Maureen Flaherty, LPC

She/her/hers – what are personal pronouns and why do they matter?

Clients I work with: Adult individuals, groups, and families.

Issues I work with: Anxiety, depression,  loss, grief, end-of-life issues, trauma, chronic illness, emotional dysregulation, family of origin issues, childhood experiences, guilt and shame,  emotional intimacy, men’s issues, and relationships.

I specialize in illness, loss, grief, and end-of-life issues. I am able to assist you with Anticipatory Grief, (grief before the death), Acute Grief (current loss, Early Grief ( first 2 years), and Mature Grief (across the lifespan). I take a holistic approach to work with clients seeking to grieve, supporting them to manage the daily business of living, find meaning, and heal from the losses that life and love bring to us as human beings. In my 22 years of practice, I have come to believe that life is beautiful and complicated, loss comes in many forms, and while pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

I assist clients in symptom reduction, decision making, and in addressing belief systems that often leave us depressed and anxious and unable to make positive change.

I strive to work with clients as an agent of change. I believe many of our emotional and relational difficulties can be connected to the experiences we have growing up in our unique family systems. These familial experiences have powerful influences on our core beliefs about who we are and what we can expect from others. Family of origin work involves becoming unstuck emotionally and healing faulty relationship maps, losses, or traumatic wounds of the past.

This work is particularly helpful if you experienced abuse or neglect, critical or invalidating parenting, chaotic or fear-based family interactions, caregivers with a mental illness or addiction, or a volatile/high-conflict relationship between your parents.

Our work may often involve an exploration of the past, understanding how it might have impacted you on an emotional level, your map for connecting with others, patterns of behavior, and the identification of any unhelpful core beliefs you may have developed about yourself, others, and the world. It is these inaccurate maps and beliefs that often underlie symptoms of depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and relationship problems.

My goal is to help you resolve and heal the unfinished business of the past so that you don’t have to keep recreating them in the present. I work directly with unresolved pain and trauma, loss, dissatisfying relationships, life purpose, and/or damaged self-worth and find that when clients create healing at the root cause, the symptoms are no longer needed.

As such, I am skilled at working with symptoms such as depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, decision-making or ambivalence about important relationships, trauma, guilt, shame, procrastination, difficulty with finding purpose and meaning, and chronic illness.

My style of therapy is targeted, structured, and focused on the creation of lasting change. I don’t believe that therapy needs to take years, more that it should help to restructure your experiences so that you see life through a different lens. This new lens allows for continued change, long after therapy has ended.

Much of my clinical experience and expertise has been in therapeutic work with men. Cultural expectations of men often paint men to be independent, self-sufficient, stoic problem solvers, who are invulnerable to often powerful stressors and traumatic experiences.  These rigid expectations of masculinity may prevent us from understanding and accepting who we are and get in the way of creating connections and becoming our whole, happy selves.

My approach to treatment includes cognitive behavioral therapy, TEAM CBT, solution-focused and existential modalities, trauma, attachment, and family systems. After getting to know you and the change you seek, I tailor my work to meet your particular needs.