My speciality is joining horses with foster and adoptive families on a path to healing through connected and wholehearted relationships. I also work with children and families who do not have specific attachment-concerns. Helping families build healthy attachments and overcome trauma is our goal because we all know “love makes a family” but sometimes our homes can feel more like a battlefield than the loving picture you planned for. Attachment wounds can do that despite all of your best intentions of cherishing a child you welcomed in. We can help you find the joy in family and restore hope in your child’s future! The help of horses, a balance of nurture and structure, and rewiring the brain will get us there!
Family Therapy
Wholehearted Herd Counseling, LLC offers family therapy for families and parent-child relationships that have been formed by adoption or have other attachments needs.
Thank you for taking this step to seek out help for your family. I can imagine you have many fears that brought you to this place, and I admire you for the bravery to seek help.
Parenting a child from a "hard place" is HARD. It causes us to question ourselves and fear our child's outcomes. Some possible fears that you could have are that your child will end up in prison, on the streets, or alone. Or maybe you fear your own thoughts that you may not love your child anymore and your shame for thinking it. You are also probably just trying to get through this next hour without having anyone injured... You also likely don't have much support because when you tell others about these things they think you are crazy. You are not crazy. Your child has an attachment wound. I can help and there is hope!
There is hope that your child can reach their true potential and be the real boy or girl that God created them to be and that you know is underneath all that attachment trauma.
My family therapy process:
I spend time helping your child build the regulation skills needed to manage their stress and help you to be expert co-regulators.
We work on your own "stuff." We all have it. It's the automatic reactions that get in the way of helping your children.
We build connected interactions through family equine and play therapy sessions.
I help to make you, as parents, the healing relationship they need to wire their brain for connection and security.
Support for Adoptive and Foster Moms
You’ve tried all the reward charts, consequences, bribes, and even connected parenting approaches and nothing seems to work. You’re cranky, short-fused, and just tired. You are expected to help regulate your out-of-control child but wonder who is there to regulate you?? You ‘re left feeling guilty and in this cycle you can’t seem to get out of.
We all know you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s time to take the time needed for you to recharge and get your own regulation! You can’t give the calm you don’t have, no matter how many books you read on trauma parenting. Working on building your own secure attachment and experiencing deep regulation for yourself can help you to be able to apply these TBRI and connected parenting approaches and finally get some traction in your home.
Schedule individual sessions for yourself or keep an eye out for my mom’s group during the school year! More information on the group can be found here.
Seeking out help for your child can be a daunting and scary task that you never planned to be a part of your story, just like the trauma they have faced. Trauma can be one of those over used therapy-words but it essentially is any experience that was too stressful to cope with and often happened in the absence of caring attachments. That could be abuse, neglect, relationship disruption such as adoption or foster care, witnessing domestic violence, accidents, and many more. These experiences actually change the brain and make areas for safety over-used and "muscled" and areas for problem solving, thinking, and relationships weaker and undeveloped. It also disrupts the development of managing feelings and body energy, or regulation. Can I get a witness for trauma-kids who tantrum at 13 years old or do other things that frustrate and baffle us? Their brain has changed! This is not something a child or person can "just move past" without reorganizing the brain- and that happens in secure relationships.
Wholehearted Herd Counseling, LLC provides individual psychotherapy services to children and adolescents with the Trauma-Focused Equine Assisted Therapy™ (TF-EAP) model. This model helps to reorganize (rewire) the brain by learning skills for regulating oneself, building healthy attachments, and processing trauma. Click here to read more about the process. Wholehearted Herd Counseling, LLC also provides EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Repressing) treatment in combination with the horses to provide healing for traumatic memories and PTSD symptoms. Click here to learn more about EMDR therapy. There is hope to help your child to heal their brain and build healthy relationships!
Email to find out more information on how to begin services [email protected]
Take a look at Trauma-focused Equine-assisted Psychotherapy in action from the founders of Natural Lifemanship