Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Uhrig.
Hi Amanda, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
During my Master’s in Social Work program at Rutgers University, I was a part of the Violence Against Women and Children certificate program, and completed my second year internship working with survivors of child sexual and physical abuse. I worked with the non offending parents to help link the families to resources so their children would be set up for success in recovering from their abusive experiences. After graduation, I went on to work at The Children’s Home Society of NJ in the Ocean Reunification Program, where I worked with parents whose children had been placed in foster care due to abuse or neglect. The program’s goal was to help the families reunify successfully and break intergenerational cycles of trauma and abuse. I started The Healing Tree Counseling & Consultation in 2013 with the goal of continuing to provide trauma informed care without the restrictions of grant funding or DCP&P referral. In 2019, I. brought on another therapist to join me, and we have grown from there to a team of a dozen skilled, thoughtful professionals committed to high quality care in an outpatient setting. Our group provides individual and family counseling for children, adolescents, and adults with a variety of presenting problems including anxiety, depression, perinatal mental health, eating disorders, substance use recovery support, and PTSD/Complex PTSD. We do accept most major insurances and offer both in person and virtual therapy sessions. I also provide training and supervision to other professionals in both general clinical supervision on trauma and eating disorder cases, as well as specialized consultation for EMDR clinicians.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have certainly been smoother times than others! During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a really wild uptick in the need for therapeutic services, which my team and I met head-on. There were challenges for clients who struggled to find private spaces for therapy, often needing to meet from their cars or even in their bathrooms so their family members couldn’t overhear. We got creative in learning to engage in typically hands-on work like sand play and EMDR through a virtual space to meet our clients’ needs. And of course, we can’t talk about anything healthcare without acknowledging the challenges in our health care system. High deductibles and insurance restrictions on services are often barriers that our clients have to face before they even make their way in the door, and that can certainly be a problem for anyone who doesn’t have the financial means for basic necessities, much less the cost of therapy.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The Healing Tree Counseling & Consultation?
The Healing Tree was created with the idea that high quality trauma informed care should not be restricted to those who can afford to pay out of network prices for therapy. We are an insurance based practice and we focus on high quality training and evidence based approaches to treatment. Many of our therapists are trained in evidence based modalities like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Sand Play therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and other approaches with decades of research behind them. Our therapists absolutely love what we do and the clients that we work with. As an owner, I am most proud of the sense of community among my staff and their commitment to providing top quality treatment to the people in their care.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I personally love Bessel van Der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” and Francine Shapiro’s “Getting Past your Past” for building awareness of trauma’s impacts on the body. “Maintenance Phase” is an awesome podcast that helps debunk some of the fad “science” we hear in terms of food, bodies, and wellness, and can be a really helpful resource both personally and professionally. When it comes to reading and listening for pleasure, I find that memoirs, true crime, and thrillers really help get me out of my head and into an escape!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thehealingtreecc.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehealingtreecc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehealingtreenj
