Counseling
“The walls constructed around our hearts that block truth must come down so that we can live how we are made to live as vulnerable and valuable creatures.” - Chip Dodd, Voice of the Heart, page 154
Counseling is a tool that leads us towards breaking down the walls that bind up our truth while being in a trusted therapeutic relationship.
Individual Counseling
Life is so painful; overwhelming events are normal to the human experience. Also, joy and delight are real experiences we often leave behind because of pain.
Each clinician at the VOTHC believes that individual counseling is an invitation to rediscovery. Counseling helps us find what we lost, reawakens what is asleep, and helps knock down the walls around the human heart. Counseling is a tool for the journey home that starts with listening to the heart and understanding how you were made.
We believe that there is a daily path from:
Hurt to Healing
Fear to Faith and Wisdom
Sadness to Acceptance
Guilt to Forgiveness and Freedom
Shame to Humility
Loneliness to Intimacy
Anger to Passion
Gladness to joy with sadness
Come experience true hospitality, warmth, direction, and competency that can only come from clinicians practicing relationship with each other. You will fill the warmth we have for each other and the passion we have to meet you.
Marriage Counseling
Relationships thrive when two people feel understood, heard, and appreciated. We have found that each spouse must face the fear of receiving or not receiving love and the sadness of a relationship not being exactly as desired. When we don’t acknowledge and lead with these feelings, our inner world fills with anxiety, control, and self-pity tied to the other person in the relationship. There are few greater miseries than ongoing hurt, blame, resentment, and vindictiveness with the person we care about most in life.
We believe in marriage therapy as one tool to foster straightforwardness and understanding. Marital counseling gives couples the opportunity to learn how to do life on life’s terms together: to safely have their say and feel acknowledged. As a result intimacy, healing, and forgiveness can flourish.
See if our counseling fits you!
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specific therapy tool that we use frequently at the VOTH to help deal with the trauma, anxiety, depressiveness, and lingering resentments every human eventually faces in life. Trauma, or experiences that overwhelm the brain’s ability to make sense of a situation, is a normal part of life. Every child longs for an emotionally secure home where they can openly discuss difficult experiences like breakups, bullying, or puberty. Likewise, every grownup hopes to create a home where he or she can be authentic, rest from anxieties of the world, and be accepted as human.
When the main ingredients of safety, security, gentleness, and honesty are not available, the heart, brain, and body can become stuck in anxiety, depression, addictions, or general uneasiness with life.
We have found EMDR to be a powerful tool for fostering self-compassion and helping people move beyond the isolation from painful past memories.
More specific information about EMDR (hyperlinked to: https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/
Meet the Team
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Colton Shannon, PhD, LPC-MHSP
Owner/Director, EMDR Trained
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Beth Ann Mergens, LCSW
Clinician, EMDR Trained
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Alex Courington, MFT
Clinician, EMDR Trained, Prepare-Enrich Facilitator
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Chandler Ross, LMSW
Clinician
Client Testimonials
Still looking for more information? We’d love to connect with you!
