Kaley Chiles LPC, LAC

Addiction is not just about a substance or activity, but an entire process itself. Addiction as the opposite of connection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs My goal is to walk alongside clients to discover WHY, HOW, WHAT, WHERE and WHEN they are using (most people have a very surface understanding), what was the set up, and to get curious about what alternatives there might be. Oftentimes, there is treasure hidden beneath the behavior that is part of the keys to freedom.

Relationships often give meaning to life and make life worth living. The quality of our relationships is often synonymous with our perceived quality of life. Understanding attachment to God, to self and to others helps us live more fully satisfying lives. Being truly known and truly loved is the dream, but relationships can feel like a nightmare or maybe even ground hog day. I help people become more self-aware and break down the invisible walls that prevent them from connecting with others.

I offer Christian counseling upon request for those who see their faith as either a struggle or an obstacle to healing and wholeness. I also love to see families, including those of different faiths, and help close disconnectedness through facing conflicts that may have been avoided for a variety of reasons.

Many of us struggle with a disconnect between our head and heart so to speak. This often manifests as a disconnection from our body, which leaves us without helpful data. Somatic work can help us increase our awareness of the feedback from our body so that we can begin interpreting that data and make the connection between head and heart, leading to more integration as a whole person.

One common distinctive of trauma is fragmentation. It leaves us disconnected, often from parts of our body, a sense of hope and purpose, making sense of what happened to us and how we responded. Regular talk therapy fails because during a traumatic event, parts of our brain literally go off line, like those associated with language and regulation. So when we try to just talk ourselves back into sanity and regulation, it doesn't work. Let's talk together about what does.

Attachment theory has one of the most robust research bases in all of psychology, which provides us with an understanding of what secure attachment is and how we adapt into ways of staying connected to imperfect people that made sense at the time but may no longer, given that we've grown up and our environment has changed. Making these changes isn't as intuitive as you might think, but attachment theory guides us so that we can work smarter and not just harder.