Therapeutic Services

During our conversations, I will encourage you to narrate your life with full autonomy. You can expect a collaborative, respectful, and empowering process that focuses on the stories you tell yourself about your life—especially the ones that shape your identity, relationships, and sense of meaning.

Here’s what a client can typically expect:

  • A collaborative partnership. I will work with you, not on you. We’ll work together to look at how your experiences have shaped the narratives you tell about yourself. “I always mess things up” becomes a story to explore, not a truth to accept. These stories are shaped by relationships, people, experiences, wounds, and even cultural contexts.
  • I will help you to separate the story from the self. “I’m different” might become: “Estrangement has been showing up a lot lately.” Being curious about this together allows you to feel a sense of agency and power over your own meanings.
  • I will ask you questions that promote deeper reflections. I might challenge some of your thinking, but I will also help you to trust me. Doing so will allow you to develop a new, different awareness that responds to the deepest motivations and meanings in life.
  • Unearthing the “Grand Narratives” of your life (including family of origin woundings, grief and loss, and present-day life concerns around success, power, control and failure) will enable you to critically examine patterned behavior in order to re-author new and less frequently travelled pathways. I am transparent, collaborative, honest, creative, and culturally sensitive. There are no ‘tricks’ in counseling, just hard work. I will approach you, and your story, with warmth, compassion and a deeply genuine curiosity.

Grief Work

Loss comes in many shapes: a relationship culminating, a death, a departure, transition, or a change in one’s identity that disrupts a sense of self.

Grief can complicate relationships, destabilize a sense of predictability, and can reactivate old challenges. Exploring and expressing loss in its many forms can help.

Interpersonal Work

Within the interpersonal exists a complex network of relationships, including that with yourself.

How do you interact with your social world? How does it treat you in return?

Supervision

I offer weekly group and individual supervision. As a CCE Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS) and professional counselor educator, I can ensure quality, ethical, and rigorous supervision that explores a counselor trainee’s interests and abilities. Supervision fees are also available on a sliding scale for early career therapists.

“And what of solidarity? I am thinking of a solidarity that is constructed by therapists who refuse to draw a sharp distinction between their lives and the lives of others, who refuse to marginalize those persons who seek help, by therapists who are constantly confronting the fact that if faced with the circumstances such that provide the context of troubles of others, they just might not be doing nearly as well themselves.“

Michael White

Re-author your story

Take your first step

Having success in therapy is, in part, attributable to the quality of the therapeutic relationship.

About Me

I have been a licensed and board certified counselor in the State of Illinois since 2013, and a professional counselor educator since 2016. I obtained my Ph.D. in Counselor Education from The Pennsylvania State University, where I received advanced clinical and supervision training. I currently work as a full-time faculty member at Adler University, training master’s level clinical mental health counselors as well as counselor education doctoral students. I was honored to be the Illinois Counselor Educator of the Year in 2019.

I am experienced working with people in a range of different clinical settings, from university counseling centers to hospitals and school-based services for youth and families. I am able to work with a broad range of people and clinical issues. In recent years I have spent time cultivating my knowledge and abilities with grief, loss and bereavement counseling.

I specialize in affirming interpersonal work related to identity development. Understanding who you are, and how this is expressed and experienced may start with examining what important events and relationships have informed your sense of self. To that end, I am adept at helping people navigate anxiety and emotional woundings. I consider cultural competency to be imperative to the counseling relationship and I am attentive to cultural considerations.

specialities

Interpersonal Work

Within the interpersonal exists a complex network of relationships, including that with yourself. What patterns exist within these networks that create challenges in relating to others? To your self?

The main goal of interpersonal process therapy is to improve the quality of a person’s relationships and social functioning to help reduce distress.

Identity Development

Identity isn’t stagnant. Here we might explore deeply how your identities (be they cultural, gendered, social, sexual, spiritual) relate and interact. How does your identity help you feel connected? Isolated? Further, how do you interact with your social world? How does it treat you in return?

Grief and Loss

Loss comes in many shapes: a relationship culminating, a death, a departure, a change in your identity that disrupts a sense of self. 

Unexpressed feelings
of self-condemnation, social isolation, and the loss of meaning are often unnecessary additional burdens to the inevitable losses in life. Exploring and expressing loss in its many forms can help.

Critical Incidents

Critical incidents include emotional wounds, events, situations, and adjustments that throw off our equilibrium. A critical life incident may make us feel disconnected from our culture, social circle, family–it may also make parts of you feel active and extremely sensitive.

When facilitated and processed, a critical incident can be an opportunity for growth and transformation.

It’s hard to be truly honest with a stranger. I try to approach counseling with sensitivity to this and attempt to create a safe, trusting, and approachable environment where we can really do the work.

Contact

I’m ready to hear from you.

I AM CURRENTLY ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS FOR TELE-HEALTH & REMOTE THERAPY OPTIONS ONLY.

Please share any information you’d like me to know. Once submitted, you can expect a response within 48 hours by the preferred contact method that you’ve identified.

Office Location

Chicago, IL 60660
USA
lauren@melamedcounseling.com
312-283-4490

Insurance

BCBS Illinois – PPO

United HealthCare

Aetna

Session Fees

For those not using insurance, the out of pocket rate is $150 for an hour of individual therapy. Payment is due at the time of service.

Financial Assistance

Sliding scale fees are available for individuals who are not insured and cannot afford the hourly rate. Sliding scale fees are set and based on annual income.

Open Path Collective

I am a member of Open Path Psychotherapy Collective. This service is a non-profit nationwide network of mental health professionals dedicated to providing mental health care – at a steeply reduced rate – to individuals, couples, children, and families need. Click the Open Path logo below to get more information and setup your account.

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