Laura halford

Laura  is a highly skilled, deeply compassionate therapist whose approach is  warm, supportive,  direct and inquisitive. She  brings 30 years of both inpatient and outpatient mental health and substance abuse counseling experience to her work, including time in her career at the  esteemed Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California.  Laura currently works as a Director in a private outpatient center.

Laura utilizes a holistic approach to emotional and mental well being.  She  is passionate about  professionals and their partners and families, drawing from Gottman Method Relationship Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, EMDR, Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing and Emotionally Focused Therapy.  

She is a third-generation therapist, mentored by her late grandfather, a  psychiatrist whose practice in Orange County and Hemet, California  exposed her to the healing effects of meditation, nutrition, and group  therapy as a basis for healing including recovery from substance abuse. Her father was a devoted social worker  in community mental health in Southern California and Spokane,  Washington, and before retiring after many years of work as a school counselor. 

A Navy Reserve veteran, Laura has extensive experience supporting recovery for Pilots, first responders and military  personnel, both active and veteran with combat trauma.  She ran a pilot support group for 16 years as a member of the HIMS team that helped pilots get back to work after after going through treatment.  As a business owner and a director she is driven and visionary, which has enabled her to develop an acute and intuitive sense of fellow professional people and cultural trends.  She balances her professional life with her family obligations which  includes supporting her young adult son who is working on his four year degree.

Through a couple decades of counseling executives, high-profile individuals, and others of significant responsibility, she has developed a pragmatic, humorous, and collaborative approach, working to get to the root  of problem-sustaining behavior and thinking in order to drive more  effective methodologies in work and home life. Drawing from Napoleon  Hill’s 17 success principles, she maintains a “break it down" approach to managing complex problems. She also invests time in training  therapists in mindful wellness and life balance as she supervises those  gaining their credentials in the clinic she founded in Bellevue.

Laura began her counseling career in 1989 working in Seattle based treatment programs where her focus was on helping people develop insight into the aspects that undergird addictive behaviors. She became interested in the connection with family of origin influences and the central role they play in managing pain, stress and discomfort as well as how these influences play a role in partner selection.  This led to her choice of graduate school, which was steeped in studying systems in the family and the workplace.

Laura graduated from Bastyr’s  Leadership Institute of Seattle in applied behavior science in 2001. After completing hours for her licensed mental health counselor designation, she began her private practice in 2004. Her  post-graduate work has included studying Dialectical Behavioral Therapy,  Gottman Method Relationship Counseling, Somatic Experiencing, and recovery from PTSD with veterans and  others recovering from trauma, and she is currently working to complete  training to enhance her work with couples seeking a collaborative  divorce.

Laura founded Eastside Center for Family in 2011, a family-based  treatment and counseling clinic for all ages in Bellevue, Washington. The clinic emphasizes  wellness within entrepreneurial, high tech, and executive family systems, requiring an understanding of the need to maintain high  productivity without losing the heart and soul of one’s self or the  family unit. She believes in unifying families by providing multiple  counseling services under one roof. In her current professional studies,  she continues to research and learn about trauma effects and the  healing power of appreciative inquiry, and values greatly a philosophy  of mindfulness, compassion, and empathy in all counseling work.