Jera Nelson Cunningham, Ph.D.

Dr. Jera Nelson Cunningham holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition, Dr. Cunningham attended college at Wake Forest University and earned her Master's degree in clinical psychology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She completed her clinical internship at a community mental health center. Both her coursework and clinical training has primarily focused on working with children and families. To further specialize in children and families, Dr. Cunningham completed a post-doctoral fellowship at VCU's Virginia Treatment Center for Children. She has worked in residential, acute, and outpatient treatment in both community mental health and private practice settings.

Dr. Cunningham's focus is therapy with children, families, and couples, as well as, conducting psychological evaluations and attachment evaluations. Dr. Cunningham believes it is important to work as a team with parents to determine what type of treatment will work the best for each family or child. She specializes in attachment and trauma and is trained in the Circle of Security Attachment Model.She is a certified enneagram coach and enneagram-informed mental health professional. Her work could best be described as an emotion-focused, relationship-based model that is guided by family systems theory, interpersonal process (relationship focused), attachment theory, emotion-focused therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy through a trauma-informed lens.