Our Team At Asheville Psychotherapy Services, PLLC:
Marc McKinnis, M.A., LCMHC
Marc is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in the State of North Carolina. He holds a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology from Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Counseling and Education, located in Portland, Oregon. Marc is no stranger to change himself, having moved around the country several times throughout his adult life to places such as New York City, San Francisco, Oahu, Hawaii, and Portland, Oregon. In 2010, he decided to move back to the east coast to settle down with his wife and start a family in beautiful Asheville, NC.
Marc has been providing counseling & psychotherapy services to the Asheville area for over ten years now. He started out working as a college counselor at A-B Tech Community College for several years in addition to seeing clients part-time in a private practice setting. Over the years, Marc discovered a true calling for working with clients in private practice. As a result, he chose to "follow his bliss" and created Asheville Psychotherapy Services, PLLC in the fall of 2015.
Marc is grateful to be able to devote his career to the work and the clients that he truly loves. Marc's therapy style interweaves a balance of theory and structure with spontaneous creativity much like that found in improvisational jazz. In addition, Marc's approach to therapy has been described as down to earth, compassionate, intuitive, and insightful.
“Marc really saved my life and prepared me for where my life is now. It’s a struggle, but one I am far better prepared for than when we first met, and a lot of this is due to his help and guidance. ”
“Marc has provided me with a clear understanding of how to navigate life’s challenges, while living a life of integrity. I consider his counseling a gift that will follow me throughout my life. ”
“Marc has a wonderful gift, the gift of empathy and healing. He is very perceptive, insightful and compassionate. He helped me through one of the most difficult periods of my life and helped me make several positive changes in my life. My self-esteem and confidence levels have improved greatly. Marc is truly a wonderful person and I feel very fortunate to have found him.”
Lara McKinnis, MS, MT-BC, FAMI
Lara is a nationally Board-Certified Music Therapist as well as a Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music Therapy with an emphasis in Counseling Psychology from Radford University, located in Radford, Virginia. Lara’s love of traveling and learning about diverse cultures propelled her to move around quite a bit throughout her career to places such as Montreal, Quebec, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Providence, and Durham, North Carolina. In 2010, along with her husband, she decided to move to Asheville to settle into this beautiful community.
Since then, Lara has been providing music therapy and psychotherapy services here in Asheville within the context of Hospice/Grief Services and private practice work. Throughout her career, Lara has worked to create holistic community-based care within schools, inner-city home-based care for adults, hospice settings, and other community outreach efforts. She has loved both the clinical and program development sides of her career. She started providing the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) within a private practice setting in 2007 as well as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 2018. In the fall of 2020, Lara decided to transition from her community-based hospice role to focus more on her private practice work with Asheville Psychotherapy Services, PLLC.
Lara is excited and grateful to leap more fully into private practice, as providing GIM and EMDR allows her to feel completely connected to her life’s greatest purpose and meaning. She loves people and has a palpable respect for the work that we all have the ability to do when we look under the surface to untangle thoughts, heal wounds, and realize more of our true selves.
“Lara is the kind of person who literally can make anyone feel comfortable. I am so grateful for the time that I had with her and the support that she provided as I did my work. I was scared to try GIM at first but it literally changed my life. I thought it would open up a can of pain that I wouldn’t be able to close. Instead, what I found was that it allowed me to move past the pain and feel better than I’d felt in years.”
“Lara is wonderful, compassionate, and so down to earth. She helped me to sift through years of abuse and trauma in a way that I could grasp onto and move through. I’m so grateful for the way that she provided information and for her endless analogies that always seemed to speak directly to what I was saying but also helped me to feel and see things in a new light.”
“Lara helped me to rediscover who I was after the death of my husband. I was so lost and had no compass for my life. I had never heard of GIM, but the process allowed me to move through my grief in a way that I didn’t think was possible. I thought that if I connected with the pain in my heart, I’d never find a way out. With GIM, I was able to not only connect with my grief, but also discover that I had everything I needed to help myself through the process. I am forever grateful to Lara and GIM.”