Dr. Heather Bryant

LPC

I have been a counselor for about 20 years and helped people struggle with life's challenges. When my son was born - my husband experienced an episode of psychosis and was diagnosed with a severe mental illness. There is a lot more to the story, but over the next 4-5 years I spent a LOT of time cycling through various stages of growth and having the rug pulled out from under me. I came to a point where I stopped grappling for something to hold on to and instead leaned into myself. When I truly reconnected with myself, I found my way out of that cycle. Once we stabilized, I reopened my counseling practice - and expanded to offer life coaching. I leaned into my passion of helping others find and EMBRACE who they are, strengthening skills to step forward into their journey and authentic presence. Things happen, life will throw curveballs - I want to use my experience and lessons learned to give value and insight to others to help increase their resilience.

I have a strong commitment to family and value my roles as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend. I identify as Christian and have learned through many transitional phases of my own the importance of faith; and how even doubts can bolster confidence in faith. With an innate love of animals and fondness for felines, cats have adopted me, and I've given them life-long homes. As a mental health advocate, I will go above and beyond to help my friends, family, or clients. If I cannot, I put the same effort into finding the resources and support needed. I am is a crafter and enjoy exploring crafts with unique appearances, mediums, and geeky themes. When time allows, I enjoy playing games and visiting friends in virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft and Animal Crossing. Friends know me to be caring and genuine; what you see is what you get. I am a foodie with a love language in memes. My research focuses on virtual settings and the development of life skills and relationships within virtual venues. The influence my personality has on my therapeutic approach has been that I am an outside-the-box therapist. I like to be creative, and mix and match techniques in ways that are most applicable and effective for each client. I am by nature quite open and accepting, and this translates to my practice as a therapist as well. It is easy to welcome clients into the therapeutic space because I genuinely care and am sincerely in it for my clients and to be helpful. My clients are the heart and soul of what I do. It is a great privilege to walk beside clients and support them in their journey. Without them, I would not be able to do what I do; they are part of my journey too.

I"m going to answer three questions in one. I had a client who was surprised and exclaimed how fun therapy was, and how she wished she'd come sooner - and I think that is a big barrier to people coming, they don't know what to expect. In the first session with me, I like to spend time getting to know each other. It is literally just chatting, interests and hobbies, life experiences, what is going on right now that brought you to counseling, and I answer any questions that you have. If we can set goals that day then great - if not we can initiate that to think on for the next session. That first session is about getting to know you and letting you get to know more about the therapeutic process. When we set goals, I like to be very specific. I ask questions such as, what would it be like if you did meet this goal? How would you know that you were making progress toward this goal? What differences might you notice? This allows us to get a solid idea of the goal, and things that signal progress - all unique and specific to the client. Once we identify the goal and how we'll know we're on track, it's like a road map for us and we set up where you feel that you are right now, and where you'd like to be by the end of a certain length of time. Each session we'll do a check-in to see how it's going and if we're on track. There's no pressure, it's a plan to follow and we can always change it up, add another goal, pause a goal, or change a timeline, the overall goal is to make sure that you are achieving the results that you want from your sessions. If not, we shift gears to better reach those results.