Kathleen S. Hoagland LPC, CAADC

My name is Kathleen Hoagland, and I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with sixteen years of experience in the treatment of mental health and substance use disorders. I welcome people from all backgrounds and beliefs into my practice. The tools, techniques, and interventions I use depend on who you are, your beliefs, background, goals, and presenting issues. Therapy looks different for everyone. The one constant for everyone entering in my practice is that you will be treated with respect, kindness, and unconditional positive regard. My specialty is in the treatment of trauma, and I usually begin by helping people understand that untreated trauma can look like a lot of different things. Poor sleep, anxiety, panic attacks, depression and sadness, avoiding people, places and things, and problems with substances and addictive behaviors. A persistent feeling that something bad is going to happen or that other shoe is going to drop. Feeling completely disconnected from your emotions, your physical body, or just not really knowing who you are or what you want. Trauma can be the result of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, and it can also be caused by not feeling loved or supported by your parents, feeling responsible for our parent's happiness or wellbeing, seeing or hearing parents argue, growing up in strict religious upbringings, loss of the ability to play a sport you love, experiencing a medical condition that results in significant shifts in our wellbeing or lifestyle, witnessing a loved one's medical illness, grief and loss, divorce, infidelity, or working in a profession that involves witnessing pain and loss and grief or extreme stress. The list goes on and on. We all learn very unique ways of coping with trauma -- these are survival skills. Survival skills helped us continue to live and function in the world, but often times these survival skills can lead to unhealthy and unhelpful patterns that prevent us from being the person we really want to be and interacting with others the way we really want to interact. This is where therapy comes in. Learning how to acknowledge how critical these behaviors were to our survival, developing self compassion, and beginning to identify better ways to cope with life so we can ultimately discover who we really are, what we want to become, and experience genuine happiness, joy, purpose, and fulfillment.