Lauren Kelly, LMHC, BCBA

"Remember, words break walls, and it is never too late to make changes in our stories."

Lauren has been a holistic therapist and licensed behavior analyst since 2009. She spent her first few years of practice providing crisis treatment to youth and families involved with the child welfare system, and soon after she began working with adults with disabilities on Maui. Over the years, she gravitated toward caring more specifically for children and in 2019 achieved her License as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst to provide medical treatment (Applied Behavior Analysis) to people diagnosed with autism. In this role, she gained expertise helping families learn the skills necessary to best manage and embrace their children’s diagnosis and/or conditions.

Lauren has worked in school, home, office, and community settings, serving people individually, in groups, and as family units. She believes that treatment should be a collaboration between the provider and the recipients of care, thus the specific tools, skills, and processes involved will be unique to each therapeutic relationship. Particularly interested in narrative therapy, she places great importance on the power of words and the stories we tell ourselves, emphasizing the impact that these habits and styles can have on our daily realities. Even slight modifications to these narratives can lead to profound changes in our worlds, both inner and outer, as we seek to create meaning in our lives.

Lauren’s treatment approach is eclectic and strengths-based, integrating components of cognitive behavioral treatment with techniques drawn from humanistic and experiential therapies that focus more holistically on an individual’s complete body mind as one fluid entity, such as Hakomi and Gestalt therapies. She maintains a systems-based perspective and sees the human experience as a continuous reciprocal interaction between the elements that lie within us and those that exist in our external environments. In this way, the multiple cultures that have influenced our upbringings are inextricably linked to our development and our unique experiences and sense of self.

Earning complementary degrees in Psychology, Holistic Counseling, and Applied Behavior Analysis reflects the value Lauren places on utilizing different, often even seemingly opposite perspectives, to gain comprehensive insights. She believes that we are wisest when we can see both the microscopic and the macroscopic nature of things, when we can be both analytic and holistic, and when we see as much value in our weaknesses as we do in our strengths.

Lauren believes that it is mana, a Polynesian and Melanesian concept referring to spiritual strength, that fuels human resilience, healing, and growth. A critical part of all therapy is minimizing the stress that can diminish our experience of mana while establishing ways to connect with the mana that is accessible to all of us. Lauren strives to optimize her own experience of mana by engaging in mindfulness practices such as writing, yoga, time spent in water, and connecting with all forms of nature – including human beings!