Healing Relationships, Promoting Wellness

HOPE seeks to heal broken relationships, whether with one's self or others. HOPE not only focuses on mental, emotional, and relational health, but also on physical, social, and spiritual health, on whole-body wellness.

The Mission

I created HOPE Couple and Family Therapy to serve individuals, couples, and families who are dealing with illness and trauma. Whether physical (such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, etc.) or mental (such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, stress, etc.), HOPE focuses on healing relationships that have been damaged by these illnesses and traumas.

The Services

With a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy, specialized education in Medical Family Therapy, and over 15 years of experience working with those who are trying to handle both physical and mental struggles, you as clients will receive focused attention, warm compassion, and all the expertise I can offer.

Services are scheduled by appointment. For information regarding scheduling and fees, please call 6672174235 or email hopecoupleandfamily@gmail.com. You are also welcome to contact HOPE Couple and Family Therapy through this website.

Individual, Couple, and Family Therapy

HOPE provides individual therapy that addresses the impact of illness, stress, isolation, grief and loss, and trauma. Individual therapy can also support relationship enrichment and adjustments to new life situations (i.e. new diagnosis, relationship, marriage, move, job, baby, teenagers, adult children, retirement, school, etc.).  

HOPE also provides couple therapy for couples from diverse backgrounds seeking reconciliation and/or communication skills, pre-marital or pre-engagement counseling, and divorced yet co-parenting ability. In addition, HOPE also encourages couple therapy for transitioning life events (i.e. new baby, teenagers, adult children out of the house, retirement, etc.) and routine relationship check-ins... think yearly physical except for your relationship. Just as there is no one manual for parenting, there is no one manual for dating and marriage. We all have different backgrounds, values, and personalities. Couple therapy can help two people, no matter how different, combative, or isolated, learn relational skills that will benefit them in most, if not all areas of life: dating and marriage, work place interactions, parenting, etc.. 

HOPE facilitates family therapy for various situations such as children struggling at home/school, parenting dilemmas, parent-child difficulties, sibling issues, grandparent-child problems, and single parent concerns. Family therapy can help future generations of families by breaking previous cycles of distress, conflict, and broken relationships. Self-awareness and growth tend to be more rapid with family therapy than individual therapy. 

Medical Family Therapy

Medical family therapy is couple and family therapy for individuals, couples, and families who are dealing with physical illnesses. For those who are struggling to handle the diagnoses of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, brain and spinal injuries, and any other debilitating and stressful physical illness, medical family therapy helps you and your social support, or lack of social support, manage the illness better. Illnesses often strain relationships among friends and family, especially couples, creating stressful situations and environments for everyone involved. Medical family therapy seeks to heal those relationships and promote wellness for those struggling under the burden of illness.  

EMDR for Trauma

In addition, those dealing with historical or recent trauma may find relief from symptoms with EMDR, a type of therapy that treats symptoms of anxiety and trauma.

Here is an excerpt from https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/

"EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.  Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal.  EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.  When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound.  If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain.  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.  EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes.  The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health.  If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering.  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.  Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes."

About Maya

My name is Mayuri Thomas, nicknamed Maya, and I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy and a specialty in Medical Family Therapy. I am passionate about relationships and continually seek to learn and grow from my clients. 

I married the love of my life in 2016 and moved from California to Maryland. In 2023, we welcomed our baby girl into our world with great pleasure and happiness. As the youngest of three, I enjoy friends and family time, reading books and watching movies, and playing all kinds of fun games in and out of the home. Even though young at heart, I have lived a rollercoaster-kind-of-life and especially cherish moments of contentment, peace, and connection to others and the world around me.