missing? And what changes when we're willing to look at something differently?
Selected Presentations & Trainings
Why Traditional Trauma Therapy Fails Neurodivergent Clients (and What Works Instead)
Professional presentation exploring how traditional trauma approaches may miss the experiences and needs of neurodivergent clients.
Sex, Tarot & Taboos
Professional training for therapists, 2020.
The Authentic Private Practice & BEST Intentions
Original professional education developed for therapists and helping professionals and distributed through Therabundle, with approximately 900 practitioner downloads worldwide.
The Shift Network — Evolved Empath Summit
Featured speaker addressing the experiences and needs of highly sensitive and empathic people.
Podcasts, Radio & Media
Sex Talk with Erika Miley — Episode 31
Featured podcast guest.
The Reid Miles Podcast
Featured podcast guest.
The Alt Psych Show
Featured podcast guest exploring alternative and integrative perspectives in mental health.
Maternally Yours
Two-time guest on the Sarasota radio program focused on maternal health.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Featured as a mental health professional discussing COVID-19 and children.