More Info About My Practice

Most clients enter into counseling with hope and reluctance combined somehow. My first goal is to make everyone feel welcome, safe, and hopeful. I think my adolescent / teen age clients are most surprised that they soon discover that they actually look forward to coming in to see me. This is because I honestly open up their world for them in ways they are not used to from adult figures in their lives. My first message to parents who think they are going to drop their kids off and have me fix them is that there is nothing wrong with their kids. What is wrong is the relationship between the parent and child. Counselors are, after all, relationship doctors of sorts. What tends to happen over time, is resentments develop and cloud individual issues. Extremely rarely are any issues more important than the relationship between two people, however, too often, issues take on huge importance that seems to be more important that that relationship. The underlying reason is that we hate to sit with our feelings hurt, so we turn those hurt feelings into anger. We save that anger up and let it fly if some one leaves their shoes in the wrong place or stays out too late at night. The resentment builds on both sides and though invisible, that wall can become very thick. What is amazing that in a heart beat it can also disappear and relationships can heal.