Deborah Mulgrew, LCSW

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Deborah Mulgrew is an experienced and supportive Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 20 years of diverse experience. She received her Master’s degree in Social Work with an emphasis in Women’s Studies from Arizona State University. Before working as a therapist, Deborah worked with Native American families in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, with elders in assisted living facilities and with families in transitional housing.

Deborah specializes in treating complex trauma, including developmental, relational, attachment, historical, and cultural trauma. Her training includes:

-NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM Therapist)
-Compassionate Inquiry®
-Advanced Training for Trauma Treatment of Complex Trauma (AZ Trauma Institute)

In addition to working with complex trauma, Deborah is experienced in helping adults with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, low self-worth, family-of-origin & women’s issues, and process addictions.

As a therapist, Deborah believes life can be challenging and that you are not alone in your struggles. We often get stuck in using coping strategies that are no longer serving us well. The therapy process can help you discover what is causing you to suffer and what you can do to improve your responses to life situations. She believes a safe therapeutic relationship supports clients towards greater insight, allowing them to see how they perceive and respond to their life experiences. This leads to a greater capacity for living authentically – with purpose and meaningful connection to ourselves and others.

Deborah’s interests include hiking, cycling, swimming, and reading. She also enjoys road trips, especially visiting national parks and other natural wonders. She loves spending time with friends and family.

Deborah sees clients 21 years and older. She offers in-office and telehealth sessions Tuesdays through Fridays at the Mesa office.

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NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM)
The NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM) created by Dr. Lawrence Heller is a cutting-edge model for addressing attachment, relational, and developmental trauma by working with the attachment patterns that cause life-long psychobiological symptoms and interpersonal difficulties. These early, unconscious patterns of disconnection deeply affect our identity, emotions, physiology, behavior, and relationships. Learning how to work simultaneously with these diverse elements is a radical shift with profound clinical implications for healing complex trauma. To learn more about NARM: https://narmtraining.com/what-is-narm/

The Compassionate Inquiry® Approach
Compassionate Inquiry® is a psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Maté over several decades while working with patients and retreat participants. This approach gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body, that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction.

When clients perceive the therapeutic relationship as a safe container, compassion, and curiosity allow them to acknowledge and examine the traumatic events that happened to them as children, recognize the beliefs they internalized, and feel the emotions they suppressed. This contributes to the healing process.  Using Compassionate Inquiry, both the individual and therapist unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories, and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal.  When we can release ourselves from the hold of these stories, a new way of being emerges, leading to spontaneity, choice, expansion, and freedom. To learn more about Compassionate Inquiry: https://compassionateinquiry.com/the-approach/