Gillian Van Dien

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Wisconsin with over 20 years of experience providing counseling and psychotherapy services in a variety of settings including residential treatment, outpatient psychotherapy, and vocational rehabilitation. I am a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP 1), a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP), and a Certified Telemental Health Professional (CTMH). Everyone has the ability to heal from past injuries, solve psychological problems, and improve their lives so that they are happier, more confident, and better able to achieve their life goals, when they are willing and ready to apply themselves to those tasks. I have worked with a wide range of people of all ages and backgrounds to help them solve the problems that brought them to therapy, learn and practice new skills, new ways of thinking, more effective ways to manage their lives to be more fulfilling, and move toward the goals they set for themselves. People come to therapy for a wide range of reasons; our first task is to identify what you want to change and need assistance with and develop a plan to achieve those goals. Some of the problems I've helped people work through include depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD resulting from a range of experiences (including abuse experienced as a child, domestic violence, and sexual assault), family problems, women's issues generally, various relationship problems, employment problems, and adjusting to many life changes.

A good working relationship is necessary for therapy to be successful. You are the expert on your life; this is your journey. My role is to be a guide, help you find perspective on yourself and your experiences, be a source of support and information, help you learn how to make the changes you wish to see in your life, and how to make those changes happen. I understand the importance of meeting you where you are. Therefore, our first task together is to establish that working relationship. You have to be able to trust your guide to be able to move forward, and that is a process in itself that can't be rushed. Once we've identified your goals, I use a variety of techniques drawn from different schools of psychotherapy to help you reach them. Some of those schools of psychotherapy include polyvagal theory, client-centered, motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, internal family systems (IFS), mindfulness, and solution-focused strategies. It is also important to consider how any physical health conditions and the people and environments you interact with affect you psychologically. It's important to take all of these factors into account to effectively help you heal and grow.

In the first session, I will collect some basic information from you and we will talk about your goals for the therapy process. I encourage you to think about those in advance of the first appointment. Four questions that you can use for that purpose are: 1) What do you want to change about yourself and how would you like your life to be different? 2) What steps are you already taking to move toward your goals? 3) How will you know when you've reached your goal(s)? How will you and your life be different. And 4) What gets in your way, including ways that you may have observed yourself getting stuck?