Barbara Lanz, LMHC

I am committed to helping you find your way through the valleys of life. I work with anxiety and depression which seem to be acceptable diagnoses to have these days. If you don't want to be on medication the rest of your life, then lets figure out where you learned these survival skills and how they got stuck in your body. I also work with events that were disturbing to you but you might not want to call them traumas. Others have had much worse...I hear often. But its YOU they happened to, or you witnessed, or no matter how hard to try and push it down, it just keeps coming up and so you guard yourself so that you don't have those moments where you 'lose it'.....whatever that looks like in your life.

I grew up in a Christian home, and everything was perfect, until my life started unraveling after a divorce in my early 20’s, leaving me a single parent with little support. Then followed a severe car accident, followed by another marriage and subsequent treatment for addiction. I spent 30 years working as a nurse and many hours in therapy. It was this that led me to return to school and get my Bachelors in Social Work, and then my Master of Arts in Counseling. It saved my life. It led me to specialize in working with domestic violence, addiction, codependency, and the many losses life brings. I work with trauma, but many times trauma is not recognized because life appears so perfect on the outside. So, then it becomes ‘what’s wrong with me’, the essence of toxic shame.

I describe the way I work the same way one of my favorite therapists said to me many years ago. Walking in the desert alone is pretty difficult. I want to offer to walk beside you. I won’t pull you and I won’t push you. When you’re tired, we’ll rest. When you get scared, I’ll stand with you. When you’re sad, I’ll sit in it with you. And together we will reach the other side.” Those words still bring tears to my eyes, because it meant so much to me at the time and the pickle my life was in right then.

I define progress this way. Any step is progress. If all you can do is show up, I’ll take it.
Homework--I offer a lot of resources to my clients, but you are the expert in your life. You have a wise self, and you will find your way to connect to yourself.

So, if you’re ready to work, give me a call. Because I was a working mom, and impossible as a nurse to get off work, I offer some weekend hours. They are limited, and there is a waiting list for evenings and weekends. Please let me know if at all possible if you can't make it.