Alive and WellCenter for Healing Office line(856) 395-9536 REBUILD FROM HERE

About Alive and Well Center for Healing

Your Work Turns on What Happens Between Us

You get halfway into the thing you actually came here to say, and then you stop and check my face to see what it just cost you.

Nothing happens to my face. I’m still in the chair, and I’d like the rest of it.

That’s the moment nobody thinks to describe afterward, and it’s the one doing the most work, because you’ve almost certainly told some version of this before to somebody who flinched, or fixed it, or turned it around until it was about them, and your body took a lesson from that.

In this room it goes another way, and your body takes a lesson from that too, and enough of those in a row will change what you believe you can say out loud to the person you go home to.

Teresa Pressley's counseling office in Blackwood, New Jersey

Most of Your Answers About Forgiveness Arrived Before You Did

At the heart of my practice is the belief that all healing is divine, and that is my own conviction, arrived at over a long time, and it governs how I prepare for our hour and what I’m listening for once we’re in it.

My work runs on biblical principles, and I ask the Holy Spirit into my part of it, into what I notice and what I say next and what I have the sense to leave alone.

Your own belief system came in with you, whatever shape it’s in, because everybody arrives holding something about what they’re owed, what forgiveness costs, and whether a person can genuinely change, and most of that got settled long before you had a vote in it. So we look at what it’s been doing to your marriage and your family and your sense of what’s still available to you, and we follow where it leads.

Everything You Do Is Doing Something for You

Whatever you keep doing to the people closest to you, or to yourself, however little sense it makes when you say it out loud to a stranger, it’s accomplishing something for somebody, and until we find out what, you’ll keep doing it.

Plenty of people tell me early on that I’m the last resort, and I take that seriously enough to be honest with them about what this is going to ask of them, because heart change is the slow part and the real part of it, and I want the work we do together to be sustainable, which usually means going slower at the front end than you’d like.

How I came to work this way is its own story, and it doesn’t begin with me knowing what I was doing.

Teresa Pressley smiling in front of a leaf mural

Teresa Pressley, MA, LMFT, ACS

About Teresa Pressley, LMFT

Teresa here! My fascination with helping hurting people found me more than 30 years ago when I discovered my gifts in service to others in the church.

If I am being completely honest, at that time I found myself ill-equipped to manage some of the struggles God’s people were facing.

This inspired me to become a Christian mental health professional to gain the knowledge and skills needed to integrate faith-based and clinical practices. This intersection allows me to serve individuals seeking spiritual knowledge, wisdom, and maturity, in the midst of mental, emotional and relational challenges.

So, I have a unique vantage point to relate to church culture and leadership challenges, as well as theological and spiritual insights.

I draw from several evidence-based theories, including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), attachment theory, psychodynamic therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

These frameworks allow me to tailor our work to your specific needs, goals, and life story.

In preparation for this work, I earned my Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Liberty University, and my bachelor’s in biblical studies from Cairn University.

I gained 6 years of experience working in private practice at the Center for Christian Counseling and Relationship Development, before embarking on my own private practice, Alive and Well Center for Healing, in December of 2025.

My training and certifications include:

  • EMDR Trained
  • Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Trained
  • Certified Life Coach (CLCI)
  • Certified Prepare/Enrich Facilitator
  • Co-author of “Self-Care Is Scriptural”

When I am not working, you can usually catch me doing Pilates, Zumba, singing, line dancing, traveling or spending quality time with my family.

I have done the hard work of marriage, raising children and being an awesome grandmother, all while leading ministry and pursuing work-life balance throughout many years of training and preparation. I am here on purpose, and I am ready to be on your team.

Start With One Conversation

Here’s the ask, and I’ll make it plainly, because that’s how I do most things.

Write to aliveandwelltherapy@gmail.com or call the office line at (856) 395-9536, begin wherever the story begins for you, and we’ll put a consultation on the calendar and be straight with each other about what this work would ask of you.

I’ve sat down with people who arrived certain that nothing was left worth sitting down for, and I’d count it a privilege to sit down with you.

Two lattes side by side on a wooden tray

Bring Your House Back Together

A house divided against itself can’t stand. You’ve been living inside the proof of that for a while now, and somewhere along the way you stopped expecting the rest of the sentence to be true.

The rest of it is true. A house with two people standing on the same side of it will hold up under things that would have flattened it before. That is the whole aim of the work: get the two of you on the same team, and then let the two of you go after the actual problem.

When you and I talk, I’ll tell you plainly what I make of it. I’d rather be useful to you than agreeable.

Start With One Email

Write to me at aliveandwelltherapy@gmail.com, and we’ll set up a consultation.