Moving forward with your life invites the decision to look forward. Choosing counseling is proof… you are taking the steps. Solution Focused therapy looks at the past with a view to the future.
When it comes to life's challenges:
Solution Focused Therapy starts with defining the problem then looks at the exceptions to the problem - "when is the problem not a problem?" It takes a next step- a focus on the goals you can set to create an environment that incorporates those exceptions in your future. What has worked, or might work, so that you could wake up tomorrow, and the problem would be better, or even solved? Change is always happening, and small changes lead to greater changes. If a miracle happened, and the problem was solved, what would your life be like?
Through constructive support, helping you create an action plan, feedback, and compliments on your progress, solution-focused therapy gets positive results!
The Unconditional Love and Forgiveness Process is a step-by-step "recipe" based on the work of Dr. Edith Stauffer. She applied the ancient writings of the Essenes, who prioritized harmony, and Dr. Roberto Assagioli, a transpersonal psychologist in a gestalt method that allows you to move through your resentments to freedom and peace. Within this process, forgiveness is to cancel any expectation, condition; or demand that I am holding in my mind that prevents the free extension of unconditional love and forgiveness between myself and another being.
Who do you need to forgive? Wendi assists you to forgive others with insight, supportive understanding, and lighthearted warmth. There is also a sequence for self-forgiveness, which offers compassion and acceptance for any and all things you may be holding against yourself. Nothing is too shameful to be forgiven.
Wendi was certified in Unconditional Love and Forgiveness through spiritual director, writer, and consultant Mary Hayes Grieco. Visit Mary's website for her books and more on the Unconditional Love and Forgiveness Process.
"Doing the same thing over and over and expecting differ¬ent results" is a matter of the brain and body having been "highjacked" by a substance or behavioral addiction. Alcohol, illegal and prescription drugs, sugar and processed foods, unhealthy relationships, pornography, workaholism, gambling, self-abuse, and any repetitive pattern bring pain and chaos.. Wendi specializes in disrupting these addictions to create wholeness and health.
Wendi will assist you to gain insight into the nature of addiction to alcohol, drugs, destructive relationships, food, work, or whatever has you "hooked". Transform your life and your brain with support for truly nurturing nutrition, relationships, empowerment, and self-care.
Loss, abuse, accidents, and life threatening events call for an understanding of how we cope with that which is overwhelming. Through Imagery Rescripting and Reprocessing, we create empowerment over feelings of loss of control or helplessness, and new images to soothe help you move forward. Release resentments and limitations with Unconditional Love and Forgiveness, a recipe for letting go of expectations. Give yourself the gift of peace.
The word "trauma" has been used in everyday language to mean a highly stressful event. A traumatic event refers to extreme stress that overwhelms a person's ability to cope. What is stressful to one person may not be to another. Traumatic events can include physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, accidents, threats to one's life, or significant losses (such as divorce or unemployment).
The impact of traumatic stress can extend far beyond the event. Nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts or images can reoccur for years. Emotional reactions of wanting to "fight, flee, or freeze" can be triggered as you encounter daily stressors. Wanting to numb or escape the feelings can give rise to eating disorders, alcohol or drug abuse, sleep disorders, self-mutilation, and relationship difficulties. Often, these related conditions are thought to be the problem, instead of the underlying trauma issues. Untreated past wounds, if not revisited to be fully healed, may prevent you from having an emotionally healthy future.
One process that has had proven success for resolving trauma issues is Imagery Rescripting and Reprocessing Therapy (IRRT). IRRT is a therapy method that carefully revisits the traumatic events of the past to bring healing and restoration through the re-writing of those events in light of a present understanding. The process involves:
Accessing the painful feelings and then "scripting" a different outcome provides options for different thoughts and actions. It can transform retraumatizing flashbacks into non-threatening memories. After this process, one will remember the event, but usually without the negative emotions and fight, flight, or freeze reactions. This opens the way for grounding, owning your voice and actions now, and creative, centered choices.
Wendi has a Certificate in Trauma Counseling through the UW-Milwaukee, and has had training and supervision with the psychologist who developed IRRT. She invests in conferences and education to remain current and further her understanding and professional skills in trauma counseling.
Wendi experienced a healing connection to horses since she was a child, and grew to love horses for their unconditional acceptance, beauty, gentleness, and power. Wendi took Greg Kersten's Faith-Based Applications for Equine-Assisted Programs and Practices Seminar in 2011. This seminar addressed the unique needs of equine-assisted practitioners who implement faith in their work with people and horses. The equine-assisted philosophy and faith-based exercises make the natural connection between herd behavior and human wellness. For information about EAP seminars with Greg Kersten, visit www.okcorralseries.com
Visions Counseling offers equine assisted psychotherapy to individuals, families, and groups, either as the primary choice for sessions, or to compliment your sessions in the office. Her Quarter horse, Blue, and miniature donkey, Harmony, assist you to "ground and conquer."
