Each week on “Around Town,” our host talks to members of the First Coast community who are making an impact in their part of town. Today our host, Sarah Olson, spoke with Larry Baumgartner.
Larry Baumgartner
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist at Best Hope Therapy
Website Address: BestHopeTherapy.com
What’s your favorite way to get involved in the community?
Helping those less unfortunate such as volunteering at a food bank and handing out food to the homelesll of daily living resources.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?
Relationships are everything! If more people can see the type of person you are. others will want to connect with you.
Transcript:
Sarah: Welcome back to another episode of Around Town. I am your host, Sarah Olsen, and today joining me is a very special man, Mr. Larry Bumgarner with Best Hope Therapy, somebody that we might need in the future. Yeah. Welcome to the show.
Larry: Thank you so much.
Sarah: Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. First, you are a licensed marriage counselor, licensed marriage and family therapist, as is the proper title.
Sarah: So what’s the difference between a marriage therapist and say, just a regular therapist?
Larry: So, so marriage and family therapist? They actually married. In fact, my therapist actually has specialized training in relationships, and we’ve gone to school for a degree in marriage and family therapy. And, we actually do lots, lots of training, kind of behind the scenes or doing that kind of thing where as a counselor, they have a lot of experience, kind of in individual work, whether it’s, you know, PTSD, whether it’s anxiety, it’s depression, but a licensed marriage and family therapist, somebody that has spent a lot of time in training, has a degree and is an expert and working with relationships.
Sarah: So something very specific.
Larry: Yes, exactly. Yes. You would go to a family practitioner. They can do everything head to toe. But you are specifically in the heart.
Sarah: Yes, exactly. Yep, yep. For the love for the couples and the relationships.
Larry: Yes. That’s what I’ve been doing for, I guess, my 11th year right now, helping folks. And I just I love it started over in, Tampa many years ago and then spent some time up north for a little bit, and we relocated to Saint Augustine.
Sarah: So I have an office in Palencia.
Larry: Yes. And, so we just we just we just love helping folks and, just just excited every day when I go to work and kind of talk with folks and kind of help them. It’s awesome.
Sarah: Do you have a specific approach you call supportive as a solution?
Larry: Yeah, yeah. So it’s a solution focused therapy.
Larry: And so one of the things that is really different about it is so in traditional therapy, I would say probably 97, 98% of all kind of talk therapy folks, whether they’re psychologist, whether they’re social workers or counselors, I kind of a lot of the conversation is just really about problems, right? As far as what’s going wrong and what’s not going well and, and this and this. And like, you just kind of like you walk in going, hopefully this is better and you walk I’ll going next session be better. But it’s kind to get your head scratching right. And so you don’t really you don’t talk about solutions in those sessions. You don’t talk about moving forward. You really don’t talk about change as far as to get to where you want to be or just talking about what you’re angry about.
Sarah: Right, exactly.
Larry: And so I kind of look at that as problem focus therapy.
Sarah: Okay.
Larry: Whereas what I do, it’s 180 degrees difference. It’s solution focused therapy. Sarah. So so the bottom line is we’re going to be talking about solutions. So when I mean solutions, it’s every relationship, every relationship that I see. They’ve had some past successes. Because where you’re at right now does not worry you. It always has been right down the aisle for them.
Sarah: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There was. Yes there. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Larry: And so and so in couples therapy too. Right. But but we look, we literally look for as far as when things were better, what was happening. What were you doing? What was your partner doing at that moment. So those are the solutions that in 2026 and beyond, we can do some of that stuff again. Right? I mean, if at a core, if you’re just a kind person and you’re respectful and all this kind of stuff, like it’s maybe that not there today. So we’re not going to focus on what’s not there. We’re going to focus on what you can do to build that again.
Sarah: Right, right.
Larry: And so we work with building solutions in that regard. And we also work toward where you want to be. Right? I mean, like if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, that’s called insanity, right?
Sarah: So it’s totally.
