About HeartWay Holistic

My name is Kim Valdes. I am a bilingual Licensed Professional Counselor, Registered Play Therapist, Psychedelic Assisted Therapist, and Holistic Coach. My work with children, adolescent, and adults began as a para-professional providing mental health services working in a community agency setting with underprivileged communities in Georgia beginning in 2006. I have been a licensed professional counselor in my private practice setting since 2015 in Alpharetta, Georgia.  

As a Registered Play Therapist I provide services to children, adolescent, and families experiencing life challenges ranging from abrupt life changes and transitions, school bullying, family conflicts,  communication challenges, childhood trauma, and grief.  Certain diagnosis that children, adolescent, and families come in with wanting to address in my practice are Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, and ADHD.

As a Play therapist, I take a prescriptive approach that is both directive and nondirective. My internal guiding framework is Humanistic but trained in interpersonal, relational, and attachment focused. I value being compassionate and respecting where people are in their journey and creating a safe space/setting for children, adolescent, and adults. I value, appreciate, and respect seeing the gift of neurodiversity in the children, adolescent, adults, and families I meet and connect with in my office.

When working with children, adolescent, and families, the tools I use in sessions include expressive art and sand tray play that support and create safety for feelings and experiences that are hard to connect with, express, or understand inside of us, or in relationship with others. Art and sand tray gives us a way to work on ourselves at a deeper level, for the mind and body to express itself nonverbally and energetically through images, color, shape, and texture. Art and sand tray can be a container of safety as we move through challenging stories, feelings, and experiences in the therapeutic process.

I am also certified as a Psychedelic Assisted Therapist with Integrative Psychiatry Institute. This means that I have been trained to provide preparation, dosing sessions, and integration sessions with the use of Psylocibin, MDMA, and Ketamine. However, due to the current illegal use and DEA level 1 classification of psilocybin and MDMA we are not able to support clients in the state of Georgia with these medicines at this time. We are hopeful that in the coming several years we will see these medicines available for therapeutic use with continued research and clinical study. For now, I am able to provide Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy including preparation and integration to support individuals who have experienced psychedelics and are in need of support services and integrating challenging experiences.

I joined Journey Clinical to provide ketamine assisted therapy (KAP).  Journey Clinical will be providing the psychiatric evaluation, prescribing, and ongoing assessment with Ketamine. If you would like to know more please visit under services for further information. My KAP practice is also informed by trainings and workshops in interpersonal neurobiology, relational neuroscience, attachment, and Polyvagal Theory. Other modalities and approaches I am learning and integrating are Internal Families Systems and Somatic therapy. I am currently working on certifying as CCTP-Level II Trauma Professional using somatic therapy techniques.

Another important process that can be implemented to discipline the mind, release emotions, ground, and regulate is including meditation and mindfulness to one’s therapeutic work. Meditation is not only a practice for spiritual cultivation but I have personally felt it has been a healing process in my own mental and emotional life journey. Therefore, I facilitate meditation practice for individuals and group meditation for adults into my practice as a tool to support changes in the brain, grounding the body, self-regulation, and coregulation in a community of others that can reduce anxiety, depression, and support working through trauma in conjunction with any therapy you are currently doing.

However, throughout the last couple of years I have completed workshops, trainings, and certification on spirituality and coaching, focusing on trauma, anxiety, and depression working with adults through the work of Bonnie Badenoch, Dan Seigel, Deb Dana, and others in Polyvagal Theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Internal Family Systems (IFS).