EAP differs from the practices used by commonly known physical therapeutic riding programs in that there is a focus on emotional and psychological processing of the interaction with the horse. We do an activity, on the ground, with our "herd," and then we discuss what happened during that time, and how to apply the lessons learned to your life after the session. Sometimes there are intense emotions and deep processing, other times, "We have fun, therapy happens."
Wendi is open about her path of discovery and empowerment, from her eating disorder, depression, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and adult child of an alcoholic, dysfunctional family. Becoming a mental health or substance abuse professional is often an avenue of healing and transformation for individuals who have had these and other issues, as was true for Wendi. "Wounded healers" benefit from continued support. Wendi invites counselors, clinicians, professionals, and therapists to open to receiving this valuable connection for personal and professional growth.
Wendi welcomes you to experience the variety of holistic, nontraditional, and experiential modalities offered through Visions Counseling. Personalize your time in sessions to get solution-focused brief therapy and resolve issues in a targeted manner.
Services for professionals can also be educationally-oriented, such as learning more about Nutrition, Exercise, and Sleep for Well-briety or Overcoming Depression and Anxiety through natural means. Wendi has presented a four day Movement Therapy course at the National Rural Institute for Alcohol Abuse. It is an excellent body-centered recovery experience for professionals.
At Visions Counseling, we embrace the value and potential of the whole person, body-mind-emotion-spirit, and recognize that each impacts the other on every level of being.
The individual cells of the body form the whole human being. On a cellular level, we are aware that choices for nutrition, supplements, exercise, and sleep impact the structure and function of the brain. Wendi has learned from resources such as The Chemistry of Joy, and The Chemistry of Calm, by author Henry Emmons. She references Prescription for Nutritional Healing, by Phyllis A. Balch, and Nutrition for Recovery by Joseph D. Beasley and Susan Knightly, among many others.
Wendi also gleans wisdom from the Ayurvedic perspectives of balance, including body type assessments and learning to eat according to the seasons to pacify your body type. Chronobiotic nutrition, eating from the top of the tree down, is a plan we introduce to enhance digestion, assimilation, and elimination. These practices facilitate a foundation for health.
Neurons, dendrites, and axons, the basic communication channels of the brain, are physically and biochemically wired by our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. We are sparked to action or interrupted by non-action. The cognitive-behavioral solution-focused brief therapy provided by Wendi offers insight. Recognize the messages you interpret as truth, discern if it really is the truth, and make conscious choices to rewire your brain (and behavioral) responses.
Wendi gathers from scientific approaches as well as psychological, mindfulness affirmations, and Biblical inspirational inputs for recovery, body/ brain health, and transformational thinking.
Emotions are not good or bad, they are simply, or complexly, messages that inform us of our inner reactions to any given situation, person, or thing. Allowing emotions to surface in the safe space of a session can offer moments of understanding that make a lifetime of difference.
Conditioned tendencies, defenses, patterned that are destructive, addictions, mental illness, and personality disorders may be linked to underlying or buried emotions. Wendi accesses the wisdom of body-centered therapist Christine Caldwell in her book Getting Our Bodies Back for a comprehensive understanding of emotional reactions. The Addictive Spiral begins with intolerable feelings of pain or pleasure, and latches on to control. Control leads to rejection of oneself and the real world, and being out of step with time. This only leads to further intolerable experiences. The awareness, owning, acceptance, and action sequence of the Movement Cycle is process-oriented. It counters family agendas and rules to uncover new material, new mysteries about ourselves. We seek ever higher states of consciousness, as a spiritual journey.
God is love, and each choice made from love has a healing effect.
As a counselor who is a Christian, Wendi offers the opportunity to include Biblical principles and Christ-centered grace. Visions Counseling and the solution-focused approach is inclusive and offers services to those of all faiths, agnostics, and atheists. On her personal path, Wendi was baptized Catholic and raised in a Lutheran grade school. She is a member of Northwoods Vineyard Church in Tomahawk, has begun Restoring the Foundations work at Prince of Peace Church, and attends a healing Mass.
Visions Counseling offers educational and therapeutic groups structured along a central theme. Groups are designed to help you develop specific skills, understand certain concepts, or progress through challenging life transitions. You will increase your awareness of a certain life problem, learn tools to cope, strengthen the ability to apply what you learn. Examples of such groups include the 16 Step Empowerment, Overcoming Depression, and Living Sugar and/or Gluten-Free.
Visions Counseling offers individual, family, couples, and group counseling and therapy.
Counseling focuses on growth, development, enhancement, prevention, self-awareness, and releasing blocks to growth.
Therapy focuses on issues such as remediation, treatment, and personality reconstruction. Therapy is a process of re-education that includes both conscious and unconscious awareness of both the present and the past. The purpose of therapy is to assist you in developing a correct emotional experience, and in making new decisions about the world, others, and yourself.