Larry: Yeah. Yep. So we have to make some changes. And so it’s, it takes two to tango in any relationship. So it’s a matter of, you know, I know when I, when I meet with couples, I always meet with each of them first.
Sarah: Separately.
Larry: Correct. Yep.
Larry: So I want to kind of see where their relationship kind of builds some rapport with them. And then like at the end of the session, I’ll say something like, what’s just one thing that you want to work on between now and that first marriage counseling or a couples therapy session? And so I want to come back to that session. I hold them accountable.
Sarah: Okay.
Larry: So I’m like, what’s new? What’s better, what’s different? What are you doing to get to where you want to be? And I always tell folks to, like, give yourself some grace. It’s not going to be perfect, right away.
Sarah: Right.
Larry: But then we focus on what it is that was able to be done. Right. So it’s almost like steps. So you’re not so overwhelmed with analysis paralysis. I have to throw everything out.
Sarah: Yes. We have to correct this day.
Larry: Yep. Yep. It’s a process. It’s baby steps. But the great thing about even those individual sessions is that when I’m having conversations with you, like you might say to yourself, gosh, I could do this, this is going to be a little bit of a thing. I know my partner has been asking about this, and then we come back the next week and I’m like, how did that go? Well, I tried it and here’s the response I got. Here’s the response that I got. And so we just kind of continue that positive momentum. And so that’s just the way we’re thinking about changing, common problems that people come to you with.
Larry: Yeah. So, we’re getting a lot of calls about just communication in general. Right. They’re just not speaking on the same terms. They’re not understanding each other. A lot of people these days are kind of waiting to respond instead of, like, just understanding and sitting there kind of in that conversation with their partners. So we kind of just take a step back and it’s like, let’s listen to our partners, right? I mean, let’s be present in the moment. That’s a huge thing, right? And I know life’s busy and all that kind of stuff, but just being president, knowing, like, where this relationship started and so on, so a city or so and so like, just like you’re the person you start you, you, you know, proper eye contact, body language, all that kind of stuff. So, communication is really huge. And the other thing is like, there’s some infidelity. So and I have been working specifically with infidelity for the past ten years. Yeah. For the past ten, 11 years. And then also just a lack of intimacy. So those kind of the things that I really kind of focus on, they are very, very raw to, to seek help when you need that. When is a good time for a couple to, you know, reach out to you?
Larry: I would say anytime they feel like just things are not the way they want them to be. Because we really we have a conversation and we talk a lot with love languages, but we’re going to have conversations about what you want to see, what you want, what you want to have different, your your wants, needs and desires. We’re want to talk about that. Just open that communication. And so as soon as there’s times where it’s like we’ve tried on our own, we haven’t been able to communicate to make this happen again. God give me contact me, let let us move forward. And so the best way to reach folks to, to reach me, Sarah, is through my website.
Sarah: Okay.
Larry: Which is besthopetherapy.com.
Sarah: Perfect.
Larry: Besthopetherapy.com. And there’s a section up there as far as contact us. You can just send me a quick message and say hi, I’d like to set something up and then we do a free 15 minute phone consultation just to make sure we’re a good fit. I can explain the process a little bit. The approach and a lot of folks are like, so let’s go to the sign up. You know that’s awesome, right? They can be virtual.
Sarah: Yeah.
Larry: Or virtual or in-person, like I said in my office, which I love helping folks in both ways.
Sarah: Definitely. Oh that’s fantastic. You’re serving the community, keeping marriages together.
Larry: Yes. Yes, they were very expensive, right?
Sarah: Speaking. Yeah.
Larry: And families there and children sometimes. And I will say is that it’s a lot cheaper to see a therapist and there is a divorce attorney. Okay. So very true. So I’d love to help you folks for sure.
Sarah: Well, and on that good point. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with the show. Is a pleasure talking to you and getting to know you more.
Larry: Thank you.
Sarah: And you can watch this and learn more about Larry and get all the things that he just rattled off at propertysolutionstv.com.
