My Approach to Helping
“Before one can risk change or growth, a sense of security, a clarity of purpose, and consistency must be established.”
Hello! My name is Madalyn and I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing for over 7 years now. I admire you for being brave enough to use this platform and take advantage of technology to ease whatever burden led you here. I have experience with adults, children, and adolescents in individual, group, couple, and family therapy sessions. In addition to being passionate about my profession, I am also a personal believer that was lucky enough to experience the gift of therapy for myself. After my own positive experience, I wanted to learn all that I could about being a therapist to provide others with the same relief and compassion I received. Unfortunately, no one taught me where to find a magic wand, but I have learned a thing or two along the way that I hope can be useful to you.
To give you more insight into my background, I have worked in a variety of professional settings, including private practice, residential addiction treatment, intensive outpatient eating struggles treatment, outpatient programs addressing domestic violence/addiction/anger management, parenting concerns, military settings, family counseling centers, women’s health centers, academic settings, and hospitals. Basically, there’s not much I haven’t done, but I must admit I am most drawn to working with people who have had a negative prior experience in therapy so we can figure out what went wrong and make changes this time around. I consider myself specialized in the areas of trauma, addiction, eating struggles, family/relational conflict, family of origin issues, and women’s issues. I am also passionate about working with families who love someone with substance use or eating struggles and have experience as a family program coordinator in an inpatient addiction treatment center. I am also specialized in military life issues and the unique challenges faced while loving or being someone in this career. While I have enjoyed the variety of knowledge gained from these experiences, I have found that the common denominator across all types of settings that must be present for therapy to be effective is making sure that you feel understood, validated, and safe. Basically, you should never be judged in this space and you deserve to be treated with respect in all of our interactions. That is what I hope to offer to you as we enter a honest, person-centered therapeutic relationship.
Unfortunately, we don’t all have access to a safe place to vent and feel validated in our day-to-day lives. I aim for my counseling style to be empathetic, validating, and warm and would love to know what you have found helpful or unhelpful from therapy in the past (seriously, feel free to tell me this – the good, the bad, and the ugly). I am drawn to humanistic approaches that aim to find the good in all of us and build on our inherent strengths. I also won’t hesitate to be human with you myself and admit that we are all in this “figuring life out” thing together, and while I definitely don’t have all the answers, you don’t have to experience pain alone.
Thanks for taking the time to read this! I look forward to starting this journey with you.