Hello,
My name is Ed Thompson.
I am the primary Counselor and owner at Best Life Counseling. I am an LMSW, with over 25 years of practical and professional experience working with adults and children. My specialty is children and adults with co-occurring autism and psychiatric diagnoses, as well as school-based behavior problems of fieldwork in the mental health community. I started this company because the words "client-centered care " were overused but under-implemented. Too many providers were using the same cookie-cutter approaches without truly taking the person they were helping.

I am a father of six children and have raised a son with autism and an adopted daughter with a significant trauma-based mental health diagnosis.

I am fully aware of the difficulties in accessing resources and the lack of information that is shared with families. That is why I am a strong advocate for client education and individualized care.

There are thousands of Licensed therapists and counselors with thousands of treatment strategies & therapies in their toolboxes to help you overcome or perhaps manage whatever it is that is preventing you from living your best life.

However, there is only one you. My overall focus is ensuring that the individuals that I support through their journey to achieving their best life, is that they know that they are leading the way. I feel that each individual's treatment should be customized to suit their specific needs, culture, knowledge base, and goals. I have the same toolbox but I don't open it until I know what to use and when to use it.

Why I decided on starting the Best Life Journey.

As an LMSW I have worked for several providers and loved what I did. but I soon realized that my clients were being charged unnecessary fees and I was being forced to discharge them because they had either missed too many appointments, been late, or rescheduled too many times. As I was the primary clinician, I expected to have some control over this, but learned that it was insurance and provider-driven to maintain revenue.

This approach is the norm in the field and although does provide some needed business structure and order, the promoted "Person-Centered Care " has been lost. People who are seeking help with mental health issues are often struggling with structure, managing time, and feeling like they cannot connect. I feel that financially penalizing them and discontinuing the support that they need for the reasons that they sought support in the first place often further aggravates their condition.

In addition, many providers struggle with keeping consistent therapists which in turn causes increased and unnecessary trauma to clients.

Since COVID, anxiety, depression, and inability to cope with everyday life have become an ever-increasing part of our lives.

Keeping our thoughts, emotions, and feelings under control seems to be getting harder and harder, It seems more and more that our emotions and feelings are controlling us rather than us controlling them, and often our minds are on autopilot.

It doesn't have to stay that way. It starts with understanding why we are feeling what we are feeling, learning how to explain it to others, how to recognize when it's going to be a bad day, and what a bad day looks and feels like for each of us. and how to overcome what we can and learn to manage the rest.

I have over 25 years of practical and professional experience working with adults, children, and families with trauma as well as individuals feeling overwhelmed by the sudden demands and rapidly changing social expectations and stressors of this world.

Although, as an LMSW, I am not a licensed therapist, I have worked under and with them for several years and have maintained caseloads and provided the same clinical therapy and interventions.

I am certified in Floortime Play Therapy, and trained in CBT, DBT Trauma-Based Therapy, and Functional Family Therapy through Evergreen Training.

I am continuously updating my training to learn and provide the most up-to-date interventions and modalities to my clients.

However, my primary focus is to educate and train my clients on how to understand what is happening to them and why, through listening to them and helping them to not need me.

I believe in client education and feel strongly that a client-centered approach will lead to success.

My approach is simple, TREAT you as a PERSON first and then work WITH you to identify and address any barriers that are preventing you from living your best life, and coordinate strategies and interventions to overcome them.