What Do You Do When Therapy Feels Like It Was Built for Someone Else? Meet Dez Nunez, LPC

The Problem She Solves: When You’ve Already Decided Therapy Won’t Work for You

There is a version of a therapy client that most providers are quietly, unintentionally designing for: someone who already believes in the process, comes from a background where asking for help was normalized, and is ready to sit down, be vulnerable, and do the work on day one.

A lot of people are not that person. And the mental health system has historically done a poor job serving the people who are not.

For teenagers dealing with depression who would rather die than admit they need help, the intake questionnaire at a typical therapy practice might feel alienating before the first session even starts. For adults in Hispanic or Black or military-adjacent communities where struggle is supposed to be handled privately, the suggestion that they talk to a stranger about their feelings can register as somewhere between ridiculous and offensive. For people whose only experience of therapy was a clinician who pushed the wrong technique at the wrong time and left them worse than they came in, starting over with someone new requires trusting a system that already let them down.

This is the population Dez Nunez, LPC was formed by and the population she is most drawn to serve. Dez did not walk into her first therapy session with hope. She walked in at 19, skeptical and hostile, ready to confirm what she already believed: that this was not for her. Instead, she found a counselor who matched her energy, stayed patient, and changed her life. That experience redirected her entire career. Today she works with teens and adults who arrive the same way she did guarded, skeptical, maybe a little angry. She understands that the first job is not to fix the problem. It is to earn the right to be in the room.

Her Unique Approach: Evidence-Based Therapy Meets the Unconventional

Dez is a licensed professional counselor with a full evidence-based toolkit. She uses CBT for thought pattern work, DBT for emotional regulation and distress tolerance, and Internal Family Systems for identity-level healing. These are the modalities you would expect from a clinician trained at a CACREP-accredited program and supervised through years of complex casework.

What you would not expect (what most Denver therapists are not offering) is what comes next.

Geek Therapy is a legitimate clinical framework that uses fandom, gaming, comics, and pop culture as entry points into therapeutic work. For clients whose defenses collapse the moment someone asks a direct question about their feelings, talking about what a character in a game or film is experiencing can create enough psychological distance to make honesty possible. Dez uses Geek Therapy regularly and with intention. She is not dropping Marvel references to seem relatable. She is using them because they work.

Movement and sports function similarly. Dez has coached boys’ basketball at the high school level for most of the last decade. She knows something that many clinicians in sit-down offices miss: some people think more clearly when their body is in motion. Shooting hoops while talking through something hard, or playing catch while processing a difficult memory, can lower the nervous system’s guard in ways that a quiet room and a couch do not always achieve.

Religious trauma is another area where Dez offers something rare in the Denver market. She served in ministry from age 11 to 23 and completed some formal theological training before transitioning into counseling. For clients deconstructing faith, navigating shame-based religious systems, or working through trauma that happened in a church context, Dez is not consulting a framework someone else designed. She is drawing on lived experience that makes the nuances legible.

Decolonizing mental health is a phrase that appears a lot without much behind it. Dez brings substance to it. She is a therapist of color who has – by her own account – always been the only therapist of color in every Colorado practice she has worked in. She is actively critical of over-medicalization and dismissal of cultural context, and she has built a practice philosophy around holding space for what doesn’t always show up cleanly in a research study: community, connection, culture, and unconventional healing.

Who Benefits Most from Working with Dez

Dez works with clients ages 15 through 45. The clients who tend to get the most out of working with her share some combination of the following:

They have tried to deal with depression or anxiety on their own and hit a wall. They are smart enough to see through generic advice and impatient enough to resent being talked down to. They have a complicated history with religion, family, or cultural identity that makes “standard” therapeutic frameworks feel like they’re missing something. They are teenagers or young adults whose brains work fast and weird and who need a therapist who can keep up. They are athletes or achievers who are used to performing but struggling to let anyone see that they are struggling.

Dez also serves clients navigating ADHD, grief, LGBTQIA+ identity concerns, gender identity, mood disorders, and complex trauma. She provides bilingual services in Spanish at an intermediate fluency level, which is significant in a metro area with a documented shortage of Spanish-speaking mental health providers.

Dez’s Journey: From the Biggest Skeptic in the Room to the Best Advocate in It

Dez grew up in a community that did not have much room for mental health. Her family background, her religious upbringing, her identity as a Hispanic athlete in a military-adjacent household pointed toward therapy as a viable option. Mental health help was, in her words, something she saw as “BS.”

She was 19 when she finally went. And she was not kind about it at first. “I roasted the dude constantly,” she says about her first therapist. “He never gave up on me.” That experience broke something open. She had assumed therapy was a service designed for a different kind of person. She learned that it was not, and that assumption had cost her years.

She shifted her career toward counseling. She earned her BA in Psychology from New Mexico State University graduating with honors and receiving the George E. Briggs Award for Outstanding Graduating Senior. She then completed her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at NMSU. Her graduate training included an inpatient psychiatric facility, a community mental health center, and a private practice setting. After graduating, she completed her supervised post-graduate hours through LifeStance Health under an LCSW Regional Clinical Director who trusted her with complex cases and expanded her clinical range considerably. She received full LPC licensure in Colorado in November 2023.

She also coaches freshmen boys’ basketball with a 6a program with her dad. Their freshmen boys’ basketball team carries an 84-10 record across three seasons. One of the few female coaches on the boys’ side of the league, she has led her squad to two district championships and considers coaching among the most formative things she does. “Those young men are very tall and often sweaty,” she says, “but I love them.” The mentorship orientation that drives that work is inseparable from how she shows up in the therapy room.

What to Expect Working with Dez

Your first session is an intake conversation. Dez uses it to understand what is bringing you in, what you have already tried, and what has and has not worked. She will ask about your history (personal, cultural, relational) and she will listen to things that do not fit neatly into a clinical checkbox. She does not expect you to have your goals sorted out before you arrive. She does not need you to already trust the process. She needs you to show up.

From there, treatment is collaborative. Dez tailors her approach to the individual. Some clients do better with structured CBT-style work. Others need something more like a long conversation and a slow excavation. Dez reads the room and adjusts.

Axis Integrated Mental Health accepts most major insurance plans. Dez sees clients in person at Axis locations across the Denver metro area, including Aurora. Telehealth options are available depending on scheduling needs.