Celeste Ballard, LPC MHSP TN, LCPC IL, LPC WI, CMT

In-office visits: Knoxville
Telehealth: Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin
My therapeutic focus:
- Celeste specializes in working with clients who are seeking to unseat and unlock long held patterns in their lives. Individuals who wish to get to the root of their problems and face issues that may be preventing meaningful change and peace in their lives. Oftentimes clients who have tried traditional therapy methods and/or done their own self-help work, find themselves at a “stuck” point on their healing path. These answers can often be found through somatic, meditation based work, or by exploring spiritual or existential questions that impact our daily living and purpose.
- People spend their whole lives running from pain without realizing that just increases the pain. Healing is actually within the pain and when you learn to be in the pain, learn why it is there and what it needs, your body can release it. This actually changes your neural pathways, so the groove that was always being triggered is now new. The mind and body can relax when you learn to be with whatever the moment brings without reacting from defenses and long held family beliefs. Equally important is learning to have joy and success in life, which doesn’t happen when there are many hurts piled on top of each other. Rather, it is a conscious choice and learning to be able to open to your inner self and to others around you. It is learning to care for yourself with boundaries versus static walls.
- Celeste also specializes in couples counseling and takes a unique approach to the work of healing relationships. While communication is essential to work on, couples rarely learn how to bypass the arguing and get back to the love that they feel inside. Oftentimes their communication has become focused on details and is fueled by defense mechanisms which deteriorates their connection. By using meditation based techniques, Celeste helps couples access what is happening subconsciously in the relationship so the deep connection can be restored.
- Celeste also works to provide therapy and supervision for therapists looking to deepen their own personal growth and to increase joy and efficacy in their work. She guides therapists in the use of somatic and mindfulness based techniques to provide therapeutic insight on both a personal and professional level. Being a successful therapist requires continual commitment to understanding themselves, how their history impacts them today and the navigation of their own difficult feelings and pain. Celeste uses a mix of education and experiential work to take therapists where they personally haven’t gone to before.
Celeste’s passion for the field has been a lifelong endeavor and this is evident in the daily commitment to both her personal and professional growth. From this commitment to professional training and personal growth Celeste has cultivated specializations in the fields of psychology of disease, help with relationships, healing from depression and anxiety without medications, and changing trauma patterns in the mind and body.
Celeste has extensive concrete training in mind, body and spirit and has been in the counseling field for 30 years. She has a Bachelors in Human Services and a Masters in Counseling psychology. Celeste became a massage therapist to learn anatomy and physiology and how the body holds patterns. She also completed a 2 year training in Hakomi which is a somatic-based therapy training and has been using meditation and somatic psychology techniques for over 20 years. She has done many trainings over the years, including IFS training with Rickard Schwartz, workshops with Harville Hendrix in Imago-based couples counseling, somatic workshops with Pat Ogden, Gestalt training, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training, Mindfulness based therapy to prevent recurrence of depression, and Jungian dream interpretation; she also holds a Pranic Healing certification, among many others. Celeste also has 20 years of meditation based training in Eastern and Western psychological techniques.
Contact Celeste:
Via email: info@withinholisticcounseling.com
Via phone: 865-410-8366