Are you an allergic individual or parent/caregiver curious about therapy? Check out Allergy Counseling Information for Patients |
Are you an allergist or healthcare provider curious how allergy counseling could help your patients? Check out Allergy Counseling Information for Allergists |
"The most rewarding part of being a food allergy counselor is helping others manage their food allergies and anxiety over foods. As a licensed professional counselor and fellow food allergy mom, I know how hard it is to navigate this. It can be so overwhelming, stressful and scary. Having been through this with our child 16 years ago and not having any counselor understand what we were going through, was rough. When I’m able to help another person and family adjust to this new lifestyle and reduce their anxiety, it gives such satisfaction. I must say it’s more than working with other clients in my practice. It’s a way of me giving back to the allergy community and trying to make it better than we had it 16 years ago. To see the relief in their eyes and the confidence they gain from therapy is very rewarding. They realize “I can do this” especially when I share our family story."
"There is a huge demand for allergy informed therapists. As a licensed professional counselor and allergy mom I started allergy counseling due to our personal experience. For example, at age 9 our daughter had a severe reaction to a new food had to go to ER in ambulance and became OCD. She was very restrictive in her foods to the point of becoming malnourished. The doctor recommended counseling and the first thing I asked was for one with food allergy experience. The doctor said she did not know of one but what a great idea. So we saw a counselor for her anxiety and OCD who told our daughter to put her hand in a toilet and gave us a germ exposure chart. I was livid explaining to the counselor this was not about a fear of germs but a fear of having a reaction to nuts. Because we had no other options I had them redo the exposure chart based on foods and nuts. I was directing her therapy. It was at that point I realized how this needed to change and I focused a portion of my private practice on food allergy counseling. To this day I hear horror stories from clients about how counselor do not understand food allergy anxiety and treat it as an irrational fear when in fact it is a real valid fear. We need more counselors to understand this. This need is great and the area is expanding. It’s this directory that assists so many find a food allergy counselor. My wish is that at some point every allergy office will have their own food allergy counselor because the need is there."
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