Carolyn Welch, LCSW

Is your teenager out of control? Is he violent? Is she failing at school? Does he worry you with his dark moods or statements of hopelessness? I can help.

Or are you facing a new stage in life? Are you a new parent, or adjusting to an empty nest, or dealing with an aging parent? I can help.

My training, my personal journey and my nearly 20 years of professional experience have led me to these specialties.

The reasons that clients have sought my services have ranged from school performance to grief and loss. Specific areas of clinical diagnoses that I’ve addressed include anxiety, depression, substance abuse and trauma. I am certified in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a modality developed at the University of Washington to help clients learn to check in with themselves, to separate their feelings from their actions, to realistically evaluate the scope of their distress, and ultimately, to regulate their behavior. The emphasis in appropriately applied DBT is always on the first element, otherwise known as mindfulness, and reinforcing the idea that the client is always responsible for his or her behavior. Further, according to DBT, it is possible for individuals to acknowledge stressful situations, but not to lose control. That is the dialectical, or seemingly contradictory, piece of DBT.

For years psychotherapy has been referred to as the talking cure. However, I believe the work is more about listening. Today’s culture and today’s families are rife with oppositional talking. Resolution lies, I believe, in better listening. I work in the space clients allow me to share with them, listening for beliefs, feelings, and information that may have been unheard to date. My job, I believe, is to reframe what I hear in a way that clients find helpful, or at least tolerable, so that they can begin to live more peacefully.

Further, I like to teach my clients to listen to themselves and their own precious wisdom, whether or not they have ever done so before. ­­­­I also teach them to actively listen to their families, friends and associates.

I am troubled by today’s pursuit of information bytes. I believe we have traded the wisdom and knowledge gleaned from close contact and trusting relationships for Web MD, Twitter and Instagram. We teach our children that it is desirable to answer first, rather than to contemplate and to find deep curiosity about what is being said or implied. Again, I believe my job is to ask questions heretofore unasked, and to teach my clients to do likewise.