About Holly Pechter-Walters Holly contemplates her relaxing office ambiance. B.A. - Bachelor of Arts from Alvernia College, Reading PA CAC II - Certified Addictions Counselor in Pennsylvania, USA NCAC II - Nationally Certified Addictions Counselor ICADC - Internationally Certified Addictions Counselor CCJS - Certified Criminal Justice Specialist CPC - Certified Pastoral Counselor Holly Pechter-Walters didn't expect to be a therapist. At Temple University in the late 1960s, she majored in Biology and minored in Psychology. And that minor really turned her off!! Although she did well in her psychology exams, she grew disenchanted by "all the conflicting theories." And she actually spent a lot more time playing guitar under a tree, or sitting up in that tree than she did in any classes. So, like many people of her generation, she dropped out of college... and became a traveling folk singer. Her travels sometimes took her in unexpected directions. While crewing on a sailboat headed for Jamaica, she discovered that the trip was really a drug run. Due to some power struggles amongst the crew, they found themselves lost at sea with little more than brown rice and some lemons to eat. After running aground on the Yucatan Peninsula – which just happened to be in the opposite direction across the Gulf of Mexico – they did finally land in Jamaica, having sailed for 28 days!! Looking back on it now, Holly figures the trip was a positive experience because it facilitated an important spiritual awakening. This is Holly, very early in her counseling career. She was waiting to go to the county prison support group, where she was a co-facilitator. A few months later, after traveling with several friends across parts of the US and Canada in a school bus, Holly settled in "West Bank" Minneapolis. She continued some folk performing, but eventually put most of her focus into designing, hand-stitching, and selling high-quality leather goods. But she missed living in Philadelphia's Germantown section, so she moved back East and opened a custom leather goods business in the city's South Street Renaissance Area. The full-time party atmosphere soon became too irritating, so Holly moved her shop to quaint West Chester, PA – where she then had street drunks wandering in to talk. Meanwhile, she was also exhibiting at numerous crafts and music festivals – where she seemed to attract more than her fair share of burnt-out addicts. It began to occur to Holly that she was starting to resent her paying customers interrupting her conversations about various life issues with troubled people. This became a conflict of interests between two types of creativity: manual craftsmanship versus assisting others in fine-tuning life's coping skills. "That was when I decided to go back to school. I finally remembered what I wanted to be when I grew up." During her several years in Chester County, in the mid-1970's, Holly got involved in a 12-Step recovery program in order to deal with her dysfunctional choices of addicted, emotionally unavailable boyfriends. In the early 1980's, she became certified as a pastoral counselor, and by the mid-1980's, she'd completed her undergraduate degree, double majoring in addictions counseling and criminal justice, at Alvernia College in Reading, PA. Years prior to even getting into recovery for her own codependency issues, Holly had defined addicts as "people who are very sensitive and creative – too sensitive to deal with the reality of the world they find themselves living in." And closing in on a quarter century of experience in the addictions field has not changed her perspective very much. Some of Holly's favorite clients are the ones other therapists have given up on as too difficult, or "not ready for recovery." Holly figures that "a difficult client is one who is arrogant, self-righteous, argumentative, very stuck in his/her dysfunctional personality and choice-making style." This is generally fixable, with the usual chemistry between Holly and these clients. In addition to her professional training and natural skills, it's Holly's style of relating, and ability to apply her own recovery program to every aspect of her own life, in combination with her willingness to take risks in sharing appropriate personal details, that makes her a talented therapist. She spent many years working as an addictions counselor for several inpatient and outpatient agencies, and along the way picked up an impressive array of certifications – in addictions, criminal justice, and pastoral counseling. But two things got in her way: the office politics, and being constrained to treat clients as if they were merely widgets on an assembly line. So, in late 1994, she opened her own private practice, and named it Healthy Responses in a Dysfunctional Society, and got it licensed in 1995. Holly serves clients with all kinds of addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex & love, gambling, spending, food, internet, etc.); ACOA and codependency issues; post-traumatic stress disorder, anger, anxiety, depression, and personality disorders; couples counseling (any gender combination) and family counseling; grief and loss issues; office politics; and issues arising from physical limitations and disabilities. Holly has a particular affinity for clients with CFIDS/FM/CMP (Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome / Fibromyalgia / Chronic Myofasial Pain), because she was diagnosed with this condition in 1990, and has developed lots of understanding and coping skills. Is that actually bamboo behind her?! A few years ago, Holly went looking for a house in a rural setting. She wanted a place that could accommodate her many pets – a hybrid wolf, several cats, and a variety of exotic birds. When she saw the partially wooded property with an historic house and beautiful old stone barn, nestled between a state park and the State Game-Lands in Upper Bucks County, she knew she had found her new home. This led to another important choice: should the barn be utilized for a horse, which Holly had dreamed of in her youth, or should it be the site for her private practice? Maturity and responsible decision-making won out, so Holly designed an office and waiting room in the old barn. "I guess I'm a grown-up now," she grins.