Tag Archive for: therapy

Telling Your Children You’re Divorcing: 5 Things to Consider

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When couples decide to end a relationship and it leads to the breakup of a family with children, the amount of information to process can be somewhat overwhelming. While the separation may be what’s best for everyone involved, how the information is shared with children will be a memory they hold forever.  How this family change is shared can impact the trajectory of the entire transition for each child. This process should be handled with tender care and with an emphasis on how you, the parents, will provide physical, mental, and emotional safety for each child.  Here’s a simple list to guide you through a very challenging decision making process which can help you share this news with your children in the most honest and gentle way possible. Learn More...

The Secret to Co-Parenting Success: Shifting from a Personal Relationship to a Parental Relationship

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As a Therapist who has spent over a decade working with families and children, I’ve had the great privilege of sharing the various journeys of many, many clients. Some journeys (especially at the end of my work with clients) take a positive turn; I cherish the moments when I see clients thriving and no longer needing therapy for the time being.  Most people, however, begin their work with me at the start of a challenging journey, such as a journey of separation and divorce. Since I specialize in working with children, teens, and parents, the caregivers typically reach out to me after they’ve made decisions to end their relationship. They are oftentimes seeking out support for the purposes of best caring for their children through the transition. Sometimes they need support in developing c0-parenting skills, and sometimes they need support in how to tell their children about the divorce (and most times, both).  If you need help in planning how to tell your children you are separating, this article may be helpful, here. Learn More...

Introducing ‘Grow’ – A Group for Teens

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“Am I the only one that feels like this?”

“Do other people talk to you about this kind of stuff?”

“This is super embarrassing, but…”

“I know this isn’t normal.”

“Literally no one gets it.” 

I’ve heard the above statements and questions over, and over, and over in the therapy room, especially when I am working with teenagers. In their world, they’re the only one with this experience, this struggle, this thought, this worry, this insecurity. This perception leads to feelings of isolation, loneliness, low self-esteem, and hopelessness.   Learn More...

Coping with Grief During the Holidays

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Grief is a complex mixture of emotions.  Grief can come from many types of losses or transitions including death of a loved one or pet, divorce, job loss, loss of a friendship, moving, etc.  Grief emotions are often cyclical in nature and are felt at various levels throughout the year depending on the intensity of emotional triggers.  Sometimes seasonal changes bring back memories of other emotional experiences at that same time of year. Learn More...

New Group Offering: Artfully Inspired Therapy Group

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Happy almost 2023! This time of transition is often characterized by reflection, resolutions, and future planning. Although we do not have to wait for a New Year to begin making changes, oftentimes this hopeful energy fuels us to bettering our overall health. One way to accomplish this is by seeking therapeutic support, such as Group Therapy. Group Therapy is a valuable resource to incorporate into one’s mental health regime. Learn More...

Louisville Based Practice Expands Animal Assisted Therapies to Include Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

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Creative Family Counseling, a child and family counseling practice with locations in Lyndon and Prospect, has long been known to offer Animal-Assisted Therapies.  Founder and CEO Lacey Ryan, LMFT and her dog Lola have offered this service as a certified pet therapy team since the practice opened its doors in 2016.  Lola’s gentle and powerful work has inspired other clinicians on the Creative Family Counseling team to train and certify their own pets for this work. The practice now has four therapy dogs between the two locations, offering the beautiful and healing service that only animals can offer.   Learn More...

Lola the Therapy Dog

A Life of Service: Lola’s Retirement From Animal-Assisted Therapy

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While in graduate school earning my degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, I spent a semester working as a student counseling intern at a psychiatric hospital.  Also at that hospital worked a Therapy Dog named Brinkley who offered a sweet and calming presence to the patients with whom he worked. Brinkley was the first Therapy Dog I’d met. While I had known of working Service Dogs, I had never met a Therapy Dog and was excited to learn about the difference between the two and something called Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT). Learn More...

“Hello…I’m looking for a Feelings Teacher for my children.”

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A parent recently called and said she was looking for a “Feelings Teacher” for her two children.  I explained that this was not necessarily a title I’d been given before, but that perhaps I could help.  While discussing what exactly her goals would be for bringing her children in to see a “Feelings Teacher,” she identified what I would call typical treatment goals for counseling with children: Learn More...

Therapist offering counseling at Creative Family Counseling located in Louisville, KY

What is HypnoTherapy?

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Most of us have heard of hypnosis, but what is it? There are so-called examples of hypnosis on television shows, movies and even stage performances. In these “examples” the person receiving the “hypnosis” seems to have no control over their actions or behaviors and sometimes have no memory of their actions! While we could spend the time to explain what these instances are in reality, I can assure you that they are most certainly NOT hypnosis. Learn More...

Therapist offering counseling at Creative Family Counseling located in Louisville, KY

The Therapeutic Specialty of EMDR: What is it and how is it used?

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While Creative Family Counseling offers many different Specialties for clients, depending on their interests and therapeutic needs, EMDR Therapy is a specialty that many people have questions about when first introduced to it.  For this reason, I sat down with my colleague, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Dawn Pendleton, who is Certified in EMDR. As a seasoned clinician with over 20 years in the field, Dawn has used numerous types of approaches to therapy, including EMDR.   She states that her goal is to facilitate healing for her clients in as short an amount of time as possible, which is why she’s so passionate about her use of EMDR.  In this interview, Dawn gave some background on this therapeutic tool, discussed how and why it is used, and suggested who might benefit from EMDR Therapy. Learn More...