Individual & Family Counseling

Loriann Oberlin, MS, LCPC counsels children as young as age five (kindergarten age), teenagers, and adults to about age 70.  She provides marriage and family counseling as well. 

With children who don’t sit down and talk as readily, Loriann uses a variety of creative modalities including therapeutic board games and books, arts/crafts, and toys including dollhouses or LEGO blocks to connect with children and help words emanate from play.  Teens benefit from games, card decks, art, relevant books, articles and video clips as well.

Adults and couples may benefit from reading or bibliotherapy as an adjunct to their sessions such that they learn better communication, stress reduction and anger management skills.  Certain books such as Becoming Your Best by Ronald W. Richardson and Extraordinary Relationships by Roberta Gilbert help clients learn about family systems and alter their reactivity.  Ms. Oberlin’s books regarding anger, coping with passive-agression, separation and divorce may be helpful for any given situation, and The Angry Child serves as an overall parenting primer for helping parents from toddler through teen years.

When scheduling couples counseling, please provide contact information of both parties.  Both partners should come to the first and subsequent sessions unless we determine otherwise.

Groups

Currently, groups are run out of the North Potomac office, but may be added in Easton in a few months. Ongoing therapy groups may be covered by insurance. They require that a mental health diagnosis be given and disclosed and may require occasional treatment plans to be reviewed by your insurance company.

Time-limited focused groups — those regarding school transition, college preparedness and journaling, for instance — are not considered therapy and thereby are not set up for insurance payment.

Family Mediation

Every family has occasional disagreements about key decisions, reconciling a past event, or deciding upon a path for future action, such as what to do as siblings when mom and dad can no longer live at home.

That's why there's family mediation — a provess whereby your family meets with a mediator trained with an understanding of family systems and problem solving as well as mediation skills. Mediation, unlike counseling or therapy, does not involve a diagnosis or mental health reason to meet. Sessions last longer at each visit. The parties themselves settle matters with the help of an objective third-party facilitator sponsoring whatever difficult conversations need to take place.

Family mediation keeps squabbles or misunderstandings out of the court room with expensive litigation that often further divides families. Whereas litigation can wipe away monetary resources and create rifts that may never heal, mediation brings about human resources such as everyone's abilities, strengths, determination, and talents. The process helps people to hear one another, find mutually beneficial solutions, and work with rather than against one another.

Facing divorce or dealing with post-divorce difficulties, you likely know that one of the hardest issues to face is the fallout on family life. Whereas before you likely had daily access to your children, now it's challenged. Many parents worry how they will remain active participants in their kids lives. They yearn to stay connected, and be one of the vital influences in their children's live as they mature through childhood, the teenage years and beyond.

We can make that happen! Even amidst emotional hurt or fears about the future, parents usually want to work out the best arrangments for co-parenting their children. Sometimes, they aren't quite sure how. Not even your lawyer has the knowledge of your circumstances, and certainly not the affection for your children and their best interests that parents have. You know your needs — not the judge or any court officer. So as you consider your options to develop a parenting plan, remember that solving problems now with the help of a third party often inflicts less damage, emotionally and financially.

To learn more about the possibilities for mediating family matters, contact Loriann Oberlin through this website.

Parent Coordination

It's hard to create peaceful co-existence sometimes. Parenting coordination is a relatively newer practice used by many jurisdictions to help parents manage on-going issues in child custody disputes. Parent coordinators are usually mental health professions with a least a Master's degree or attorneys in good standing with their state's Bar Association. Sometimes they are appointed by the Court.

A parent coordinator meets with both parties, listening to questions and complaints about the process of exchanges and whatever other difficulties arise between them. He/she helps the parties to come to resolution of their own accord whenever possible, but will make recommendations, particularly in stalemates. These recommendations may become obligatory for parents to follow because the parent coordinator can later report to the court about any non-compliance. Some of the matters frequently brought into a parent coordinator include matters of child access, communication between parents, drop off/pick up routines, exchange of clothing and related belongings, the children's schedules, activities, education, therapy and medical care.

As a licensed mental health professional, Ms. Oberlin has the skill set of understanding family dynamics, divorce, and anger management required for effective parenting coordination as well as the required divorce mediation and child access training along with continuing education. She can either mediate a parenting plan or serve as a parent coordinator, though she cannot serve both roles to the same set of parties. She will also make appropriate referrals when necessary.

Should you wish to proceed, each party should contact Loriann Oberlin requesting an appointment and alerting to daytime availability. Each session lasts two hours.

Ms. Oberlin will send necessary paperwork to you by attached file so that we can get right to talking at our first meeting. Services are billed by the hour and time spent out of session on a case will be prorated in 15 minute increments.