Brenda Murrow

Brenda Murrow is a graduate of the Clinical Psychology program at Pacifica. Brenda’s passions include animals, animal-assisted therapy, play therapy, and research methods. She is enthusiastic about supporting students both in the classroom, and through sharing her clinical experiences when they support students in exploring their own clinical interests. As part of her clinical training, Brenda’s experiences span a wide array of environments. In her practicum placement with a community sexual assault support center, she did equine-assisted psychotherapy with adult survivors of abuse. From there, she spent the rest of her internship and post-doc fellowship primarily focused on children’s therapy, including infant-parent attachment, play therapy, and psychoanalytic interventions with emotionally disturbed children. Her dissertation was a study of how child survivors of domestic violence, physical, and sexual abuse responded to a therapy dog entering session. The common thread through these experiences is how the relationship (either between patient and animal, child and parent, or patient and therapist) informs us as therapists about the most supportive direction to take in therapy. Brenda welcomes your insights and questions about any of these topics. Having been both a student and now adjunct faculty in the program gives Brenda a unique perspective into Pacifica’s particular format, and she is looking forward to supporting students in traversing their own journeys to becoming academically-informed and depth-oriented clinicians.