Meet Salley
I am a Kansas native, having been transplanted to Texas from Colorado. I am pretty sure I was supposed to be born in Colorado, but my parents forgot to move there.
For over 2 decades now, I gladly call Waco, Texas my home and love this community and the people I have come to know and call my friends. I consider it a privilege to own and operate a business in such an entrepreneurially focused community. My passion is helping people heal from trauma and love the life they live regardless of the challenges life has thrown at them. I am the proud mother of Hailey and Jordan who are young adult women now. They are twins. They keep my heart very full. I am blessed with a very supportive husband, Chris. We married in 2009. I also enjoy time with his son, who is the same age as my twin daughters. So yes, I have virtual triplets. My favorite times in life are with my family, especially when all 5 of us can be together.
"I understand and respect the important role personal values and spirituality play in healing, change, growth and moving forward."
I earned a Master of Science in Family Therapy from a private Christian University in Wichita Kansas, Friends University in 1996. I have worked in a counseling and administrative capacity since that time in a variety of settings including private practice. I have worked in the field of mental health and human services since 1985. I identify as a liberal Christian, refusing to perpetuate the messages of shame that unfortunately often come with religion. I value the role spirituality plays in self-evaluation, change, growth, healing, relationships and success. I practice very holistically. I come from a foundation of family systems theory, attachment, and emotion focused work. I approach healing relational wounds and mental health recovery work from this foundation. All of my work is heavily infused with the research and work of Dr. Brene` Brown, author of Daring Greatly and Rising Strong among other works. I am a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator. When it is the right fit for a client, I incorporate yoga, art, creative and visual processes into counseling as well as relaxation, mindfulness, and somatic informed processes.
I am first and foremost a trauma therapist. I work with individuals, couples, families (blended, adoptive, multigenerational, adult siblings, adult child and parent relationships) as the challenges that lead them to counseling are impacted by and relate to experiences of interpersonal trauma. Life and relationships are hard enough to navigate, trauma complicates thing exponentially. That is where I come in and support, help, guide, facilitate to bring healing and forward momentum toward a life you can love living.
I work extensively with survivors of interpersonal trauma, especially adult survivors of childhood trauma, adults surviving toxic relationships and dissociative identity disorder among other manifestations of trauma survival. I have experience and an interest in helping people struggling with disordered eating, especially as it related to the experience of trauma. I help couples with relationship trauma such as infidelity or individual past trauma that is interfering with the current relationship.
Come explore your strengths and learn to harness the power and success that already lies within you for visible, life and relationship change. Discover the hindrances present in your life and work to overcome them to design and achieve a life you love living.
"One of my greatest honors has been to help people emerge strong and successful on the other side of a difficult life experience or transition"
My ideal client match is someone who has experienced interpersonal trauma as a child and never told anyone or told one someone who did nothing. Now as an adult they find themselves asking "what is wrong with me, this is all in the past, why is it coming up now and messing with my life?" The resurfacing of old trauma is often triggered by a current life circumstance such as children approaching the age of when abuse began for the client or a major life transition.
There is a close second ideal client match, and this would be someone who is having an awakening experience and realizing "I am in a toxic relationship or marriage." They are experience psychological abuse and have lost all sense of self and identity and feel like an empty shell of a person who now walks around vacant of their true self.
In both of these cases I see a fair to extreme degree of dissociation, shame, and numbing as well as dysregulation of emotions and thoughts.
My credentials and training include but are not limited to the following: I am a Positive Discipline Parent Educator and am Certified in the Daring Greatly™ and Rising Strong™ material through the Daring Way™, I am trained in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Yoga for Trauma. I am trained in Family systems theories, Adlerian theory, Art, Attachment Theory and much more.
If you desire to emerge strong and successful and live an unchained life, I would love to support you.
I look forward to meeting you should you decide to seek support for your success through training or counseling with me.
Salley Schmid, MS Family Therapy, LMFT, CDWF, and Y4T, EFT and EMDR trained
An Interview with Salley
Click the play button below to listen to an interview with Salley Schmid, MS Family Therapist, LMFT...
My office is located at 5010 Lakeland Circle, Suite A, Waco, Texas 76710. Video-based counseling is available upon request. Contact me here to schedule today or call me by phone at 254-300-5339. You will get voice mail. Leave a message and I will call you back.