Welcome to Gossamer Threads Counseling,

I understand that taking steps to find the right counselor can be daunting. Perhaps you are skeptical that counseling can be helpful or worth the investment of time and money or perhaps you’ve had negative experiences with other mental heath professionals. I relate to these kinds of questions. From an early age, I had heard fears and experiences from family and friends about therapy and had reservations about the mental health establishment as a whole. When I went to college, I had no interest in counseling or psychology and planned to work in the field of research biology.

However, as I became involved in the mess and joys of deep connection with the people around me, I became engaged with openness and vulnerability in relationships in a new way. Through a campus group, I became a peer-counselor to other students and heard their stories of sexual assault, struggles with identity and purpose, and overcoming family injuries. Likewise, during this period, I faced some serious distresses in my own life that made it difficult to stay connected, challenged my beliefs and my sense of myself and made it difficult to function in my everyday life. I began asking questions like, “how might I genuinely help others in respectful ways? what kinds of help would I be comfortable seeking if I needed help?”

Although I did graduate with a BS in Biology, these questions led me to change my career course and eventually to obtain a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling from South Dakota State University. While completing my graduate degree, I worked for several years at the Black Hills Children’s Home—a residential treatment facility that seeks to assist children with traumatic backgrounds. Upon graduating, I worked at Behavior Management Systems—a community mental health center.  As a counselor, I worked with children and their families, adult individuals and couples, for several years. I hold a LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor) distinction through the State of South Dakota and am a National Board-Certified Counselor through NBCC.

In creating Gossamer Threads Counseling, I aim to carve out a comfortable healing space for people who are faced with problems that may be tricky to unravel, obstinate to change or that simply need a place to be aired-out and heard. Many counselors think of their “specialty” in terms of the kinds of problems they are familiar working with (depression, anxiety, grief, eating disorder etc.). Although this may be helpful in certain contexts, this can sometimes create a “problem first, person second” kind of relationship. I think of my “specialty” in terms of the particular stance and approach I take as a therapist in your life. Operating within an approach called Narrative Therapy, I am able to cultivate thoughtful, precise, creative and hopeful lines of questioning to “meet you” so that we can both reckon with the problem together. (Please visit my Q&A section for more information.)

—Jessica Hübner