Adults & Couples
Depending on the issue that is being considered we offer therapy thru individual counseling, marital counseling, and family counseling. We want to help you successfully address whatever may be holding you back from success in relationships, your work, your parenting, or your personal life. Whether these areas are conflict in an important relationship, or such things as depression or anxiety, our goal is to help you understand what is creating those experiences and be able to move past them.
If we are meeting individually we will need to get an understanding of the issue that you are facing and the background of that issue. We also want to learn about you as a whole, growing up years, experiences that impacted you, relationships that have been an important part of your life, your educational and vocational background, what you see as your strengths, gifts, and skills, along with what you see as your work areas. A thorough history helps us chart out a plan to address the areas of concern for you. At the conclusion of the initial consultation we will give you our perspective about your area of concern and how we would suggest it be addressed in therapy. There are times that we might suggest psychological testing to gain additional perspective and clarity on an issue. If this is a suggestion we will explain to you why we are suggesting it and what we want to be able to gain from it
What We Treat
Depression
Anger Management
Addictions
Premarital Counseling
Social Problems
Recovery from Affairs
Post Trauma Recovery
Infertility
Blended Families
Marital Conflict
Codependency
Mid Life Issues
Adoption Issues
Anxiety
Coping with Loss
Marital Counseling
Parenting
Vocational Directions
Addiction Recovery
Panic
Life Transitions
Men's Issues
Poor Self Concept
Intimacy Issues
Divorce Recovery
Domestic Violence
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Physical or Sexual Abuse as a Child
Children & Adolescents
We like to initially meet with you, the parents, to be able to get a thorough background and history so that we understand as much as possible about your child, the presenting problems, their strengths and work areas, and how the issue of concern has been dealt with to date. In addition we think that it is important for you to have an opportunity to meet us to make sure that we will be a good match for your child.
We may suggest a class of psychological testing called projective testing if it seems helpful to get more information about what is happening internally with your child. The Child’s Aperception Test (CAT) has pictures of people or animals in various situations that your child will tell stories about. The Draw a House, Tree, Person, Family (DAH, DAT, DAP, DAF) are drawing tests. The Sentence Completion Test (SCT) is a test where sentence stems are finished. The child projects onto the characters in the stories and drawings aspects of themselves that gives information about how they see themselves, other important people in their lives, circumstances that they are dealing with, and coping mechanisms that they use. This information helps us to develop a treatment plan and understand how we communicate effectively with them. If testing is done it takes between two and three session times to complete. Whether or not testing is done, an assessment of your child is made. Then a parent conference is scheduled to go over the testing with recommendations being made. If ongoing therapy is pursued our desire is not only to help your child, but also to help you help your child by developing parenting skills specific to your child
Younger children tend to be intimidated by family therapy and can feel all the adults are talking about them, and subsequently are more cautious and withdrawn. In cases where we work with children individually in play therapy we want to meet with parents after every few visits so that we can pass along what we are learning, how we are intervening with outcomes so that we can pass that on to you. In addition we need your feedback in order to see if what we are accomplishing in therapy translates to home, and to make necessary adjustments together to achieve progress as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
What We Treat
Anger: destructiveness, anger or rage, belligerence, defiance
Depression: social withdrawal, noncommunicativeness, poor motivation, lack of interest in most activity
Anxiety: Panic, unwilling to do important activities because of fear, perfectionistic, taking much longer to do homework than is necessary, difficulty falling asleep, biting nails, pulling hair or eyebrows out, rituals in behavior that are inflexible and cause trouble for the child.
School Problems: Underachiever, frequent conflict with peers, always negative about school, inconsistent grades (does well in classes they enjoy and fails or nearly fails in classes they do not like), aggression, blames others for their own shortcomings, stealing, being bullied or being a bully.
Family: Severe sibling rivalry, refusal to follow directions, not affected by punishments or consequences, withdrawal from the family, addiction to video games and has exaggerated responses when asked to stop playing, difficulty expressing feelings and ideas, makes threats towards others, makes frequent disparaging remarks about themselves.
Attention Deficit Disorder: Inattentive, accident prone, sensitive to sounds, visual stimuli, and how clothing feels, poor school performance despite appearance of being bright, not able to follow directions especially if given more than 2 directions at a time, socially out of sync with peers, emotional outbursts.
Physical, Sexual, or Emotional Child Abuse