Taylor Maxson

Greetings, my name is Taylor Maxson. I am an Asheville-based licensed clinical mental health counselor (LCMHC) with more than twenty years of experience in helping work. WHAT DO I MEAN BY "YES AND"? "Yes, and..." is a classic principle from improv acting that represents a spirit of openness and playfulness. When presented with another person's idea, you validate it and see where it takes you, instead of opposing it. You listen carefully and curiously explore meanings that arise. As a counselor and coach, I align closely with "yes and...". I seek to hold a space where you feel seen, heard, and understood, AND I encourage the work of tolerance and curiosity toward uncomfortable emotions and sensations. WHAT ARE MY CORE BELIEFS? • Stress is the perception that whatever is happening to us right now exceeds our available internal and external resources • Relationship is a key factor in human growth, maturity, identity, and resilience and it is the earliest and most impactful model we experience for how (or how not to) regulate the nervous system • With adequate support, individuals, couples, and families can overcome significant stressors, challenges, and barriers • Every additional support from within us or without us increases our resilience in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs • Meeting with a therapist and doing the work of therapy can be a transformative, life-changing experience From my own personal and professional work, I have learned that it is possible to heal AND be with the wounds of the past, and doing so allows us to live more engaged lives in the present and to be more hopeful about the future. WHO DO I WORK WITH IN THERAPY? Individuals, Couples, and Families: • Teens struggling to follow expectations at home and/or school (i.e. "treatment-resistance") • Families struggling with parent-child relational problems, school refusal, parenting competencies (i.e. boundary-holding or creating structure) and other barriers to healthy family communication • Couples seeking to repair relationship, optimize intimacy, and to better navigate ADHD-related communication barriers Individual and Parent Coaching: • Teens and adults struggling with ADHD-related social, emotional, and functionality challenges • Parents seeking support in shaping parenting styles and/or the home environment to better meet the needs of their children • Parents with teens in transition from structured programs back to the home environment WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THERAPY AND COACHING? There is a lot of overlap between therapy and coaching, and for me the overall distinction is very slim. The bottom line is that when I'm acting as a coach, I am not diagnosing or formally utilizing counseling interventions to "treat" a condition. Loosely speaking, therapy is more about exploring how past experiences are shaping our current responses and behaviors. I support clients in learning about and implementing appropriate strategies to change those responses. The scope and duration tend to be very open. As a coach, I do not operate in a licensed capacity as a practitioner. The work is very present and future focused, with lots of exploration of values and vision. I help coaching clients move toward their desired vision by structuring a process of goal-setting and accountability and doing regular check ins to determine what is going well, what could have gone better, and what needs continued work. The scope and duration tend to be more focused and time-limited from the start. ABOUT PARENT COACHING Some of the most gratifying work I do is helping coach parents who are struggling with complex relational issues in the home. Sometimes this may mean they are experiencing resistance from a child or feeling powerless to respond to school refusal. Sometimes it means the parents themselves are struggling to work together or relate to each other, which results in a divided parenting response to a child. Often times, parent-child relational issues arise as contextual, natural responses to relational and environmental factors that can be modified to affect positive change and increase functionality in the family. I bring a calm and impartial style to helping parents navigate relational distress and to work toward lasting solutions to problems in the home. ABOUT ADHD COACHING As an ADHD coach, I help adolescents and adults better understand what is happening when the struggle to organize and plan, remember, and self-motivate has become a significant barrier to performing goals across time. Very often shame and emotional distress become entrenched responses to this struggle to maintain “goal-directed persistence.” What follows is often a self-fulfilling shame cycle that makes the case against our own self-efficacy and capacity to create desired outcomes. MY TRAINING AND BACKGROUND I hold a Master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from Western Carolina University, and I have received additional training in emotion-focused therapy. As a therapist, I practice from an attachment-informed perspective, which means that the safety and quality of relationship form the foundation for the work that we do. With couples and families, I provide education on attachment and offer therapeutic approaches to help steward a new set of understandings about communication cycles that impact ways of relating between family members. Whether via therapy or coaching, my goal for our work with is for the journey to take only as long as you want and need it to. Some clients prefer to see me for short courses of therapy, focusing on specific problems while others choose to do longer term work.