Services Offered by Our Counselors
All of our services are oriented around helping others grow. Some people come into counseling wanting a little extra help in achieving important goals (be they personal, relational or vocational), while others are more intensely in the pain of difficult patterns. Regardless of whether your distress is little or great we will be glad to walk with you in making sense of, and working through, whatever is getting in the way of you experiencing the degree of wellness you desire in your life.
In addition to what we describe on the About Us page, all of our services are undergirded by our understanding of personality types (or temperaments). Our desire for each person we work with is to help you become more fully whoever you are meant to be. So with each client, whether they feel instensely stuck or are just wanting a little extra coaching on their journey, we use our knowledge of the differing strengths and weaknesses of each personality type to help the person (or couple) in front of us to learn how to better capitalize on their strengths, and to better manage and have compassion for their weaknesses.
Individual, Couple and Family Counseling
The following are some of the kinds of issues we offer counseling for. While these topics do represent what many think of when they think of counseling (and we do help many people with these kinds of struggles), we believe people are more complex (and more important than) particular labels or symptoms. In other words, we do not define people by their struggles, but rather we seek to help them define themselves by who they truly are (i.e., a person of value, with certain personality characteristics, and a variety of strengths and weaknesses). So rather than being something that defines a person, we think that a list like below is best treated as a starting point for beginning to make sense of where one is at, as part of discovering where it is one wishes to go.
| Individual Topics | Topics Specific to | |
| Depression | Children and Teens | |
| Anxiety | Depression | |
| Biblical Guidance | Eating Disorders | |
| Pornography | ADHD | |
| Abuse | Developmental Disorders | |
| Aging | Sensory Integration | |
| Grief | Adoption Related | |
| Stress | Cutting | |
| Work/Career Related | Anger | |
| Life Transitions | Promiscuity | |
| Loneliness | Abuse | |
| Sexual Concerns | Night Terrors | |
| Low Self-Esteem | Acting Out | |
| Anger | Difficulties with Peers | |
| Eating Disorders | Bed Wetting | |
| Trauma | ||
| Relational Topics | Separation Anxiety | |
| Marital Conflict | School Related Anxiety | |
| Parenting | Step Families | |
| Communication | ||
| Premarital | ||
| Marriage Enrichment | ||
| Broken Trust | ||
| Peer Conflicts | ||
| Divorce/Remarriage |
Premarital and Marriage Enrichment Counseling
Premarital and Marriage Enrichment counseling both have in common the goal of seeking to discern places in the relationship that would be helpful to address, but are not (yet) pressing issues. In this sense both of these tend to be more proactively “preventative” approaches to relationship work. This kind of approach works well for couples who are already enjoying a decent level of relationship satisfaction, but have a sense that they may not be moving toward greater closeness as much as they would like to. For example, it can be tempting to “not rock the boat”, but the cost of always placing “no conflict” over a deepening relationship is often distancing and apathy. In relationships there will be some amount of disagreement and conflict with anyone we are truly close with. Conflict itself does not need to be the enemy of close relationships. But it is important to have the necessary tools to navigate conflict in constructive ways, where both parties can feel heard and understood, even in places of disagreement.
Premarital is of course more focused on preparing couples for the coming changes they will experience with entering into marriage together. But again there can be some overlap of topics and skills addressed in both Premarital and Marriage Enrichment counseling, such as: Personality Differences; Communication; Sex; Parenting; Finances; Religion; Family Background; Hobbies; Lifestyle Preferences; Career Choices & Goals.
As part of the goal of helping couples to spot growth areas before they become problems we sometimes utilize the PREPARE/ENRICH Program in our Premarital and Marriage Enrichment counseling. This is a well established, research based assessment tool that we use to pinpoint growth areas to focus on in the counseling process.
Couple's who are aware of the places where they get stuck relationally (e.g., having the same fight repeatedly, or consistently avoiding the same topics) will have less of a need for utilizing the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment as they already have some ideas of what they would like to start working on in counseling. But for those who either are less in distress or are less certain of where to start working on deepening their relationship the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment can be a helpful starting point in the couple's counseling process.
