Ashley Boynton, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist

About Dr. Boynton

I was born and raised in Tucson, AZ, and went on to receive my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. After working for a number of educational non-profits in Paris and New York City, I wanted to pursue a degree that would empower me to connect deeply with people and facilitate lasting change. This desire led me to pursue my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Throughout the six years I spent pursuing my degree, I worked in university counseling centers, integrated primary care clinics, and veteran’s affairs outpatient clinics. I also was provided with the opportunity to work with college administrators to facilitate systemic change on college campuses in the fields of suicide prevention and bystander intervention. I completed my psychology internship at Colorado State University and fell in love with Fort Collins during that time. After becoming licensed, I continue to split my time between private practice and university counseling centers.

Throughout the course of my career, I have developed a deep love for this work and a voracious appetite for learning about developments in our field. I continue to seek out training and education to further enhance my ability to help clients. I am continually humbled and amazed by the courage and resilience my clients bring to therapy, and by the power they have to transform their lives through our work together. I am passionate about social justice and equity and try my best to incorporate those values into my personal and professional life. Outside of work I enjoy hiking and backpacking, singing and writing songs, and spending time with my family and pets.

Areas of Specialization

When people ask me what I specialize in, I often tell them that I am a generalist. Most of my training has prepared me to work with a wide range of concerns, and I’m glad it has. I find that the clients I work with are complex and their problems do not exist in isolation, and having extensive experience with a broad range of concerns helps me work with the whole person in all their complexity.

That being said, you probably want to know if I am equipped to help you specifically. I offer a free consultation to discuss this very question with clients, but to give you a head start, clients usually come through my door with one or more of the following concerns:

Feeling "stuck" with repeating patterns
Recovery from trauma and/or difficult life events
Feminist/women’s issues
Issues related to experiences with privilege and oppression

For those of you who are interested in the psychological science and theory that underlies my work: I have been trained primarily in psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral approaches, and I have since gone on to deepen and expand that knowledge. In individual therapy, I generally integrate a relational psychodynamic approach with cognitive-behavioral approaches, including cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), when doing so would be beneficial. I am a Level I PACT therapist and am trained in Emotion-Focused Therapy and use this approach in my work with couples. In my group work I primarily use interpersonal process theory. I continue to actively pursue training in psychological theory and use an integrative approach overall.