Jennifer Forbes
Practical family-focused therapy with compassion
- Credentials
- LMFT
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed in
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Jennifer
Jennifer Forbes is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) based in Illinois with 14 years of clinical experience. She founded Seed of Hope Counseling Services and has spent over a decade helping individuals, couples, and families navigate hard times. Her background includes nonprofit and personal-sector work, program development, and leadership in community mental health settings.
She takes a practical, compassionate approach in session. Jennifer listens first, then helps clients identify small, achievable steps.
Background and approach
Conversations are straightforward and focused on what matters most to each person and family. Sessions often cover relationship challenges, parenting concerns, grief, anxiety, and recovery from trauma. Her professional history includes program design for crisis and trauma services and participation on regional clinical committees in Illinois.
Jennifer trained at Northern Illinois University, earning a Bachelor of Psychology and a Master of Science in Applied Family and Child Studies with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy. Jennifer uses a mix of research-backed methods to match the work to client goals. She draws from client-centered practices, cognitive behavioral techniques, motivational interviewing, narrative work, and solution-focused strategies.
This mix supports practical problem solving and helps people build clearer paths forward. Parents who are worried about behavior, routines, or blended family transitions will find direct support for everyday challenges. Jennifer aims to create space for honest conversation about parenting, intimacy, stress, and life changes while helping families make realistic changes that fit their values.
Approaches that guide online family and parenting work
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and building trust first. The therapist follows the familys lead, helps people name their priorities, and supports decisions that fit their values. This approach is useful for parents who want a nonjudgmental space to talk through concerns.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions. It gives concrete tools to change unhelpful patterns and is often used for anxiety, depression, sleep issues, and stress that affect family life.
Motivational Interviewing helps people find their own reasons to change. Its brief and practical, and it can be useful when someone feels stuck about parenting choices, recovery, or lifestyle shifts.
Finding the right approach is part of therapy. The therapist will work with each family to decide which methods to try first and will adjust based on how things are going. That collaboration helps match techniques to goals and comfort levels.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging. These options let families fit sessions around work, school, and caregiving. Remote work can make it easier to get support during busy weeks, try short check-ins between sessions, or keep therapy consistent when schedules change.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Motivational Interviewing
A way of working through mixed feelings about change without being pushed. The therapist helps you weigh things up and find your own reasons, which often makes a difficult decision feel less stuck.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- 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
Next step
Talk to Jennifer
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point