Matthew Clausen MFTC, LPCC, MA

No parent is perfect, and that is okay. We work towards Good Enough parenting -- parenting that helps children explore the world in a productive way and supports them when they come back to to their secure base. In parenting counseling, we work through the "me" issues that interrupt our Good Enough parenting and practice the fundamentals of attachment science that empower children to grow into effective, satisfied adults.

Each of us is born predisposed to search for and attach to family. And the depth of these relationships sometimes create the deepest feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. Together, we work in family therapy towards secure, effective, accepting relationships. We work to move forward together, overcoming negative emotions, memories, and thoughts associated with the past in order to create for ourselves a better, healthier future as best we can.

Relationships are both essential to our health and one of the biggest stressors in our lives. We work together to name the values that you each hold in the relationship. We also find the patterns that interfere with living out those values and having a fulfilling experience together. By practicing emotional attunement, specific relationship and communication skills, and personal caretaking, we become healthier partners with more successful relationships.

I believe Couples Counseling can be one of the most successful paths to personal growth and satisfaction. I work with people in their relationships to find their core motivations and values and build skills that help them relate with their partners from positions of security, respect, trust, care, intimacy and wonderment.

As one of the most evidence-based bodies of work within the psychological fields, attachment science crosses over traditional counseling modalities and builds a common ground for how we build, maintain, and distance ourselves in myriad relationships. I use Attachment Theory to help clients increase their emotional and cognitive security as individuals as well as increase their ability to form secure relationships with others.

I often work within the seven main areas of ACT for empowering clients on their journey towards life change, though I work with emotional processing as a distinct set of brain pathways that interact with our language systems while being separate from and older than the language systems rather than combined with the traditional ACT model.