Brenda Cochran is the LCSW clinical director of Alliance Coaching and Counseling Group in Phoenix, providing trauma-informed care and restorative therapeutic services. “Alliance creates a space for clients to feel physically, emotionally and culturally safe.” Learn about Brenda Cochran…
First job: Department of Defense contracting agency in Nuremberg, Germany.
Favorite ways to spend your free time in AZ: I’m an avid fitness junkie and health-food foodie. I enjoy creating and eating clean recipes that taste delicious. I enjoy working out and visiting different fitness centers throughout the valley but my home base is at Chase Field Mountainside Fitness.
Your biggest accomplishment and why: Developing an integrative whole-person approach to treating the effects of trauma. I completed a subjective research project studying the effects of combining nutrition, resistance training and trauma therapy with individuals that have sustained complex and developmental trauma. I took that approach inside an outpatient addiction treatment clinic for one year, studying and implementing this non-conventional, trauma-focused approach – treating high-risk addiction populations and seeing the effectiveness of the approach.
The biggest obstacle you overcame Doing my own personal work healing from developmental and complex trauma in the early 1990’s, a time when there weren’t many options for treatment.
Someone who inspires you and why: Jesus. If you can put aside any preconceived ideas about Christianity or the American church and just read the gospels for yourself without outside influence, you see what a humble, sacrificial man He was.
Advice to someone pursuing a career path in what you do: To be a great therapist, you must do your own work. Embrace and practice a trauma-sensitive approach to people you work with. Be humble in all that you do and know that when a breakthrough happens it isn’t about you or for you, rather it’s about the tremendous courage it took for your client to change.
Favorite quote: “Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.”
Something someone would be surprised to learn about you: I competed as an NPC national figure competitor placing first, third and fifth in local and national levels.
What makes someone fabulous: People who walk humbly with love.