Joanie Fellows Claim

Prior to setting up practice in Midtown Sacramento, Joanie has provided therapy and psycho-education to a wide diversity of people. She has provided services to a culturally diverse population of adults, adolescents and children. She has worked for Mental Health Agencies in a variety of non-traditional settings. Joanie’s compassion for under served populations has continually expressed itself in the work that she has chosen. She has worked as a therapist in two junior high schools in the Bay Area where she provided services to children exposed to long term trauma. She has also provided Therapy and Social Work services to foster children in Oakland, CA. In addition she has worked in an adult recovery center in the Bay Area providing milieu treatment and psycho-educational groups for clients struggling with food and chemical addictions. She has provided therapy and psycho-educational support for mothers and their young children in a Community Based Early Childhood Mental Health program. Joanie’s interest in human behavior stemmed from her own need to become more present and aware in her own life and her desire to make meaning from the human experience. She studied the effect that culture had on individual identity and behavior by earning her Bachelors degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Santa Barbara. She went on to earn her Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential and a Single Subjects Teaching Credential in Sociology from the Santa Barbara University. She later earned her Master Degree in Holistic Counseling Psychology from John F. Kennedy University in the Bay Area. Joanie has also completed additional studies in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness, Trauma Therapy, Early Childhood Mental Health and Prolonged Exposure Therapy for Veterans. Joanie has always had an intense desire to understand what it is that makes us human. She has continually asked questions of herself and others as to what it is that contributes to our sense of self and our sense of efficacy in the world. She has faced many things in her life that have challenged the very fabric of her being. She believes that we all come with our own set of unique flaws which makes us precious and more human. And we all have the intrinsic capacity to transform that within us that does not serve the higher good within us and within the world.