Alyssa Durdunji, LMFT

Alyssa Durdunji, LMFT, is passionate about seeing lives and relationships restored. She recognizes the courage it takes to come to therapy and believes that transformation happens in the context of compassionate relationships when people feel heard and understood. 

 

Being a deeply curious person, Alyssa is fascinated by people’s stories and relationships. She has always viewed every life as valuable and redeemable, so creating a safe space for people to process their deepest hurts and see genuine restoration is a gift, not just a vocation. After seeing the devastating impact of trauma through an undergraduate internship at a domestic violence shelter, her interest in counseling was sparked, but her desire to study marriage and family therapy did not crystalize until later. In her first job out of college, she was doing outreach work with adolescents and saw the pervasive way mental health issues threatened to rob them of their light, senses of self, and sometimes their very lives. She observed how wounded family systems create cycles of hurt that can be interrupted and impact generations if someone has the courage to face them. That’s where therapy comes in. 

 

Alyssa has worked with a diverse range of individuals, couples, and families in community, private practice, and psychiatric hospital settings. She has a client-centered, collaborative approach that seeks to meet clients where they are to confront their pain and move toward healing. Her approach integrates modalities including Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), internal family systems, cognitive-behavioral, and emotionally-focused interventions that lead to insight, develop skills, and create healing. 

 

Alyssa earned her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Lipscomb University and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Arkansas. She is a licensed therapist in both Tennessee and Arkansas, having completed additional trainings in EMDR Spiritual Direction, Civil and Family Mediation, Prepare/Enrich premarital counseling, and C-SSRS Suicide Prevention. Her areas of special clinical interest include trauma, self-worth, relationship issues, anxiety, depression, life transitions, spirituality, couple/family conflict, substance abuse (including family members impacted by addiction), and grief/loss.

 

Alyssa grew up in Arkansas then moved to Nashville, Tennessee for almost a decade where she met her husband and had her first child. They recently moved back to Arkansas to be close to family and are loving all the hiking, biking, camping, and kayaking the natural state has to offer. If she’s not in the office, you can find her on a playground with her 2-year-old daughter and new baby boy, in a coffee shop with a good book, trying a new restaurant, traveling, or just hanging out with her people.