If you are a parent or caregiver, you may be here wondering…
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If we will be just another provider to leave you feeling hopeless, helpless, disempowered, alone, and even more stuck.
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If you will leave sessions continuing to feel unseen, unheard, undervalued, and like just another name on a chart.
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If you will continue to be left in the dark about what’s happening in your child’s therapy.
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If you will be met with more defensiveness when you ask your child’s therapist to explain what they’re doing to support your child and why.
The answer to every one of these “if”s is a resounding NO.
Unfortunately, these are often the worries that families will come to us holding because of past experiences. We’re sorry if these have been your past experiences with mental health or any other providers. We also want you to know that you and your child deserve support that makes you feel empowered, hopeful, seen, heard, valued, and understood. Support that centers your unique beliefs, culture, values, relationships, neurotype, and experiences including the context of those experiences. Support that is tailored to you, for you, and led by YOU.
We want you to know that even if we don’t have the chance to personally support you, your child, and your family, we will still walk alongside you in identifying and connecting with someone who can meet your needs. Terms like “trauma-responsive,” “attachment-informed,” “neurodiversity affirming,” and “cultural humility” shouldn’t be just buzzwords on someone’s website; they should be intricately and intentionally woven into all practices. Because of this, we’ve also shared a resource outlining questions you deserve to be able to ask any therapist you’re considering, to support you in making an informed and empowered choice.
Grounded in
Neurobiology
Our approach is guided by the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics™ (NMT™). This model is not a modality of therapy but a lens and tool that helps to organize and understand a person’s contextual experiences, impact of those experiences, current strengths and challenges, needs, and how to best approach therapeutic support in ways that align with and respect the way their brain is currently wired. This model is at the foundation of all that we do at CTHC and what helps us to excel in working with the most complex of needs. We believe, because research shows, that all behavior is communication. Even the most perplexing of behaviors provide communication about underlying needs. At CTHC, behavior is a language we are fluent in. We also know that when we can understand the “why” underneath those perplexing behaviors, they can make a whole lot of sense, seem a lot less overwhelming, and become a roadmap to support instead of a barrier.
Relationship and connectedness are the anchors of all meaningful change and positive developmental growth and healing. This key factor spans across all elements of our work including how we understand the impact of past experiences to the priority and emphasis we place on creating an environment that supports you and your child in feeling seen, connected, empowered, and understood to how we show up with you as our very human authentic selves. We are not the leg crossed, tailored pant suit, glasses tilted down “and how does that make you feel” type therapists. We are the no shoes, legs folded like a pretzel, laugh with you, cry with you, dance with you, delighted to see you type therapists that hope to be honored with getting to know all the parts of you and to hold the heaviness of all the pain you carry alongside you so that it can feel even just a little bit lighter. When your child works with us, it is not just your child that is held, but you and your family as well. We become partners and collaborators. We trust you and your child as the experts on yourselves and your family. Not only do we collaborate with you to create your child’s therapeutic support plan for therapy, but we also will collaborate with you to create support plans for you, your child, and your family in your own home and any other environment where support is needed. We aim to bring the same delight we have in you to your home so that you and your child can delight in each other again, or find the delight that seemed to be missing from the start. Your relationship with your child is the most important healing and change agent we could ever support and that is of utmost importance to us.
Centered in
Relationship
Provided Through
Experience
The modalities of therapy and support we choose to provide here are mostly experiential in nature. This means that we harness how we know the brain and body best learn, heal, and grow – through experience or “doing”. What we know and understand about neuroscience emphasizes the importance of learning through experience if we truly want to create long lasting change and meaningful growth. This is why we use modalities like play therapy, Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Sandtray, parts work, Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART), creative and expressive arts, and other forms of experiential work in our practice. These are woven throughout our therapeutic support plans intentionally choosing when and how we use them because we understand the science behind the “why” of our choices. We will work with you to bridge what experiences we are intentionally providing for your child in sessions to environments outside of the therapy room - home, school, sports, etc. so that they can receive the repetitions of these experiences needed to achieve the positive developmental growth and healing we know they are capable of.