FOUNDERS
Meet Team Chaos
Our passion and mission is to help people learn how to manage the complex situations they face and to offer educational resources about chaos and complexity as it manifests in personal and professional lives. Please email us if you would like a consultation on your situation.
Jo Vanderkloot
LCSW, BCD
MY SPECIALIZATION IS HELPING CLIENTS understand and resolve the complex issues they face as individuals and within their families and social networks. At the heart of my approach is a deep understanding of the way the family system affects the behavior, feelings and wellbeing of all its members.
Problems can seem overwhelming and insurmountable when people do not understand the way family systems work. I help clients identify the roles being played by individual family members and other significant people in their lives, and the way those roles are interwoven and affect everyone involved. In complex families, which are those with many illnesses and other problems, it is difficult for one member to change even their own behavior because all the other members do more of what they usually do to keep the family in balance and preserve the status quo. This dance of interconnectedness happens even when family members are not communicating. Whether I am working with an individual or many members of the family, my focus is broad enough to see what is happening in the family as a whole, thus enabling me to protect and guide each person.
My early years in a neighborhood clinic in the South Bronx gave me invaluable experience working with extremely chaotic families in an equally chaotic social setting. I have taught courses on chaotic systems at NYU School of Social Work, Smith College, and the Seton Hall Psychology Doctoral Program and have held workshops in this field nationally, and I am an adjunct associate professor at NYU (Ret.) I have been practicing in New York City and Warwick for the past 30+ years.
Judy Kirmmse
MA
MY LOVE OF LITERATURE AND WRITING LED me to major in English at Wilson College in Chambersburg, PA, and then to pursue a master’s degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. My academic background proved valuable in various positions I held over the years, as teacher of composition for Old Dominion University based at the Groton/New London Submarine Base in Groton, CT; as editor at Sonalysts, Inc. in Waterford, CT; and as the affirmative action officer/executive assistant to the president and later also as the Title IX coordinator and staff ombudsman at Connecticut College, New London, CT.
Early in my career at Connecticut College, I met Jo Vanderkloot, who is a graduate of the college. In addition to my job there, I began to collaborate with her and her partner, Myrtle Parnell (both family therapists): we consulted with businesses and organizations helping them find solutions to structural problems that often related to race relations. We began to explore the use of systems thinking, a primary approach used in family therapy, as a tool for understanding larger societal issues. Our research also branched into the new sciences, and we found that all these areas were mutually reinforcing. We taught our methods in brief but intensive between-semester courses for several years at Connecticut College. I also drew from my growing background in this area to help academic and staff departments at the college surmount the challenges they faced.
Now retired from Connecticut College, I am focusing full-time on sharing our approach for resolving complex problems in families, the workplace, and in society at large as broadly as possible.
