About Jennifer
Jennifer Forbes is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in Illinois. She has practiced for 14 years and founded Seed of Hope Counseling Services to offer steady, experienced care. Jennifer brings a practical, straightforward style to sessions and aims to make therapy understandable for busy parents.
She uses clear, goal-oriented methods to address anxiety, stress, grief, and relationship concerns. In sessions she listens first, then helps people set simple, realistic steps they can follow between meetings.
Background and approach
Parents often appreciate her focus on concrete strategies for sleep, parenting strain, and family conflict. Jennifer’s background includes both nonprofit and personal-sector work since 2009. She has built community programs for crisis and trauma response, and served on Illinois clinical committees focused on behavioral health system improvements.
That mix of direct clinical work and program development shapes her practical approach. Her training started at Northern Illinois University, where she earned a Bachelor’s in Psychology and a Master’s in Applied Family and Child Studies with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy. She is a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapist (AAMFT).
In session, Jennifer blends client-centered conversation with structured tools from cognitive and solution-focused approaches. She also draws on narrative techniques and motivational interviewing to help people clarify values, repair communication, and manage addictive patterns or trauma reactions. The work is collaborative and paced to match each person’s needs.
How Jennifer's Approaches Work Online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and building a strong working relationship. The therapist follows the person's lead, reflects what they say, and helps them find their own solutions; this approach is useful for stress, relationship worries, and self-esteem concerns.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions interact. It offers clear tools and exercises to change unhelpful thinking and behavior, which can help with anxiety, sleep problems, and depression.
Motivational Interviewing is a short, practical way to increase motivation for change. It helps people weigh pros and cons and find personal reasons to follow through on goals like reducing addictive behaviors or making lifestyle shifts.
Choosing an approach is a team decision. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, try methods that match their needs, and adjust as progress unfolds. That makes therapy feel purposeful and tailored rather than one-size-fits-all.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video lets people work face-to-face when schedules allow. Phone sessions need less bandwidth and can fit into a work break. Live chat and messaging let clients check in between sessions or use shorter, written check-ins when that format fits better. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around family and work obligations.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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