Intellectual Disability Therapists in Homewood, IL

After working for over two decades as a School Psychologist in school settings, I founded Gumm Consulting, Assessment, and Advocacy Services (GCAAS) to support parents and students with navigating the often difficult world of special education, IEP services, and 504 accommodations. I provide psychoeducational assessments for children, adolescents, and adults, to determine if a disability exists.

You are important and deserve to live a life with a calm and focused mind, a relaxed body, and a sense of well-being. When life gives you a hundred reasons to break down and cry, let's show life that you have support and various reasons to smile while moving in the right direction toward your goals. I'm planning to help you explore ways to identify your triggers, stressors, and symptoms and then use evidence-based interventions to help you improve your circumstances.

I provide therapy for children, teenagers and young adults. I believe all children/teens need time and space to be seen and heard. I provide a supportive space where families and their children are welcome to explore their therapy goals and improve their lives. Therapy works best when the relationship between counselor and client is authentic, trustworthy, and secure. Helping every child/teen feel good about themselves is the groundwork in my sessions. I believe that all children and teens want to be seen, feel like they matter and are worthy.

Everyday children, adolescents, and teens experience a number of stresses in various settings such at home, school, with family and/or friends on a day to day basis. My work with clients allows me to not only teach new strategies but to also provide time to practice as well as utilize various skills together in our sessions. This promotes the use of strategies when clients experience challenging situations and/or strong emotions outside of our sessions.

Navigating through the world of diagnoses can be overwhelming and challenging. There is so much information to gather and sometimes it leads you to the beginning of an end. Hope, sometimes is scarce, and the opinions of others begin to drown out your inner voice. We start with your perseverance by guiding your inner voice to the external; so you can start to find solutions to your presenting circumstances. Sometimes, all we need is a sounding board and to hear ourselves ask out loud the hard question of, "What if?" I can help you answer your own questions by diving deeper into, "What is, and where do we go from here?"

When life becomes unfocused, or the weight of stress too much to carry, it is the resilient who seek clarity and work to better distribute the weight. It is the evolutionary elite who are able to view change and stress as an opportunity for growth and adaptation.

As an experienced and compassionate therapist, I specialize in anxiety, grief, relationship issues, and personal growth. Together, we'll uncover your inner strength, develop practical strategies, and create lasting transformation.

In my 10 years of helping individuals, families, and communities I have realized we all have needs/wants and those needs/wants matter. We all come to therapy with unique experiences, and you are the expert of your experience. Sometimes things can become too difficult to handle on our own and we need some extra help figuring out the best way to move forward.

Therapy is a journey that can be wonderful, exhausting, and awakening all at the same time. I am here to walk with you, to help navigate the challenges in life that stand in the way of healing. My therapy focuses on providing compassionate, personalized care using a warm, emphatic and interactive approach to counseling.

My clients describe my approach as gentle and direct with a dab of humor. I do my best work treating individuals who have experienced interpersonal trauma, people who are navigating their role in complicated families, and those who have been emotionally abused. I tend to find success with people who struggle with depression or low self-esteem, people who work in high-stress or helping professions, and people who do not know where to start. I have experience working with people with Bipolar Disorder, PMDD, learning disabilities, ADHD, anxiety, insomnia, auto-immune conditions, depression, anxiety, panic disorders, autism, & PTSD.

H.E.L.P.'s managing owner and Chief Clinical Officer is Dr. Karen McCurtis Witherspoon, a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Illinois who has thousands of clinical hours performing assessments with children and adults for the past decade. Her clinical practice focuses on psychological testing, parenting evaluations, and psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and adults. The H.E.L.P. LLC consulting team is a multidisciplinary one: there are psychologists, clinical counselors, substance abuse counselors, social workers, educators and a naturopath on the team. Appointments are available in the Hyde Park Office in Chicago, or the suburban office in South Holland, IL.

My motto is "try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud". I enjoy working with individuals, groups, and families from all ages seeking ways to grow socially, emotionally, and behaviorally. I welcome all "walks of life" from various cultural backgrounds who are facing challenges with trauma, mental health disorders, autism, intellectual disabilities, youth in care, family dynamics, and many more. This office provides Telehealth Services (e.g., Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Texas) and face-to-face sessions.

Prescribing Psychotropic Medication, Neuropsychological testing, and counseling.