Our Team - Dawn Institute

Our Team

Dr.Crystal

Dr. Crystal Krueger DBH, LMFT

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Crystal is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has passionately helped individuals and families move from surviving after trauma to finding post-traumatic growth. Crystal received her Doctorate in Behavioral Health from Arizona State University in 2021, which followed her Master’s degree from Ottawa University in 2013. Over the past decade she has since enjoyed helping families and individuals understand the impact of trauma and find resiliency and healing.

Crystal is a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She is trained in EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Forward Facing Trauma Therapy, Theraplay, Sand Tray Play Therapy, and Brainspotting. She is currently receiving training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. While she has a strong neurological approach to understanding trauma, she utilizes different modalities of therapy to best fit each individual. She is honored to walk alongside families and individuals as they find empowerment in their healing process.

Crystal believes strongly in community awareness and has dedicated her time and support to help train a variety of professionals and volunteers working with individuals who have experienced trauma. She has been the keynote speaker at several conferences to support this cause. She has trained national audiences including foster and adoptive families, mental health professionals, law enforcement personal, attorneys, school staff and board members, and medical staff. In addition, she has published articles in Adoption Today and Foster Families Today.

Kashmir

Kashmir Frank, LMFT

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Kashmir received her master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy at Arizona State University in 2018 and earned her independent license in the state of Arizona as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Kashmir’s primary passion is supporting couples and families in the healing process in both trauma and relational struggles. She has found a unique specialty in supporting couples in overcoming the effects of trauma and understanding how each partner’s childhood adversity has impacted the relationship. Kashmir understands the importance of aiding couples and families through relational issues, as well as helping individuals who struggle to balance their emotions after experiencing an adversity. Kashmir is currently undergoing Level 1 of the Gottman Institute training. The Gottman Institute provides specialized training to assist in couples therapy.

Over the past four years, Kashmir has developed a passion for working with children in various environments. When working with children, Kashmir utilizes a play therapy approach to facilitate children in processing through hardships and to help them understand their emotions. This child-centered approach supports healing at each child’s own pace while supporting parents in understanding their child’s needs. Kashmir is training in Level 1 Sand Tray Play Therapy and is scheduled to attend Level 2 in February 2023.

Kashmir integrates mindfulness and somatic-regulation techniques to assist individuals in managing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She excels in making great effort to assist couples, families, and individuals in reaching their goals by providing the tools to improve relationships with oneself and others. Kashmir strives to create a positive and safe experience to increase overall well-being and a healthy mental state.

.

Dezeree

Dezeree Martinez, LPC

Licensed Professional Counselor

Dezeree is passionate about helping people understand and transcend beyond the effects of trauma. She specializes in helping clients make connections between the problems they are struggling with now and their early life experiences to gain resiliency and growth. She works with clients to process their trauma and understand its impact on areas of life, such as parenting, relationships, family dynamics, self-worth, emotion regulation, trust, development, and social skills.

Dezeree received her Master’s of Science in Professional Counseling from Grand Canyon University in 2017. Since then, she has worked with many populations in identifying and treating a variety of mental health concerns. With a strong person-centered approach and, working from an attachment-perspective of trauma, she uses many different modalities of therapy to best support each client and family. Dezeree pulls from a variety of theoretical orientations, including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive-Processing Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Solution-Focused Therapy.

Dezeree is most passionate about helping parents recognize the impact of their own childhood trauma and learn skills to prevent unintentional trauma for their children. She developed the curriculum for a psychoeducational therapy group called Breaking the Cycle: Parenting Group and has facilitated the group for the last four years. This group focuses on educating parents about the importance of secure attachments, the long-term effects of childhood trauma, how to effectively work through their trauma, and learn new skills for fostering healthy emotional development and resiliency in their children.

Christine

Christine Montgomery, LAC

Christine holds a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Grand Canyon University and strives to help individuals through a holistic lens – incorporating physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual approaches. This clears a pathway for growth and healing. It is within this environment that clients can feel safe to explore their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A healthy therapeutic relationship is key to client success and provides a safe space for clients to create new, healthy ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Christine understands how trauma impacts our life and aims to help individuals identify, process, and move past it in order to live in the present.

From Christine’s perspective, healing requires staying attune to the mind and body. She works to help clients feel empowered and to reconnect their mind and body with their past experiences to determine where they want to go in the future, which encourages healing. She utilizes play therapy, CBT, and EMDR to help clients gain insight and growth. Empathy, humor, and therapeutic rapport are used to connect with clients along their path to healing. She believes each client is unique, and is worthy of respect and unconditional positive regard, regardless of his or her past experiences or challenges. She strives to join with the client, challenge the client, and encourage the client to work towards healing.

Kaitlin

Kaitlin Jeter, Intern

Kaitlin is a Clinical Intern who has a passion for helping individuals, couples, and families move toward healing and growth in their lives. She completed her master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary in June of 2023. Kaitlin’s training enables her to view each individual as a product of
their many relationships and cultural contexts, which they have experienced over the course of their lifetime. She has a passion for working with couples and families and helping to enable her clients to engage in relationships in life-giving ways. When working with clients, Kaitlin often helps individuals to reflect on patterns and dynamics from their first families to identify underlying wounding and open opportunities for systemic healing. Kaitlin also works with children of all ages and their parents through a play-based, attachment focused approach to psychotherapy.

She has received training in Sand Tray Play Therapy, Emotionally Expressive Interventions, and is scheduled to start training in Somatic Experiencing in January of 2024. Kaitlin also utilizes mindfulness and guided imagery techniques to deepen emotional processing and enhance coping for her clients.

Within her work, Kaitlin has developed a passion for working with individuals and families with disabilities. Kaitlin has developed and led trainings at Dawn Institute specifically addressing loss within disability diagnoses. She has also conducted research on the effects of disabilities on the family as a whole and has published articles in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy.

Sheena

Sheena Abrams, Intern

Sheena holds a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy from Fuller Theological Seminary and is driven by a strong desire to assist individuals in feeling seen, heard, and safe. She understands the impact of trauma on our self-perception, beliefs about others, and our ability to thrive, often keeping us stuck in survival mode. This can significantly affect our relationships and overall well-being. Sheena is dedicated to helping individuals recognize their inherent value and break free from survival mode to live fully, allowing them to be present for themselves and their relationships.

In Sheena’s perspective, healing from trauma involves addressing both the mind and body. She employs interventions and theories that enable individuals to understand their own narratives, emotions, and experiences. By doing so, they can make sense of the past and process how their bodies respond, leading to transformative changes in their lives. Sheena utilizes attachment-based approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy and Restoration Therapy, as well as expressive and experiential techniques like mindfulness and sand tray therapy. Sand tray therapy is beneficial for both children and adults. With children, Sheena focuses more on expressive methods that allow for symbolic processing.

Recognizing the significance of relationships as a fundamental human need, Sheena is passionate about helping couples, families, adults, teens, and children overcome the barriers of trauma that hinder their relationships and sense of belonging

learn more

© 2018 All rights reserved - Site by Nextfly