Lynne Dumas 🟢

LIACSW

She/Her

Telehealth

I view therapy as a collaboration between therapist and client. This includes taking into account all aspects of a client’s life, from upbringing, to world view, to current routines and goals for the future. As I have a social work background, I use a strengths-based perspective when working with clients. This means utilizing the positive tools and resources an individual already has, and working with clients to discover and modify tools that are not as helpful. This is done by utilizing nonjudgmental curiosity to help clients explore their inner and outer lives. Our inner lives can be influenced by thinking and feeling patterns that can prove helpful or unhelpful, as well as the outer systems, such as current events and social justice, that can affect our mood. I work mainly with clients experiencing depression and anxiety disorders.

I am grounded and down to earth in my approach. As each client is a complex individual with different needs and things they’d like to work on, it is my privilege to be able to utilize cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy principles to discover new ways of thinking and doing to help a client optimize their life. I engage with clients utilizing motivational interviewing principles to help create a dialogue that is exploratory, thought-provoking, and meaningful. A therapeutic phrase that has always resonated with me is the idea of “unconditional positive regard,” which is the principle that a counselor should hope to make their clients feel safe disclosing and processing difficult things.

I have my Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Simmons University and my bachelor’s degree in psychology from Plymouth State University. I have worked with clients experiencing opiod addiction in my home area of New England, people experiencing homelessness in Seattle, older adults, and those with trauma histories everywhere. I am a licensed independent clinical social worker associate, and I receive one-to-one supervision weekly while I work toward full licensure. My main areas of interest for further development are trauma-informed interventions as well as attachment theory-based therapies.

I was born and raised in New Hampshire and then moved to the Boston area after my undergraduate years. I moved to Seattle three years ago, and continue to get to know the Pacific Northwest. In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, music, reading, and watching movies.