David Williams, LCMHC

I am a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and the founder of Choosing Joy LLC.   I earned my Masters in Mental Health Counseling from Brigham Young University in 1997 and have been in clinical practice continually since, working 7 years with adolescents in a residential setting first, and then working the last 17 years in private practice focused primarily on adults. I am passionate and experienced in helping clients manage and heal depression, anxiety, sexual and behavioral addictions, ADHD, trauma, and relationship issues.

From late high school age, I have always been attracted to the work of healing.  During my sophomore year of college, I decided to pursue a career in mental health counseling — “the perfect blend" of people, art, and science.  Choosing Joy is an outgrowth of my own clinical and life experience, and has been a work of love.   Its creation springs from my own emotional healing process, my faith in a loving God, and my determination to help individuals create joyful, fulfilling lives that will stand the test of time.

I thoroughly enjoy helping people achieve healing and abundance!  Here is some principles which guide my practice:
1. While biology has an important influence, our emotions are especially influenced by meaning and relationships and deep-seated core beliefs about ourselves and our world arising from these experiences. Our emotions are not primarily the manifestation of “chemical imbalances.”   
2. Mere symptom management is not healing. True healing involves also moving away from that which breeds sickness and toward that which promotes health and happiness.
3. A person is not optimally treated through accurate identification only of the primary diagnosis or condition, but through an approach that then addresses those concerns in the context of the client as a whole person, including interpersonal, biological, psychological, and spiritual factors. 
4. Rather than being generally irrelevant or a source of mental illness, spirituality or  personal religious faith can be, for those so inclined, a vitally important resource to aid in the healing and growing process. 
5. In therapy, emotional healing is the product of a team effort, with therapist as guide and client as agent. The client must be willing, one step at a time, to take the risks of becoming the prime mover in his or her own behalf.
6. A primary goal of therapy is to help the client create new, healing experiences and patterns. Hence, therapy must not only provide an emotionally supportive environment, but also a strategic, goal-oriented process.
7. The ultimate goal of therapy should be for the client to become self-sufficient and thereby complete therapy, not to continue therapy endlessly.