Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because you words become your behaviors.
Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
(Gandhi)
Peggy has a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology, a Master’s Degree in Professional Counseling and an LPC designation under Missouri certificate/license.
She specializes in relationship counseling; premarital counseling , marital counseling , and individual counseling. All relationships and individuals possess the resources and the potential for resilience... the ability to withstand and bounce back from a crisis or adversity. Peggy believes that people already have within them the knowledge, inner resources, and life experiences they need to find the solution or "right way." Her role is to help them recognize their inner resources and apply them in their life and relationships. Therapy-outcome studies show that a person's motivation is a major factor in whether he or she gets better. Peggy assumes all her clients are motivated by the simple act they walked into her office. The essential core of counseling for change must target the heart... for the heart is the "real" you. Change that ignores the heart will seldom transform your life.
Peggy is a solution-focused and action oriented with the goal to "get rid of her clients" knowing they have the inner resources to go at it alone. As a Solution-Focused therapist she focuses on the clients strengths and resources to have the prefered future they desire from therapy. She is not ignoring the problem, but asking three basic questions: 1. What do you want? 2. What does it look like? 3. What difference does it make to you? Peggy believes her clients have the answers to these questions. She works very collaboratively with them in guiding them toward that end.
NO ONE HAS ENOUGH INFORMATION TO BE A PESSIMIST.
The client must feel the therapeutic relationship is a good fit. Clients need to trust in Peggy and the process, feel heard, understood, respected, and that the therapy being offered makes sense to them. In other words, does the type, level, or amount of intervention feel right? Do the suggestions or modifications made by the therapist in response to feedback make a difference in the client's experience? If so, is the client/relationship improving and moving toward their prefered future?
Peggy enjoys private practice and marriage therapy.
"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." -St. Francis of Assisi
Her qualifications include:
- Certified Grief Recovery Specialist, trained and certified by the Grief Recovery Institute.
- Completed training and examinations required to become a Qualified Administrator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Instrument.
- As a strong advocate of premarital counseling/education, Peggy is trained as a facilitator for premarital couples in administering the FOCCUS Inventory (Facilitating Open Couple Communication, Understanding and Study). FOCCUS is a self diagnostic inventory designed to help couples learn more about themselves and their unique relationship.
Completed Certified Training in:
- The Science of Happiness (Applying Positive Psychology Towards Human Contentment & Thriving)
- Treating Adult Clients of Emotionally Immature Parents
- Working With Infidelity: Online and Offline
- Holistic and Nutritional Approaches to Treating Psychological Disorders
- Neuroscience & Healing
- Post-Traumatic Growth: Beyond Survival and Recovery
- When Sex is a Chore and Non-Orgasmic
- Couples Sexuality After 60
- Counseling Older Adults
- Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage - Mark Gungor
- Holistic Psychotherapy: Treating the Whole Person
- Healing from Infidelity
- The Psychology of Relationships: Promoting Intimacy with Couples and Children
- Cybersex and Internet Sex Addiction
- The Transformational Effect of Movies in Positive Psychology
- Changing How We Feel by Changing How We Think
- Couples Therapy: Counterintuitive Approaches to Working More Effectively
- Health-Related Benefits of Humor and Laughter
- Post Traumatic Growth: From Devastation to Hope
- Understanding the Gut-Brain
- Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Tapping: Evidence-Based Mind-Body Treatment
- Suicide Assessment, Treatment, and Management
- The Pathology of Perfectionism
- Relate: The New Intimacy Therapy Training
- New Ways to Work with Last Chance Couples: A Master Class
- Redeeming Sexuality and Intimacy: Hope and Healing For Relationships
- Happiness: Clinical Tools from Positive Psychology
- Solution Focused Therapy for Couples
- Calming an Overactive Brain
- Reasoning With Unreasonable People: Focus on Disorders of Emotional Regulation
- The Blueprint to Help Couples Survive Infidelity: Clinical Strategies for Repairing Broken Trust
- Grief Recovery Method Program, certified by the Grief Recovery Institute
- Out of the Blue: Six Non-Medication Ways to Relieving Depression
- Addiction: Building a Recovery-Oriented System of Care
- Better Sleep, Better Memory
- New Brain Science Series: National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavior Medicine
- EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Professional Skills 1
- Couples in Crisis - Strategies for High-Conflict Relationships
- Sexual Addiction 101
- Mending Shattered Hearts: Helping Families Heal From Sex Addiction
- Psychology, Spirituality and Money
- Cultivating Connection in Emotionally Distressed Couples
- Advanced Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness, Meditation, & Cutting-Edge Neuroscience in the Treatment of Anxiety, Anger & Depression
- Therapy Boot Camp: Brief Treatment of Couples and Families
- Anxiety Treatment: Techniques that Really Work
- On Death and Grieving
- Beyond Compliments: Using Solution Focused Therapy Everyday
- Restoring & Revitalizing Marital Sexuality
- Helping Adult Clients Grow Up
- The Tranquil Brain
- The Immune System: The Mind-Body Connection - Who Gets Sick and Who Stays Well
- Group Counseling and Psychotherapy
- Interventions for Sexual Issues in Therapy
- Advanced Divorce Busting: Putting "Marriage" Back Into Marriage Therapy
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: The Basics of Helping People Get Better
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Mindfulness
- Anger, Forgiveness and the Healing Process
- Couples and Affairs: Managing the Clinical Challenges
- Happiness: How Positive Psychology Changes Our Lives
- Keeping Love Alive
- Couple & Marital Therapy - Assessment Interventions & Relapse Prevention Strategies
- Pathways to Possibilities with Difficult Cases
- New Approaches in Understanding, Assessing, and Treating Persons who Self-Harm
In addition, Peggy advances the awareness of hormonal connections in the balance of mind, body and spirit.
Peggy is a member of:
- National Board of Certified Counselors
- Missouri Mental Health Counselors Association
- The American Mental Health Counselors Association
There is no losing. You either win or learn.
"Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we choose to react to it." - Chuck Swindoll 
