Elizabeth Ormes, LCPC

I have over twenty years of experience counseling individuals and working with parents, children, and families learn to adjust to significant life changes, successfully navigate crisis points, and reduce the stress in their lives.

2025 has proven to be a momentous year for change and opportunities for growth in new and unexpected ways for myself professionally. I launched my own practice and am invigorated by the new challenges before me. I am excited to help new clients achieve the healing and growth they are looking for in their lives. Establishing my own practice has enabled me to take my work in new directions to meet the needs of my clients. It has meant exploring and defining a "client focus area" for myself. My work previously, for Agency service programs, meant that any one who met the criteria for client, a person with disability, Veteran, or involved in the child welfare system, etc. would meet with me to work on managing their emotional health needs while accomplishing a task like changing their parenting behavior with their children. I still believe in serving others, and want to support those that are seeking to work on improving an aspect of themselves. My counseling approach is rooted in my strong beliefs in the ideals from feminist theory, the advocacy and civil rights movements, and guided by clinical, developmental, and social psychological theory. Thus "my client focus" is women's mental health issues and relational issues of parent and child or within families.
As I have come to realize on a personal level it is always better to move forward with purpose and intention, rather than holding on to something that is no longer meeting your needs. If you've decided that now is the time to make changes. If you're no longer willing to accept parts of yourself holding you back from becoming the person you know you can be. If you know that you need the support of professional counseling. If you're ready to manage fear, anxiety, depression in healthy ways. If you're ready to process the past and move forward. Then I know I can help you find the path to your best self, to live fully present in the moment. As we work together along your journey you will discover new perspectives on the challenges you've survived from your past. You'll practice techniques of being fully present, living in the here and now, to accept and appreciate yourself. While also motivating and moving toward the positive vision you establish for yourself.
If we are working on parent and child dynamics the focus will be on not getting caught up in limiting beliefs that disrupt the parent and child relationship. Parents who seek out counseling, recognizing that there are difficulties that they need help to work on already are on the right path. Often the role of counselor is to be a bridge to help the parent and child work through blocks in communication. Many parents some times struggle because when stress or crisis points happen they use the parenting skills that their parents used, even if those models didn't quite work at best, or at worst were neglectful or abusive. In the family or parent and child counseling sessions the work will bring honest reflection so that you and your child will discuss fears for the future, repair mistakes of the past, and recognize that neither of you can control the actions of the other. Instead you will both learn to support each other appropriately, with you each fully embracing the right roles, parent as parent and child as child.
While I believe that there is a lot of learning and work that needs to be done in counseling, it shouldn't be a boring process. In fact finding opportunities to embrace laughter, joy, and fun is just as important in a healthy counseling process as other parts. My approach which involves the use of games, crafts/art, reading, body work, and spending time in nature is not what works for everyone. I am not going to have you laying down on a couch while you spend hour after hour telling me the same story over and over while we dissect it. It is important to me that you enjoy the process of counseling so your feedback on activities will shape future sessions as we figure out what resonates with you.
As most people seek counseling when the crisis or stress gets to be overwhelming it is likely that you'll want to start feeling some relief quickly. The initial intake assessment is a longer session, usually 90 minutes so we can go through all of the preliminary intake documents and establish a treatment plan. We will discuss your vision, goals, intermediate objectives, the action steps, a timeline, techniques and you'll have a treatment plan to know how we are going to approach working together. We will review the plan and check in on progress regularly in sessions. Monitoring change over time is a crucial part of the process as many people get process blind to the progress they make.