Welcome to Dr. C.A. Childress Website

Child Therapy: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); anger management issues; defiance & oppositional behavior; school behavior problems; impulsivity, excessively sad, tearful or anxious; poor motivation

The goal of child therapy is more than simply achieving an obedient child, the goal is to achieve a cooperative child; a child who is emotionally, socially, and psychologically healthy; and a child who will grow to become a mature, responsible, and healthy adult capable of success in the workplace and family.

I work from a developmental framework that has at its foundation an understanding of the neuro-developmental processes of brain development in childhood. These neuro-developmental processes extend beyond mere behavior to include critical features of parent-child communication and how relationships are developed and expressed.

I work closely with parents as co-therapists, offering parents active and constructive guidance on communication and relationship interventions they can employ to help them more effectively and productively resolve the child behavior issues that they face at home and in the child’s classroom.

Parent-Child Relationship Therapy: Improved parent-child communication; improved child cooperation; improved family mood, less anger-fighting-frustration and more smiles-laughter-happiness

The most powerful and effective approach to resolving children’s emotional and behavioral problems is to enlist the active involvement of parents as co-therapists by helping parents to understand the issues involved and how they can help in resolving these issues. Most parents also appreciate being offered specific recommendations for how to respond to their child’s behavioral and emotional problems in a way that will not only resolve the problem situation at hand, but that will also support their child’s healthy emotional, social, and psychological development.

Therefore, my general preference for child therapy is to serve as a consultant to the child’s parents in helping them understand the issues involved and to help them become the agents of therapeutic change for their children. This approach not only helps with the target child and current situation, the knowledge and understanding gained by the parents can be helpful with siblings and with later problematic situations that may emerge in the family.

Parental Alienation Dynamics: I am also available as a consultant for issues that are commonly referred to as parental alienation, a parent-child relationship process that involves a child’s intensive and excessive rejection of one parent, with an over-idealization of the other parent, typically as part of a divorce process.

Marital Therapy: Improved communication and development of productive dialogue; resolution of relationship issues that are causing emotional distancing, arguments, and resentments.

I take an active approach to marital counseling in which I serve as a consultant to both partners on communication and relationship dynamics in order to resolve dysfunctional communication and relationship patterns that have been undermining productive resolution of their issues. I listen to the meanings contained beneath the surface issues in order to hear and address the deeper concerns contained in the marital communication, helping both partners to productively resolve the core relationship and communication issues that have been creating the impasse.

Individual Therapy: Resolution of depression, anxiety, and anger management issues; personal growth and development.

In individual therapy I work from a perspective that recognizes the central importance of personal and life meaning as core organizing forces in our lives. Issues of intimacy and loneliness, and of authenticity in self-experience and self-expression, can emerge as core therapy issues being expressed through symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger.

We tend to repeat relationship patterns from the past, but unlike more psychodynamically oriented therapists, I don’t believe it is necessarily important for adults to explore the details of their childhoods. The most important feature is how we approach our lives right now. We may bring relationship patterns and expectations from our history into our current relationships, in which case it becomes important to become more grounded in the truth of the current situation. But the past is only important as it becomes actualized in the present. Therapeutic change is a process of releasing and moving forward.