MA, MRE
Chicago
(312) 337-3484
plkennedy2@gmail.com
Psychotherapy

Services

Describe your services:
Provide a listening heart and mind, and through understanding, access inner resources in both client and therapist to work through and resolve issues.

How does your healing modality work?
Accessing the inner power and wisdoms of both client and therapist. Through understanding, movement occurs for client toward resolution and growth.

How do you see your services evolving over the next three years?
Hard to answer, depends in large part on how I evolve over the next three years, how I grow in knowledge of and pursue my own self-knowledge/wisdom/spiritual path. I would like to do more group work in the understanding model, teaching/learning with others while mutually exploring the modality.

Benefits

What are the benefits/results people see?
Increased self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence; enhancement of skills already possessed, development of more options to respond to their lives, not merely react; integration of life experience as a learning and healing process; reduction of stress, anxiety, depression, fear. Learning the value and use of emotions/affect, undeerstanding that underneath our emotions are our life values/criteria/belief systems. Understanding and accepting themselves. Better health and well-being.

Why do people come to see you?
To resolve old recurring issues, physical and sexual trauma, that impede present life; gain in self-knowledge; being in 12 step programs and wanting to deal with issues of past as they affect present behaviors; they are in enough emotional pain to want to do something about their lives, relationships, marriages, loss and grief; depression, anger; referred by other professionals and clients. To work through personal and professional issues involving self.

Who is an ideal client?
One who knows that only they can do it; that they cannot do it alone; and reaches out for assistance.

What makes you different/good at what you do?
I care. My years of experience, years of my own therapy; my belief in inner wisdoms and strengths of clients; my ability to listen and respond deeply at multiple levels of a client’s search, and walk with them through their process; my sense of boundaries and limits creating a space of safety; my belief in the essential goodness of people and that we are searchers for love, goodness and loving connection with ourselves and others. I believe that I am an instrument for people to grow themselves and that I do not do this work alone.
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Philosophy/Approach

Describe your healing philosophy:
All therapy can be summed up in a movement from “I hate myself” to “I love myself.” Listen deeply with an understanding heart and offer the client back to themselves in that understanding. Understanding is an end in itself involving the whole person, and through being understood and accepted transformational change occurs.

Describe your style or approach:
I enter the world of the other as they feel, see, hear it; and through understanding enable the client to understand and accept themselves, as this occurs change happens and where information is necessary it is accessed. Could also describe my approach as existential counseling, a here and now, present moment process. I believe the heart and mind have wisdoms the brain by itself does not easily access and which need to be incorporated into therapy as part of the healing process.

Why do you do what you do?
I love the privilege of walking with others on their life path; I learn so much about myself; I find the process of therapy exciting and constantly full of mystery. I find I need to reach out and learn more; even after all these years I find what I do and those I am doing it with exciting and energizing.
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Education/Background

Education/Training:
M.Th. St. Mary Seminary & University, Baltimore, Md., M.A. Catholic University, Wash. D. Education and Counseling; Master of Religious Education. Adult Learning and Counseling, Loyola University, Chicago, Il. Self-Acceptance Training, Dick Olney, M.A., Cherie McCoy, 1983-1987; Neuro-Linguistic Program, Practitioner 1990; Staff Trainer 1991. Ericksonian Hypnosis Training, 1992-93. Training with Jean Houston, Ph.D. in Mystery Schools, New York & Chicago. Pat Dunbar, Ph.D., Sarah Sadler, Ph.D. Journey School, New Orleans, 1998-2003. 27 years as Catholic priest in pastoral and educational work, now a married Catholic priest; Counseling Learning Institutes, 1969-1982, Staff Member and Trainer; Graduate School of Psychology, Loyola University, Chicago, research program into adult learning and counseling, 1971-1976. EMDR training, 1995

Years Professionally Practicing:
43 years

Contributions/Publications:
Over 15 years of men’s work with participation in New Warrior Training, Male Spirit Programs, and Shem Center for Interfaith Spirituality-Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Native American and others. Member of CITI, Rent-A-Priest, ministries offered by Married Roman Catholic Priests
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What to expect

Describe a typical session:
Unfolding with a client their world as they want to share it, pursuing the unsaid or unspoken; listening and responding; listening and responding; listening and responding; and where fitting, or truly requested, providing information, other ways of seeing issues, providing other resources.

How long is a typical session?
45-50 minutes

Describe your office or treatment room:
Warm, inviting, safe, comfortable. First floor of our home, fireplace, bookcases, a room easy on eyes and heart, good chairs.

How should someone prepare for a session?
Openness to the experience, to oneself, to me, to issues known and known, to feelings and emotions underneath which are our life criteria, connections and conflicts. Come as you are, it’s all we have anyway.
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Logistics

Office hours/days of the week:
Flexible: some mornings, afternoons, evenings, Sat. morning

Fee Range
$100.00 per session, payable at time of service

Take Insurance?
Yes, major medical. I do not work with HMO’s.

Cancellation Policy?
On individual basis as becomes necessary.
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Closing Comments

What else might someone want to know about you?
I am on a spiritual path, not a religious path; seeking, and where possible, sharing awareness with other seekers, questers. The path is my own. I believe each person has their own path and I do not interpret theirs in terms of my own, I merely walk alongside.
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