Katrina Barnes, MA, LMFT

Healthier life through therapy

•  means a balance is most important and present in our relationships.
• Therapy can help by connecting mind, body, spirit and our relationships with others. A change in one area often ties to threads in another.
•  Brokenness in our primary relationships can disconnect family, work, community and culture.
•  Together we can re-weave these threads through our stories about ourselves, and people around us. We can change the next chapter. 

 What we do, who we are and what our relationships mean are all important.

• We need space to be unique and we also need relationships that provide closeness. 
• We sometimes talk about problem-knotted stories of our past.
• We also need to make plans to change and grow.
• It is not about blaming, shaming or controlling those we care about. 

What I can do as a counselor

• be a listener, a curious and caring researcher and co-writer.
• Together we find the strengths, successes and supportive relationships that are often already in place. Together we add to the stories, add supportive people.
• Help carefully understanding and sometimes editing words and actions,
• Describing emotions and what they mean.
• As we grow our life story shifts from seeing only the knots and broken threads to the other side of a greater interwoven tapestry.
• We seek through healing relationships to re-member (connect) our families, faith communities and other societies where positive changes and growth are celebrated. 

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (looks at thinking patterns and positive reinforcements)  
•  Motivational Interviewing (an intense listening process that identifies your own goals and resources to meet them)         
• Bowenian Family Systems (focus on appropriate family roles, boundaries, responding instead of emotional reactions)         
• Solution-Focused (identifies small attainable goals and the strengths that help you reach them)            
• Narrative (integrating your experiences and strengths into a story that helps shift from problems to solutions and developing relationships that will witness the new changes)
• Interpersonal Neurobiology (paying attention to how our relationships influence our brain and vice versa)

Sample Areas of life that we can address: