Proudly Serving the Greater Portland Community
Willamette Counseling has been servicing the mental health needs of the greater Portland area for over twenty years. Our associates provide marriage, family, and individual therapy for patients of all ages. Additionally, each of our associates has specialized skills, some of which are listed below. You can select a therapist by clicking the associate’s links to the left.
Specialized Mental Health Services
Emotionally Focusing Therapy
• Mixed Adult Group Therapy
• Women’s Group Therapy
• Life issues relating to aging
• Gay and Lesbian Marriage Counseling
• Eye-Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Play Therapy for Children & Adults
• Hypnosis
• Thought-Field Therapy
• Focus Training
• Art Therapy
• Adolescent Girls’ Groups
• Creativity Revival
• Spirituality Issues
• Family Constellations
Patient Options
Willamette Counseling accepts most insurance and may offer sliding fee scales for those who qualify. Please refer to each associate’s page to review her specialties and available payment options.
Cheri Epstein
Experience
I am registered (ATR) and board-certified (BC) as an art therapist and nationally certified counselor (NCC). For eight years I was a Child and Family Therapist for Unity West in Portland, providing mental health services for children of all ages and their parents.
For the past four years, I have been in private practice treating children, teens, parents, families, and adults. My clients come to me for a wide range of emotional needs including depression, grief, trauma, anxiety, and mood and adjustment disorders. I specialize in working with teen girls, both individually and in Teen Girls’ Wisdom Circles. I also work with adult women in transition to provide support for discovery, resolution, and growth. I also supervise art therapists working towards registration credentials.
What is Art Therapy?
Life is the creative process of fitting things together: our feelings, our needs and desires, our relationships, and our goals. Art in all forms is an expression of that process and a window into one’s world. Combining traditional talk therapy with art-making helps healing by using both sides of the brain to connect thought with feeling. Through words and imagery, feelings are expressed so that problems are illuminated and new possibilities for growth emerge. Simple art materials and techniques make art therapy accessible to all and especially helpful for trauma and abuse survivors and for those who find it hard to talk. Feelings may be safely expressed, and then held in the artwork so that healing begins.
Mary Lansing
Experience
I have been providing marriage, child, and family therapy services in Portland Oregon since 1979. My teaching areas encompass Autogenic training, Integral Transformative Practice, and The Artist’s Way. I lead and coordinate group workshops, seminars, and training events for clients and colleagues. Most recently I have completed training to be a facilitator in Family Constellations and will begin conducting Saturday Family Constellation workshops in March 2005.
Orientation & Approach
Originally trained in Transactional Analysis and Gestalt therapy, my orientation now includes additional innovative resources. As a result of my 1977 bout with cancer, I began to focus on body-mind connection training, incorporating hypnosis, Autogenic Training, and Focusing and Imaging techniques that more specifically addressed my mind-body connection. I have further enhanced this area of my approach by incorporating EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Thought Field Therapy.
Abigail Lawton
Experience
I am a licensed Clinical Social Worker and have a 31-year background as a therapist and Clinical Director of a private family service agency. I currently provide both long and short-term psychotherapy and counseling to adult individuals and couples. I am an ACSW (Academy of Clinical Social Workers) member of the National Association of Social Workers. I am also a Board Certified Diplomat in Clinical Social Work (BCD) a national credential issued to advanced practitioners by the American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work. BCD requires annual recertification and is based on the attainment of specified levels of continuing education, the currency of practice, and maintenance of licensure in good standing.
Theoretical Orientation
My orientation is psychodynamic in theory but eclectic in practice drawing from systems, behavioral, and educational approaches. I work most frequently with the individual’s developmental history and their current situation to help bring to light recurring patterns. I also work with loss believing that central to who we are and how we live our lives are the ways we handle the inevitable losses we all experience.
Dianne Stepp
Specialties and Approach
My specialty is marital therapy. For those couples who find themselves fighting repeatedly over the same issues without making any headway as well as those who are quietly disappointed, therapy can be extremely beneficial. As a provider of marital therapy in Portland for more than 12 years, I enjoy helping both straight as well as gay or lesbian couples find greater happiness and will be glad to talk with you to help you decide whether couples counseling is the right choice and to give you some idea of time and cost.
Most unhappy couples find themselves locked in a negative communication cycle, a kind of habitual, repetitive dance that solves nothing and deepens unhappiness. Therapy helps couples dismantle this negative cycle and establish more fruitful ways of interacting so that new solutions can emerge to persistent marital problems.A new pregnancy, childbirth, step-parent relationships, chronic illness, financial or employment stresses or other traumas can often unbalance otherwise satisfactory marriages.
I have received training both in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples and in research about marital satisfaction/dissatisfaction developed by the Gottman Institute in Seattle. My work with couples is also influenced by my interest and training in figurative language and writing, specifically poetry. Taking the leap to talk to a marital therapist is a big step for most couples. But it can be the best time and money ever spent.
