Adult Counseling
You will learn to identify how your thoughts, feelings and actions relate to one another. This will help you understand how thinking patterns are often the biggest cause of emotional suffering. Learning about your thinking patterns will allow you to change them which results in being able to change the way you feel. In turn, you can begin engaging in positive and healthy behaviors that will boost your mood. Remember the hamster wheel I talked about earlier where your mind is racing with overwhelming thoughts that lead you to feel stressed, anxious, panic, depressed? Well, these changes in mood and behavior will also help your mind to get off the wheel so your mind can finally be at rest. You will learn techniques to help you maintain your progress and decrease the likelihood of returning to old, unhealthy habits that maintained your pain and suffering.
Pre-Adolescent/Adolescent Counseling
When working with pre-adolescents and adolescents, I not only use a cognitive-behavior therapy approach, but I also help to bridge the gap in communication and emotional distance between parent and child. It can be very painful and frustrating for a parent to watch their child struggle emotionally and mentally. As much as a parent would love to jump right in and help, how to intervene is often a mystery. Parents will do the best they can with what they know while the child can still often end up feeling misunderstood. Parents who struggle to understand their child will gain support in learning about what their child is experiencing as well as how to effectively help their child work through their challenges. In treatment, your child will learn to build confidence in their ability to effectively communicate their needs and wants in order to advocate for themselves. An increase in understanding of your child’s mental health often leads to increase in patience between the parent and the child.