Individual psychotherapy: Psychotherapy can offer a safe space to reflect on how emotions, beliefs, and early-life experiences influence your reactions to current life events. For therapy to be helpful, it is important that each patient feels respected, seen, and heard. Therapy within a safe, trusting relationship is a space that allows desired changes to develop and together we can help you reach your goals and dreams.We strongly believe that everyone has the capacity to change and that personal growth has a tremendous impact on our internal happiness and our most important relationships. Together, you and your therapist will develop a treatment strategy that focuses on the issues and changes that you identify and are ready to address.

Play Therapy: Therapeutic play helps children with social or emotional deficits learn to communicate better, change their behavior, develop problem-solving skills, and relate to others in positive ways. Play therapy is used to help children explore their lives and freely express repressed thoughts and emotions through play reducing the need to act out behaviorally. Therapeutic play normally takes place in a safe, comfortable playroom, where very few rules or limits are imposed on the child, encouraging free expression and allowing the therapist to observe the child’s choices, decisions, and play style. The goal is to help children learn to express themselves in healthier ways, become more respectful and empathetic, and discover new and more positive ways to solve problems. For more information, please visit: https://www.a4pt.org/page/PTMakesADifference/Play-Therapy-Makes-a-Difference.htm

Adolescent Psychotherapy: Adolescent Psychotherapy can help teens who are experiencing difficulties with their emotions, behavior, and/or the transition from childhood to adulthood. With adolescents, playing, drawing, building, and pretending, as well as talking, are important ways of sharing feelings and resolving problems. They receive emotional support, learn to resolve conflicts with people, understand feelings and problems, and try out new solutions to old problems. Teenage patients may be resistant to the idea of therapy but that doesn’t limit the usefulness of the therapy space. The relationship that develops between the therapist and the patient is very important. The child or adolescent must feel comfortable, safe, and understood. This type of trusting environment makes it much easier for the child to express his/her thoughts and feelings and to use the therapy in a helpful way.

Circle of Security – Parenting: At times all parents feel lost or without a clue about what our child might need from us. Imagine what it might feel like if you were able to make sense of what your child was really asking from you. The Circle of Security® Parenting™ program is based on decades of research about how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened.

Using the COSP™ model developed by the Circle of Security originators, our trained Facilitators work with parents and care-givers to help them to:

• Understand their child’s emotional world by learning to read emotional needs
• Support their child’s ability to successfully manage emotions
• Enhance the development of their child’s self esteem
• Honor the innate wisdom and desire for their child to be secure

Parent Guidance: Meet with a clinician to understand your natural parenting style and how well it fits with your child’s temperament. Understand the world from your child’s perspective so you can respond to them in ways that helps them build the skills they need to function in the world. Parent guidance is a space to learn about and practice new parent skills. It is also a time and place to safely learn about how your own experience of being parented influences how to interact with your own child/children. Parent guidance is often used, in addition to the child’s therapy, as a useful tool help reduce problematic behaviors in children. 

Theraplay: Theraplay is a dyadic child and family therapy that has been recognized by the Association of Play Therapy as one of seven formative psychotherapies for children. Theraplay was developed for supporting healthy child/caregiver attachment. Strong attachment between the child and the important adults in their life has long been believed to be the basis of lifelong good mental health as well as the mainstay of resilience in the face of adversity. Modern brain research and the field of neuroscience have shown that attachment is the way your psychotherapist guides the parent and child through playful, fun games, developmentally challenging activities, and tender, nurturing activities. The very act of engaging each other in this way helps the parent regulate the child’s behavior and communicate love, joy, and safety to the child. It helps the child feel secure, cared for, connected and worthy, as well as, helping parents feel confident in the parenting role. Theraplay is also a great fit for expecting and new mothers feeling less confident about motherhood or dealing with postpartum depression.

Family Therapy: Family counseling brings the entire family together with a professional to work on the different facets that make up a healthy family. Problems can be more readily identified as each individual is able to share from their point of view. It can help families learn how to improve communication and resolve conflict. Family therapy is often short term. It may include all family members or just those able or willing to participate. Family therapy sessions can teach you skills to deepen family connections and get through stressful times, even long after therapy sessions have ended.

Clinical Supervision: Christina Thomason is a NASW Certified Clinical Supervisor for Limited License Master Social Worker (LLMSW) on their journey to become fully licensed clinicians (LMSW).  Supervision is a place to develop the necessary skills and practice of psychotherapy to protect one’s patients and become a competent practitioner. My approach to supervision follows the Developmental Model, which adjusts for and to the level of expertise of the supervisee. A clinical supervisor is there to help you learn what you do know and what you do not yet know in a safe and supportive environment that allows you, the supervisee, to be accountable while learning.