Counseling Approaches

Through fostering a dynamic interpersonal relationship between client and therapist, psychodynamic therapy helps clients gain greater insight into their lives and current challenges by facilitating a deep understanding of the impacts of their emotions, thoughts, early-life experiences, beliefs, and perceptions on present-day behaviors. Together, the client and therapist will uncover recurring patterns in a client's behavior to replace destructive stress-management and coping tactics with healthy behaviors.

Person-centered therapy empowers and motivates a client through the therapeutic process based on a framework that believes the client is the best expert of their own health and well-being. Placing a high value on building a positive client/therapist relationship rooted in unconditional positive regard,, person centered therapy instills effective communication techniques, strengthens self-awareness, and cultivates self-acceptance.

Internal Family Systems therapy is rooted in the idea that clients cannot be fully understood separate from their external influences—family, society, culture. It is a therapeutic modality that believes each individual is made up of "parts" and aims to understand all the parts of the self to heal. A practical approach to trauma, Internal Family Systems is a client-led process that utilizes somatic experiencing and is designed to cultivate self-compassion, self-acceptance, calm, and connectedness.

A highly effective approach to trauma, Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy combines talk therapy techniques with mindfulness practices to orient a client towards cultivating presence in the moment-to-moment experience. Clients can expect to increase self awareness in mind and body, develop a non-judgmental attitude, and build self compassion. This technique incorporates meditation, mindfulness, and breathing techniques.

Reality therapy focuses on examining a client's present-day situation rather than past experiences and supports client-led solutions to current issues. By centering the therapeutic process on the present-day reality of a client's experience and understanding the client's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors based on that reality, reality therapy helps cultivate an empowered self-responsibility for one's behavior and its outcomes.

Gestalt therapy examines a client's present-moment experience in the context of their entire life. This therapeutic modality focuses on the "here and now" by cultivating an awareness of what is true at a given moment. Gestalt therapy promotes awareness of one's thoughts, feelings, and actions through a body-centered counseling approach that prioritizes somatic awareness as a method for understanding the true self.

A direct problem-solving mode of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on identifying a client's thoughts and thinking patterns and the words and language they use in communicating with themselves and others, aiming to increase awareness of negative, self-defeating, and inaccurate thinking behavior. Rooted in the theory that human perception determines human behavior, this therapeutic modality offers a methodology for changing a client's thoughts and self-narrative to create positive behavioral change.

Pia Mellody's Model for Co-dependency, Trauma & Recovery places high value on examining early childhood development and trauma related to imperfect parenting, traumatic events, and/or abusive family systems. This therapeutic modality is insight and expressive-oriented, focusing on boundary work, reparenting, and recovery. It is an effective approach for managing addiction; substance abuse; physical, sexual, emotional, and mental abuse; and supporting trauma recovery.

A highly effective approach for working through and recovering from traumatic events, somatic work focuses on the internal body-mind (soma) experience to increase a client's present-moment awareness, physical sensations, and experience of self. Inner work oriented, therapy might include mindfulness practices and breathwork to facilitate a client's understanding of body boundaries and boundaries in relationship. Together, the client and therapist will explore developmental injuries and past and current traumas to release those traumas and heal.

Family Systems Theory views the family as a singular emotional unit, and thus Family Systems Therapy works to establish a differentiation of a client's self from the family as a whole. Together, the client and therapist will examine the family's emotional system and any familial patterns of emotional expression, family projections, and multigenerational issues. Therapy will provide insight into family functioning and/or dysfunction and an understanding of family communication patterns and how to establish healthier and more effective ones.

Grounded in energy medicine, this therapeutic modality operates from the theory that all human beings are connected through a universal Life Energy and incorporates a client's spiritual life and energy into the therapeutic process. The Satir method examines a client's family relationship structures and living dynamics to improve communication, self awareness, and relationships. Applicable to individual, marriage, and whole family work, therapy will increase a deeper awareness of the client's self, including individual actions, emotions, and perceptions, to promote healing and transformation. Hope for change is a critical component to the success of Satir Transformational Systemic Therapy.

The Gottman Method is an approach to marriage and relationship therapy that focuses specifically on a couple's communication. It integrates research-based changes in communication style, including language and gestures, to eliminate disarming conflictual verbal communication. Guided by the therapist, clients will learn positive, effective methods of successful communication by placing a high value on cultivating understanding, respect, intimacy, and empathy in their relationship.

Transformational counseling is a therapeutic modality designed to guide a client through a uniquely challenging event or life circumstance of such significance that they struggle to cope with it independently. Transformational counseling focuses on psychological growth and behavior change by recognizing a client's thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors to transform them into healthier ones. Therapy might include a blend of talk therapy alongside work with the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) and Enneagram personality typing systems, as well as mindfulness techniques.

Insight therapy is a client-centered modality of talk therapy that fosters a deeply trusting relationship between client and therapist and is designed to guide a client towards a deeper understanding of themselves and their patterned thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Guided by the therapist, therapy may consist of a client recalling various instances from their life, past and present-day, to uncover patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to understand and replace destructive patterns with healthy ones.