Couples Counseling Therapists in Charlottesville, VA

Our team at Strength & Ease Psychotherapy offers couple therapy for folks living in Virginia and DC. Couples come to us with unresolved relationship conflicts, needing reconnection and healing, or support with a breach of trust or longstanding resentment. They may also be seeking help with infertility, birth loss or trauma, postpartum depression or anxiety, parenting issues, grief, or complicated childhood experiences that impact their current relationship. We work together to close the gaps of disconnection, repair the ruptures between you, and create more vulnerability, trust, and emotional and physical intimacy.

I specialize in working with children, teens, and their families. I work with children and adults struggling with anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, athletic pressure, and managing stress. I have a particular interest in helping families improve their relationships, including siblings, parent-child, co-parents, and step families. I also have experience working with adoption and foster care. If you are worried about your relationship with your child, their ability to cope with stress, emotional outbursts, risky behaviors, or following directions, I can help.

Many high-performers know they are capable of achieving more but feel stuck at times. Do you feel that despite having a lot of things together, something is missing that is holding you back? The clients I work with have typically achieved success in many aspects of life, but they struggle in others. When facing challenges that seem insurmountable, we all can benefit from expert guidance and counseling. As a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of education and experience, I empower high-achieving professionals, athletes, and couples to reach their goals and create the changes in life they most desire.

I support a broad range of individuals, such as those with self regulation and impulse control, that impact their functioning and stability. I want to help you or your loved one in stabilization of mood, thinking, and behavior to live more freely without the burdens of past experiences. I believe strongly in one's motivation to change, and I will support you while you build belief in yourself and your goals. I can help you work through barriers that may inhibit your success or hold you back from taking the steps forward in your life. While the treatment journey can be a challenging one, I can help guide your path to stability.

I'm passionate about helping individuals, couples and families heal and experience deeper, more meaningful connections. My work as a counselor has spanned over a decade and through a variety of settings including community-based counseling, outpatient level services, residential care, and crisis support. I have particular interest in working with issues related to foster care and culturally-based trauma. I also have many years experience treating mood-disorders in adolescents.

I am a Resident in Counseling under the supervision of Kathleen Van Allen, LPC. I have experience in providing therapy to children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families with a clinical focus on anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, anger management and managing stress. I also have experience working with individuals and families impacted by substance use. I believe that developing a collaborative, change-oriented relationship with my clients is key to promoting growth. As such, I am solution-focused and strive to help clients learn new methods of solving their problems and managing emotions.

I enjoy helping people establish and maintain relationships. It could be a relationship with your significant other, colleagues, or your family where values, beliefs, expectations, or even the cultures may be different. I also help people maintain a positive relationship with themselves by achieving an internal balance and being at peace with their past experiences.

Accompaniment matters. Relationships transform. We sit together to access the health that is at the center of every human being, even when one of us can’t feel it. We sit because healing happens in relationship, access to true self is made easier in the presence of another person’s settled nervous system, and because your healing matters for the health of all of us. Whether you are facing overwhelm, anger, a frozen feeling, compulsions, depression, trauma, anxiety, or facing other difficult experience, we can touch it with awareness and respect. Our experience includes joy, includes pain, and includes connection and compassion.

It's hard for anyone to talk about personal issues. Anyone brave enough to do this launches themselves into a life giving process that increases the possibilities of their lives forever. It brings about unbelievable changes opening possibilities never thought of. It's hard work. It's scary. But it teaches one to live effectively with what life has brought and create changes that enhance the life that is. It's a journey into the good and the bad that takes a person to new heights. It's an exploration that creates love and light in a life.

People often seek out therapy when they are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or alone. These feelings may cause symptoms of anxiety, depression, difficulty managing anger, or dependance on food or substances to cope. As a therapist I enjoy creating a relationship that is warm, consistent, caring and safe to explore difficult feelings or experiences while figuring out what symptoms like anxiety, or depression are trying to tell us. Having someone who understands the way you think and feel can be truly transformative. This process can lead to the rediscovery of your own innate constructive forces, bringing relief and much needed change.

