The Azure Story
Hi! We're Bonnie and Sam.
We’re the owners and founders of Azure Counseling.
Whether you’re looking for a therapist for the first time or therapy has been a regular thing in your life, we are so glad you’re here.
Our mission is to offer a safe place to as many people as possible to heal their minds and relationships.
While creating and growing Azure Counseling, we’ve very carefully sought out the best humans possible to join our team. Our criteria? We need them to be some of the best trained therapists in the United States, familiar with the teachings and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and who also charge very reasonable rates. We get giddy every time we can hire someone new, because it means more people can get amazing help from amazing therapists.
As a hybrid clinic, we offer both virtual and in-person therapy options, with offices in Cache Valley, Utah and Issaquah, Washington. (Note: We do not maintain normal business hours—you must have an appointment to meet a therapist at an office.)
We hope you can find a good fit in one of our therapists. Feel free to schedule consultations with multiple therapists so you can find the best clinician for your situation. We truly want to help you on your mental health journey.
Warmly,
Bonnie and Sam
About the founders
Bonnie Young
Bonnie is the co-founder, executive director, and lead therapist at Azure Counseling.
She supervises all associate therapists and vets and hires incoming therapists. Bonnie holds a BA in History with an emphasis in Latter-day Saint women’s history and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, both from Brigham Young University (go Cougs!). She is currently pursuing her PhD in marriage and family therapy at Utah State University (go Aggies!). Bonnie is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a licensed MFT supervisor, and holds additional clinical credentials in various therapeutic modalities. She has published multiple academic articles in the foremost marriage and family therapy journal and has published several other journal articles in adjacent disciplines. Bonnie is an active promoter of mental and relational health in the community as a frequent podcast guest, campus lecturer, and therapist educator.
You can learn more about Bonnie and her personal therapy practice at bonnieyoungcounseling.com.
Sam Petersen
Sam is the operations executive at Azure Counseling.
He makes sure things run smoothly behind the scenes. Sam holds a BA in communications from Brigham Young University and an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Sam and Bonnie are married and love working together on this dream that is Azure Counseling. They have three small children and love traveling to new places and eating new things together.
How we got here…
Azure Counseling was born as an answer to common frustrations that people we know and love kept running into when looking for therapy help.
For starters, it’s a tedious and opaque process to find a therapist who feels like a good fit…
At Azure Counseling we make this easier by providing detailed bios of our therapists and by offering consultation calls before you schedule and pay for a session. We hope you can find a good fit in one of our therapists, but we understand if it’s not meant to be. Either way, we care about you and want you to find the help you need to feel whole again without having to go through an expensive, time-consuming journey.
Then, it’s a struggle to find a therapist who understands or sometimes even just respects your religious background or cultural values.
We believe the best therapists can honor a client’s religious and cultural ties while also providing an exceptional, healing therapeutic experience. We vet all our therapists for this competency before hiring them. Each Azure Counseling clinician has experience treating clients with a wide range of religious leanings, including current, former, and transitioning members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mixed-faith marriages and families.
But there’s more. It’s hard to know if you’ve found a proficient therapist with adequate training and qualifications and who is otherwise equipped to offer really high quality care. The therapy world doesn’t have a reliable rating system for clinicians, and we’ve seen first hand that a degree, licensure, or years of experience doesn’t guarantee good therapy.
Our answer to this is to hire only the most talented, best trained, compassionate therapists we can find. We observe each therapist in action before hiring them. In addition, everyone at Azure Counseling is held to strict ethical and professional standards in the field of mental healthcare. When you schedule a session with one of our therapists, you can expect the very highest level of care.
And lastly, therapy prices are all over the board, and session price too often doesn’t reflect quality of care.
We believe therapy prices should be fair and reasonable. We justify our therapist rates based on the training and experience of each provider, but we always cap session rates below what peer clinics charge. One reason we can do this is because we keep our overhead costs low. This means you can pay less for high quality therapy and we can reward our amazing therapists more.
…and that’s how Azure Counseling got here.