Awakening Connection Counseling

Charla Magruder

Education/Training

• M.S., Oklahoma State University

• Licensed Professional Counselor

• Certified Imago Relationship Therapist (CIRT)

  • The CIRT certification requires over 90 hours of relationship training, participation in an Imago couples/singles workshop, serving as an assistant in an Imago Getting The Love You Want (GTLYW) couples workshop, 6 months of supervision, and a passing score on a final evaluation of a recorded video facilitating a clinical couple in dialogue.

  • Including me, there are 3 CIRTs in Centre County. One of our local CIRTs offers Imago GTLYW couples workshops as well as Imago Keeping the Love You Find (KTLYF) singles workshops. Click here to learn more about local Imago workshops.

Services Offered

• Couples Therapy

• Individual Therapy

My Treatment Approach

I approach clients with warm appreciation, interactive curiosity, prudent truth, insightful precision, and sometimes humor. My top therapeutic priority is to cultivate a safe therapeutic relationship with my clients. Therapeutic relational safety serves as a grounding container, which (a) gives your defenses permission to relax and (b) creates space for your growth and healing. As a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist (CIRT) with over seven years of clinical experience, I integrate a humanistic approach and multicultural sensitivity to understand people more deeply from the lens of our families, cultures, and relationships. Being a CIRT empowers me with a theoretical foundation to deeply understand and intuit the ways we learn and utilize defenses to adapt to challenges and wounds. I enjoy helping couples and individuals understand themselves and to envision and create deeper and safer connections.

Who I Work with

I work with couples and individuals wanting to improve their relationships as well as individuals wrestling with life transitions, anxiety, depression, or trauma. For individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I often use Prolonged Exposure Therapy techniques, which includes thorough psychoeducation about PTSD and trauma reactions.

How I Work with Couples

For couples, I utilize Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) to guide you and your partner into attuning with appreciation, reflective listening, summarizing, validating, empathizing. In IRT, we call this structured type of safe communication “dialoguing”. I practice and teach these techniques by introducing couples to dialogue, and I offer Imago-based psychoeducational guidance to empower you and your partner to understand your relationship wounds, adaptive defenses, and relational needs. My introduction and facilitation of “dialogue” will empower you and your partner to learn to cultivate relational safety in simple, specific, and practical ways. This becomes the safe container that creates permission for your (and your partner’s) defenses to soften within your relationship. This practice I will teach you, “dialoguing,” is simple, although not necessarily easy.

How I Work with Individuals

For individuals, I utilize IRT to attune to you with appreciation, reflective listening, summarizing, validating, and empathizing. I am able to offer Imago-based psychoeducation to help you navigate your relationships skillfully, develop a clearer understanding of recurring themes, and interdependency within your stories and experiences. This is the foundation of how I will cultivate safety in our therapeutic relationship. For those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I often use Prolonged Exposure Therapy techniques, which includes thorough psychoeducation about PTSD and trauma reactions.

What is Imago?

Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT) is an evidence-based relationship therapy that teaches you and your partner to (a) transform conflict into opportunities for healing and growth and (b) maximize relational safety and clarity, which gives your (and your partner’s) defenses permission to relax. Grounded in quantum physics, IRT acknowledges the fact that we all pulsate energy that is dialogically interdependent and interconnected.

The Latin word “Imago”-meaning image-refers to the “unconscious image of familiar love.”  Our parents/“good enough care takers” are the first to introduce us to being in relationship. We use those parents/“good enough care takers” relationships as blueprints for how we experience, and learn to receive, love and connection (or disconnection). What we find is a frequent connection between frustrations and experiences in adult relationships and early childhood experiences. Through IRT, couples can learn to understand each other’s feelings and “childhood wounds” more empathically, allowing them to heal themselves and their relationships so they can move toward more “Conscious relationships.”

To learn more about IRT, click here.
To see Dr. Harville Hendrix, a co-founder of IRT, facilitate IRT with a couple, click here.

Personal Snippets

A fun fact about me is that I had the opportunity to visit Sigmund Freud’s (widely considered the father and founder of psychoanalysis) final home, (a) where his desk and world-famous psychoanalytic couch lie, and (b) which is open to the public in London at the Freud Museum. I enjoy music, exploring cooking/food and nutrition, practicing meditation, and dancing with my husband.

Let's embark on awakening your connection and personal growth together. I curiously await learning more about you and your world(s).