Apricity Counseling Services

Ten years ago I took a leap of faith and applied to UNR’s Master of Social Work Program with one goal in mind: to provide effective, trauma-informed therapy services to justice-involved youth.

I never could have predicted where that decision would lead.

Ten years later, I’m four years into private practice,
providing innovative trauma therapy to justice-involved youth while expanding my work to women, young adults, athletes, and amazing humans navigating some of the most painful and difficult moments of their lives.

I get to do work that I genuinely care about in a community that has supported me as I’ve grown, learned, and built Apricity Counseling Services into what it is today.

And now, for the third year, Apricity has been nominated for Best of Fallon. 🤍

I am incredibly honored.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my practice, trusted me with a referral, shared my name with someone who needed support, collaborated with me professionally, or simply cheered me on along the way. I don’t take any of it for granted.

Voting is now open! While you’re there, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to show some love to the local businesses, organizations, and people who work hard every day to make Fallon such a special community.

And if Apricity Counseling Services has made an impact on you, your family, or our community, I’d be honored to have your vote. 🤍

Thank you, Fallon. It’s a privilege to do this work here, and I’m so grateful for how far that leap of faith ten years ago has taken me.
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Life gets busy. Life gets soooo stressful. And even when you teach healthy coping for a living, everyday stressors can quietly pile up until they overflow.

When subtle hints don’t work, life has a way of shouting. Mine shouted recently: my attendance at a planned camping trip was cancelled because my dog needed surgery.

Thankfully, I’ve learned to listen. Instead of pushing through, I used the unexpected time to truly rest. I booked a massage, took long walks, built intentionally slow days, and spent time with family and friends.

Here’s the truth about therapy skills: even the most experienced among us can’t reach for them every time. And when we do, they don’t fix everything. What they do is help us ride the waves a little more easily until the storm passes.

What’s your signal that it’s time to slow down? 💛

I’ve noticed quite a few new faces here lately, so it feels like a good time to reintroduce myself. 🤍

Hi, I’m Jessica. I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the owner of Apricity Counseling Services in Northern Nevada.

I’ve spent much of my career working with people who have experienced trauma—in community programs, juvenile justice settings, and now in private practice. And over the years, my approach to therapy has become increasingly simple:

I don’t believe therapy needs to last forever to be meaningful. And I don’t believe you should have to repeatedly tell every painful detail of your story in order to heal from it.
That philosophy is a big part of why Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) has become such an important part of my practice.

ART is a structured, evidence-based therapy that uses eye movements and imagery to help the brain process distressing memories and experiences differently. I especially enjoy using it with people who are dealing with:
• A traumatic event they just can’t seem to get past
• Grief or a painful loss that still feels incredibly present
• Performance anxiety in sports, work, or other high-pressure situations
• Phobias and specific fears
• Experiences they’ve talked about before but still feel stuck in

Increasingly, I work with high-functioning women who aren’t necessarily looking for traditional, ongoing talk therapy. They have something specific they want to address, they’re ready to work on it, and they’re interested in a more focused approach.
That’s the work I love.

I’m also a little different from the stereotypical therapist you may have in your head. I value warmth and compassion, but also directness and I'm definitely ok with humor as a coping mechanism! I’m interested in what actually helps—not keeping someone in therapy simply because therapy is what we do.

And outside of the therapy room, I care deeply about improving how our communities respond to young people who have experienced trauma. I continue to work with court-involved youth and community partners and provide education around trauma, adolescent brain development, and dignity-centered care.

So, if you’re new here—welcome. 🌿

You’ll see me talk about trauma, ART, grief, performance anxiety, nervous system responses, adolescent development, and probably occasionally the realities of being a therapist and small-business owner in rural Nevada.

Most of all, I hope this page helps people discover that there are different ways to approach therapy—and that sometimes healing can look very different from what you expected.

I’m glad you’re here.

— Jessica

Parenting Resource Saturdays in Reno!
Must sign up by Wednesday.

Parenting doesn’t come with a manual, but luckily there is a lot of really helpful information and support available these days. 🍀

You don’t have to deal with the teenage years from a place of confusion. The most powerful tool in your parenting toolbox is your relationship with your child! 🫶

I’m probably not the first to think this or even say it, but my favorite role Dolly Parton played was that of a social worker. She spent many years quietly doing the work of identifying unmet needs of children, families, and the environment and finding ways to meet them. She was an advocate for loving people as they are. She always took a non-judgement stance, met people where they were at, and believed in lifting each other up.

At its heart, social work is about showing up for people without making them jump through hoops to deserve it. It’s about seeing why someone’s struggling, not just what they’re struggling with, and treating people like they already have worth instead of something to prove. That was how Dolly moved through the world.

Dolly was an icon, but more than that she was kind, compassionate, generous, and the absolute best of humanity. The world is better because of her, a lot less sparkly without her. I hope that her legacy inspires more people to live and love like Dolly.

I’ve spent most of my adult life working with justice-involved youth. And still, the thing I lean on most isn’t the years — it’s curiosity. I’m the first to admit, in the therapy room (not in my personal life — that’s a discussion for another time), that I don’t have all the answers. But I love, love, love to do my research.

I’m currently prepping a presentation for NAMI Nevada, and somewhere in the research, one idea stopped me: the risk-taking behavior we see in teens is less about blind risk and more about chasing the most satisfying reward.

It’s not a flaw. It’s fuel. The real question was never “how do we shut this down” — it’s “what is it attaching to.”

Here’s the part that really got me: teens aren’t just chasing a chemical reward jolt. What they value — their friendships, their sense of being capable, their reputation with the people who matter to them — shapes their decisions more than we used to give them credit for. The decision is always theirs, less about peer pressure and more about perceived benefits, usually made in a moment we’re not even in the room for. Our influence isn’t in controlling that moment. It’s in shaping their values from day 1, influencing what’s available to be chosen, and speaking to what they actually care about.

So if you’ve got a teenager, try this one shift this week: next time you feel a lecture coming on focus on modeling the values you want to instill, get curious, and ask — “what matters to you about this?”

I’d love to know: what’s one thing you wish someone had told you about parenting a teenager? 💛