Our Services.....

Children's Therapy

children's therapy

We believe that childhood should be a time for healthy growth and development with a happy family. For many children and teens, it is a time of great emotional stress. Children react to stress in many ways including withdrawal and acting out behaviors at home and school. Parents and school personnel want to help children become happy, loving adults, however in today’s society this can be a difficult goal. Our philosophy is to help children and families learn the life skills necessary to be successful.

Family Therapy

family therapy

Family counseling may help to promote better relationships and understanding within a family. It may be incident specific, as for example family counseling during a divorce, or a child experiencing trauma. Alternately family counseling may address the needs of the family when one family member suffers from a mental or physical illness that alters his or her behavior or habits in negative ways. The therapist often helps the family reflect on better ways of communicating with each other and because of that family counseling may in part be instruction and encouragement. In fact, family counseling often teaches family members new and more positive ways to communicate to replace old, negative communication patterns.

 

Marriage Therapy

married therapy

Marriage counseling seeks to identify areas of conflict and communication in a marriage and facilitate healthy ways of resolving them. If problems in a marriage aren’t identified or dealt with in a timely manner, they can grow out of control and bring devastation and possibly an end to the marriage. There is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Marriage counseling helps a marriage weather the storms and rebound stronger as a result of the counseling. Counseling helps a couple focus on their problems in a marriage and resolves them. Most problems include poor communication, a lack of intimacy, anger or nagging.

Individual Adult Therapy

adult therapy

Individual psychotherapy for adults offers a compassionate approach to therapy, which encourages clients to explore how limiting beliefs and trauma are held in the body—often below the level of conscious awareness. Specialties include trauma and PTSD; chronic illness including fibromyalgia, IBS, Lupus, insomnia, chronic fatigue and cancer.  Other issues addressed include grief and loss; emotional struggles such as shame, depression, anger and anxiety, and relationship problems.  Counselors have extensive post- graduate training in Self Regulation Therapy, a gentle approach that enables the nervous system to integrate overwhelming events and bring balance to the nervous system. Additionally they are trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

 

The Center and the NMT Model

By admin | September 13, 2023

Deborah Pettitt, the director of the Center has been certified in Phase I and Phase II of Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neuro-sequential Model of Therapeutics. Dr. Bruce D. Perry is a prominent psychiatrist and neuroscientist known for his work in the field of childhood trauma and its impact on brain development and mental health. He is…

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Object Permanence and Constancy

By Deborah Pettitt | August 2, 2023

I recently took my 91 year old father who suffers from dementia to a restaurant. I gently guided him with his walker to a table and left him there as I went to order the food in a long cafeteria style line. I made sure that he could see me in line and every few…

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Summer Break

By Deborah Pettitt | May 24, 2023

Introduction: The summer break exciting for children, they are looking forward to a free and fun time.  However, without a sense of structure, children may find themselves with nothing to do or fall into bad habits. It is crucial to provide them with a well-defined routine that balances fun activities with enriching experiences. I thought…

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Check ups are always healthy

By admin | April 7, 2023

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a check up on your marriage where you learn ways to  make it stronger and more fulfilling? Gottman Risk Assessment The Gottman Marriage Risk Assessment Checkup is a research-based assessment tool developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, leading researchers in the field of marriage and relationships. It is…

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Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

By Deborah Pettitt | February 27, 2023

We at Family Christian Counseling Center specialize in treating trauma in children, teens and adults. Our therapists have been trained in several treatment models. One such model is Sensorimotor Psychotherapy that integrates somatic (body-based) and cognitive techniques to help people resolve traumatic experiences and other psychological symptoms. This therapy is based on the knowledge that…

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Dr. Perry’s Model

By Deborah Pettitt | January 16, 2023

I thought this month I would share with you a positive story from Dr. Perry’s model (Neuro-sequential Model of Therapeutics) for children who have experienced trauma. “As an adoptive mom and child welfare professional, I have seen firsthand the incredible power of Dr. Bruce Perry’s groundbreaking insight into trauma treatment. On a stifling hot June…

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Christmas Quotes

By admin | December 28, 2022

I thought this year for Christmas I would share with you some of my favorite quotes for the holidays: …and I could not resist a few of my favorite humorous ones: We at Family Christian Counseling Center do wish that the joy that filled the world when Jesus was born be found in your home…

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Regulate, Relate and Reason

By Deborah Pettitt | November 27, 2022

I just got done rereading Dr Perry’s thoughts on working with traumatized children using the “regulate, relate, and reason” sequence from his Neurosequential model of therapeutics and I thought it would be good to review this month. Step 1: Regulate. Since it is basically impossible to do any work with traumatized children when they are…

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