Ellen Wood

Post Masters Clinician Working Towards Licensure
Supervised by Dr. Lee Kinsey

About Ellen

As part of my training, I worked at a partial hospitalization program where I gained experience working with anxiety, depression, grief, ADHD, and trauma in both individual and group therapy. I have 30 years experience working in client based sales and have raised three sons. The transition into therapy has been comfortable and rewarding, and I feel blessed to begin this chapter in my life. 

I learned the greatest lesson of my graduate school career in the first week of classes when I discovered that being a counselor was not about fixing people. I had all of the right motivations for being there and a burning desire to help others. I imagined that the counselor’s job was about applying my experience, my pain, and my healing to help clients learn from my mistakes - to fix them before they were hurt. I quickly realized the second most important lesson - counselors help clients learn to live with uncomfortable feelings. I came to realize that my life experiences had prepared me to be empathetic and understanding of the importance of being with others, listening, and recognizing how feelings help to reveal what we need or what is missing in our lives.

The decision to return to graduate school after my children were grown had almost everything to do with something I had learned years before. Living a life of purpose is about taking the painful lessons of my life and giving them meaning. Infidelity and divorce changed almost everything about my life. At the worst time, the best plan I could make for myself was to keep moving. What I really needed was a person. Someone who would listen to me, be with me while I cried, understand my pain and not be my mother, my friend, or my sister. I am not even sure I wanted anyone I knew to know what was going on in my life. I could not escape the thoughts, feelings, and fears that kept me awake at night and exhausted me during the day. I felt like a peeling onion. After years of introspection and healing, writing a blog and then a book, I applied to graduate school for a masters degree in mental health and counseling. I wanted the education, the degree, and the license to be the person I needed and could not find. 

The truth is that life is hard, and after Covid, it got even harder. We experience tough things like loneliness, rejection, abandonment, loss, illness, and grief. We struggle with low self-esteem and poor self-image and lack self-compassion when what we really want is acceptance, safety, and to be loved. There is a Japanese word, Kintsugi, which means that when a piece of china breaks, it heals with a gold thread. Every single one of us at one point in our lives will crack. And this is what I learned years before: It is ok to crack. At the moment, you are not going to like it. You may want to hide or deny the crack, because looking at the crack makes you feel broken.  Cracking is how I found myself. I am no longer afraid to feel. Once you see the gold thread you realize what is possible. Healing is possible, growth is possible, self-love is possible, life is possible. The first step is finding a safe space, and talking about the crack. That is what therapy is. 

At Kinsey & Associates I provide individual therapy, using modalities such as person-centered therapy, narrative therapy, ACT, CBT, or DBT, depending on the needs of the client. I see couples who are looking to deepen their sense of connection and understanding of one another for a more fulfilling relationship. I am also offering group therapy sessions on topics of importance that help clients heal through the support of others. 

It is very important to your care that you find someone you can trust with your story. Call me to find out if I am the right fit for you.

Modalities

• Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

• Person Centered Therapy

• Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT)

• Dialectical behavior Therapy (DBT)

• Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Areas of Focus

• Couples/Relationship Therapy

• Infidelity/betrayal recovery

• Divorce

• Women’s issues

• Sex Therapy - eg. vaginismus, low libido