Who am I
My name is Melody Pippel,
married and mother of a spirited son and daughter.
I started as a teacher in primary education. There I discoverd my strenght lies in recognizing a child's needs for growth and how I could foster this through play and creative materials. Unfortunaly, with today's large class sizes, it proved impossible to offer evry child what they trult needed. That's when I started training to become an Child and Adolesecent Therapist.
Meanwhile my husband en I had two children: a daughter and then a son. We quickly noticed that our daughter was a sensitive gril. She was highly sensitive to stimuli and the atmosphere, and allergic to various things. This caused her to quickly become overstimulated. Besides her sensitivity, she als quickly demonstrated a very strong will. At nine months old, we started using sign language because she could get so angry when she couldn't express herself. Our son also turned out to have a strong temperament wich often overshadowed his sensitivity. Two completly different children, each with a different approach of parenting. As a parent and therapist I searched for a way to understand what worked and what didn't, and the search turned out to be primarily about discovering the needs behind their behavior. Partly for this reason Istarted training as a highly sensitive and strong-willed specialist. In my practice I see many children who experience intense emotions and parents who are trying to cope with them.
Both I and my children have had some traumatic experiences. I myself have a metabolic disorder, for wich I saw many doctors as a child. My daughter broke her arm with a very nasty fracture, wich required traumatic surgery. These experiences led me to specialize in trauma treatment.
Both children and adults now come to my practise with many more issues besides high sensitivity or trauma. With eacht issue, verious protective mechanisms are naturally activated, and it often proves challenging to tolerate the associated negative feelings and turn them into positive ones. So please feel free to contact me for a dree introductory consultation to discuss how I can help.
Freelancer at Praktijk Valida
in addition to my own practise, I also work as a freelancer at a colleague's practice: Praktijk Valida. At Praktijk Valida, I also work as a child therpaist and family therapist, but often with complex issues, with a trajectory that typically lasts six months to a year. For my own practice, I work with individuals and often short-term programs, averaging three months, to maintain a pleasant variety.
The name Infini and the logo
Infini is French for Infinity, or infinite. I chose this name because, in my opinion, everything is connected. I deliberately chse an infinity symbol with four loops because of the symbolism of a family, in wich veryone is connected. But the four loops also represent the four parts of ourselves that I work with: physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. My training is in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), But i've also completed various additional courses, so my strenght now lies in working with play and creative materials, and utilizing the imagination and the body. The lotus flower represents how I help a child regain balance in al four areas, based on consciously feeling and experiencing what's happening in their own body and learning to tolerate and regulate it. A lotus flower grows from the mud toward the light. In the same way I help families escape negative spirals and grow in connection toward positivity. Teaching parents how to support their family is therefore essential in treatment.