Elizabeth Martinez Acuna

Elizabeth acquired early experience through volunteering with social services and family and juvenile courts. These experiences fostered her passion to serve others, clarified her life’s purpose, and inspired collegiate studies in social work, sociology, and psychology during her junior and senior high school years. During this time, she completed certification with Prison Fellowship Ministries and begin facilitating groups in prisons and serving as the Area Director for the Angel Tree program for children and families of those incarcerated. For a little over two decades Elizabeth has empowered people to believe in their inherent ability to elicit strengths and resilience, overcome challenges, and achieve the life worth living. Her integrated approach encourages honoring the self and the therapeutic relationship to cooperatively identify the step-by-step process you will embrace as you achieve goals. Facilitating an accepting, safe and nurturing environment; she encourages understanding one’s self holistically; not separated parts pieced together, but how the mind, body, spirt and behavior are interwoven and impact one another. Elizabeth obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a minor in Social Work from the University of Montevallo, Masters of Science in Community Agency Counseling through Jacksonville State University and completed post graduate studies at Ohio University and Kent State University. Elizabeth’s experience entails private practice, community mental health, prisons, schools, non-profits and Hospice. She served as a missionary in Mexico and with Indigenous Peoples. Her broad experiences provide the perspectives needed in opening a wealth of insight and ability to inspire one’s surpassing struggles. She is a Diplomat of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress in collaboration with the National Center for Crisis Management, a National Certified Counselor, National Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor. She holds licensure as a Professional Clinical Counselor and Professional Counselor. She’s had extensive training in Cognitive and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Trauma Focused Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Solution and Emotion Focused Therapy, and EMDR; yet firmly believes in empowering the therapeutic alliance through working with the individual where he or she is at.