I work with people struggling to resolve feelings of anxiety or sadness, or those who find that relationship challenges seem to keep repeating themselves. Together we embark on a journey of discovery to identify and understand the patterns operating below awareness that inform expectations, and color perceptions. Whether working with adults, adolescents, couples or caregivers, I believe therapy should be an engaging and dynamic process where all thoughts and feelings are welcomed. Healing occurs when we allow ourselves the freedom to express the scope of our emotions, and my sessions are as likely to include laughter as tears.

Feeling overwhelmed, difficulty making decisions? Sadness or anxiety ruling your life? Relationship struggles - with your partner or family? Traumatic memories keeping you stuck? Separation, divorce or even retirement challenging you to find the 'new normal?' Loss or grief causing a hole in your heart? Sometimes everything we know just isn't enough - perhaps psychotherapy can help. Learn new skills, insights and perceptions; navigate through the angst while strengthening your inner resilience.

Hello there! My name is Jennifer Smith Sims. I am licensed Mental Health Counselor (LPC) and the Owner/Founder of LifeSpark Counseling and Coaching.I have over sixteen years of experience in the field and I have a solid foundation in utilizing techniques from Cognitive Behavioral therapy, Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Solution focused therapy. I also have a strong Christian faith and am very passionate about providing faith based counseling to those individuals that want to incorporate their faith into our sessions.

My style is interactive, behavioral, and usually short-term. I'm curious about where and how clients get stuck in running their lives, solving their own problems. I focus on helping clients break dysfunctional patterns, take acceptable risks, and approach problems in a more flexible way. There's homework and new behaviors to try during the week. I have written 13 books on couple & family therapy, anxiety, depression & anger, brief therapy, clinical supervision, as well as over 300 articles. I write an online column for Psychology Today entitled Fixing Families and have provided trainings nationally.

"I hope you are blessed with a heart like a wildflower. Strong enough to rise again after being trampled upon, tough enough to weather the worst of summer storms, and able to grow and flourish even in the most broken places." -Nikita Gill The impact of trauma, anxiety, or depression in your life can lead you to feel isolated, stuck, or disempowered. As a licensed counselor, I believe that no one should have to manage those feelings on their own. Through developing a strong therapeutic alliance, I assist my clients with identifying their goals for themselves and walk alongside them on their journey towards growth and healing.

I’m so glad you’ve taken this step to prioritize your mental health. You deserve a responsive, well-trained, and caring therapist. At Wellness Path Therapy, my primary goal is to work with my clients to effectively meet their needs. I use "treatments that work" while helping clients to pursue their values. I also believe in the power of human connection, hope, and resilience.

Your decision to start counseling represents a meaningful commitment to yourself, and to a life that is more satisfying and balanced. The clients I work with appreciate my focused, sensitive and caring approach to the issues they present for counseling. If you are dealing with anxiety, depression, grief, stress, or relationship issues, I will work with you to develop strategies that will help you improve self-esteem and self-confidence, enhance self-awareness and relationship skills, reduce worry and negative thinking, and improve mood and energy.

I focus on individual Trauma, Couples, and Family. With years of family and individual work I've developed a flexible ability to meet adult and teen needs from parenting, marital, and developmental trauma and transitions of life. My work is informed by an attachment approach where I seek to create safety with you to untie negative relational patterns and move into greater awareness and courage. To assist my clients with underlying issues of trauma, my training in AEDP, EMDR and somatic approaches are well suited. I also use Ketamine Assisted Therapy in my office to break through old, unconscious patterns.

Finding a therapist who you feel comfortable with and supported by is key to any successful therapy. I work to develop a strong, trusting relationship with every client and design a treatment that is tailored to your needs. I enjoy working with a wide range of people struggling with many different issues, including relationship problems, anxiety, depression, grief, reactions to trauma, and child and adolescent problems, among other difficulties.