Living happy and healthy.
Educational and Professional background:
BA in Creative Writing, emphasis in poetry & BS in Special Education and Rehabilitation, 2007 (graduated with honors). MA in Rehabilitation Counseling 2009. Maya worked as a habilitation therapist from 2005-2009. Maya worked as a behavioral support specialist and counselor (intensive in home) from 2009-2014. She worked in the public behavioral health system, at multiple Tucson agencies as a mental health therapist from 2009-2018. She was a supervisor for a grant funded program at JFCS focused on working with individuals who'd experience sexual truama and domestic violence. She started her own private practice part time, in 2015. She started full time running Maya's Creative Counseling in 2018. She is currently working on developing a professional co-op, with trusted colleagues.
Having a strong behavioral background, Maya has experience working with challenging behaviors and unique family dynamics. She has extensive experience working with sexual trauma experiences and survivors of violent / abusive relationships. She looks at disability as a unique difference worth empowering in a world full of stigma. She understands trauma as a process of survival that can blossom into unwavering strength.
Maya believes in the importance of healing as an ongoing process, a natural part of living. No individual or family fits into one box and no recovery plan should be cookie cutter. The medical model focuses on problem/illness vs. solution/empowerment, this can be counter productive to progress and healing.
Maya's Creative Counseling is a trauma informed and nerodivergent friendly space. Our goal is to support empowerment, authenticity, and healing.
Personal Identity:
Maya is AuADHD, identifies as disabled,* and is a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. She overall identifies as cis gender but is currently exploring her gender fluidity and enjoys both she/her and they/them pronouns.
She loves poetry, art, movies, reading / writing, music, history, playing, humor, dancing, yoga, animals, and nature. She's working on becoming more of a gamer. She values perseverance, data gathering, evidence-based science, creativity, honesty, transparency, and humility (so long as it's not self deprecating).
Maya wanted to be a poet, not a therapist. Today, she is both. Her creativity is a gift she uses within the therapeutic relationship. Focusing on the potential in others rather then the deficits.
*There is a lot to be said / understand about identity and labels, and each person is allowed to use the words that fit them best. Maya does not feel labels are meant to limit or confine so much as create understandable names (short-hand) for complex experiences. This includes the word disabled. The common resistance towards "disability" as a negative is worthy of in depth discussion.
Photo of Maya
Drawing of Maya, by 7 year old client
“Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
― bell hooks
Maya Asher, LPC
Clinical Therapist
The goal is to celebrate clients differences and nerodiversity.
520-487-1978
6700 N. Oracle Road, suite 332
Tucson, AZ 85704
520-487-1978