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meet our therapists
Maria Maria Ciupe, MA, LPC, received her Master's degree from Wheaton College and is a Licensed Professional Counselor. Maria has previous experience working with young people with emotional, attachment, abuse and abandonment issues, as well as working with adults and families at a community counseling center. Maria works full-time in ECFA’s Wheaton and Chicago offices providing individual, couple, and family therapy. She sees her areas of clinical strength as grief and loss/bereavement, personal and spiritual growth, anxiety, depression, family dynamics, communication, abuse, and working with individuals with physical disabilities and their families. When asked about counseling, Maria states, "Counseling is about bringing healing, restoration and hope. It is about growing both personally and relationally and becoming the unique persons we were created to be."
Gay Gay Lynn Patton, MA, LPC, received her Master's of Clinical Psychology from Wheaton College, and is credentialed as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Board Certified Professional Christian Counselor. She works part-time at ECFA Counseling Centers in the Wheaton office doing individual therapy across all age groups, as well as couples therapy, family therapy, and parent coaching. Gay's approach is often to use evidence-based treatments. For example, when appropriate, she uses an approach for parent coaching which is proven to change parent-child interaction patterns and improve the quality of the parent-child relationship. Also, she is certified in Prepare/Enrich premarital and marital counseling, and is interested in relationship reconciliation and conflict regulation within families. She believes it is possible for everyone to tap into their God-given creative nature to find new ways of coping with traumatic life experiences, and also to begin recapturing their true identities. When asked about counseling, Gay states, "For me, the goal of counseling is to facilitate processes of renewal and also deep restoration of hope with souls that are weary and wounded."