Nicole's full story.

A desert dweller from the East Coast.

I'm from Queens, New York. If you've spent any time with a New Yorker, you already know what that means: I'm direct, I don't sugarcoat things, and I have a pretty good sense of humor about all of it. I'll challenge you. I'll celebrate you. I'll hold you accountable to the person you told me you wanted to become. And I'll do all of that in a way that doesn't make you want to run out of the room.

But before I was a therapist, I was a lot of other things.

After managing and producing off-Broadway dance concerts in NYC (I was a theatre-dance major in college after all), I left my loft in Brooklyn to chase love all the way to Arizona. Here I ran an aerial arts training facility and managed a performance company, which meant swinging from ceilings and figuring out how to keep creative, passionate, slightly chaotic humans pointed in the same direction. (Useful skill, as it turns out!) After retiring from dance I pursued ministry in Sydney, Australia. Wound up in London before settling back in Phoenix once again, this time as a solo mom navigating grad school for my Masters of Social Work. Now, I have built the blended family of my dreams here.

Looking back, the thread through all of it has always been helping people: first coaching performing artists, then serving in ministry and leading small groups, then caregiving and case management in London. Now I get to do it as a therapist and the clinical director of Southwest Mind.

I identify as neuroqueer, I've walked my own road through religious trauma and faith deconstruction, and I've navigated chronic health conditions with my love of life fully intact. I bring all of it into the room as lived experience.

How I work

I specialize in OCD and anxiety-related disorders, neurodivergency, and working with people in the helping professions: nurses, doctors, therapists, counselors. The people who help others deserve care as well.

My approach is evidence-based and grounded in modalities that have research behind them. But here's the thing about modalities: they're tools, not scripts. I use what fits you, not what fits a checklist.

I believe you have to accept yourself before you can change yourself. Not as a platitude, as a clinical reality. The work we do together is about understanding what's there, accepting what can't be changed, and building something real with what you've got.

I also believe therapy should have some lightness in it. Life is heavy enough. We'll do hard things in here, but we'll laugh sometimes too.

— Nicole Weant