Services – ECH Counseling | Empower to Cope and Heal

The benefits of counseling can far outweigh any discomfort encountered during the process.

Remember: Counseling does take work both in and out of sessions to be effective.

Benefits of counseling:
- Ability to change self-defeating thoughts
- Decreasing intrusive and ruminating thoughts
- Gain insight to turn unhealthy habits into healthy
- Improve communication and boundaries
- Learning how to regulate emotions
- Greater self-worth this helps with confidence, trusting yourself, and decision-making
- Managing your stress
- Many more

Risks of counseling:
- Uncomfortable emotions
- Confrontation
- Changes in beliefs and behavior – To change belief systems that you have lived by and believe are true, can be scary
- Changes in dynamic (family, relationship, etc.) can be disruptive – Once skills are developed and utilized, areas of your life will get affected, but remember it’s for the better

Individual Therapy

Individual therapy provides individuals the opportunity to confidentially talk through problems or situations with a trained professional that has an unbiased opinion. It is effective treatment for many types of mental, emotional, and behavioral issues. It can also help people who are facing difficult life situations or would like to develop healthier, more functional personal habits.

Therapy does not necessarily make problems disappear, but it equips individuals with the tools needed to cope with them more appropriately.

It focuses on inspiring change and improving the quality of life for people who may be experiencing any one of these common issues (but not limited to):

Extreme emotions
Trauma (current or past)
Substance abuse
Problems at work
Worrisome thoughts that interfere with your day
Loss of enjoyment of activities
Strained family and/or personal relationships
Focus and concentration
Concern from friends or family

While working on moving forward, here are some of the areas you might work on:

Gaining a better understanding of yourself
Learning how to handle emotions
Identifying underlying causes of symptoms
Coping strategies
Managing symptoms
Facilitating lifestyle changes
Conflict resolution
Learning how to handle difficult situations
Identifying aspects of your life that you would like to change
Making healthy decisions
Setting personal goals
Adding to your support network

Couples Counseling

It is estimated that nearly half of all married couples get divorced and about one in five marriages experience distress at some time.

Relationships can get strained resulting in a failure to function optimally which ends up producing self-reinforcing, maladaptive patterns. Couples counseling attempts to improve the relationship and resolve interpersonal conflicts.

The basic principles for couples counseling includes:

Safe place to normalize feelings
Active listening and assertive communication – To enable each person to be heard and to consider themselves
Reflection on the relationship’s difficulties and the potential direction for change
Identifying the repetitive, negative cycle and the source of reactive emotions that drive it
Help in maintaining a sense of intimacy
Empowering the relationship by setting clear goals and objections
Creating a positive mindset to developing new patterns

Child and Adolescent Counseling

Child and adolescent counseling offers invaluable insight into your child’s mental health, along with their social and emotional development.

Counselors have the knowledge and expertise to recognize, identify, assess, diagnose, and treat a wide range of mental health conditions, adjustment issues (divorce, new school, bullying, grief, etc.), and psychological distress.

More specifically, counselors can work with children and adolescents to help them make sense of what is going on in their minds, bodies, and lives, in a way they can understand. Talking to a counselor can be beneficial for coping with these changes and dealing with confusing situations and feelings.

Counseling aims to help children and adolescents (but not limited to):

Explore and express their feelings through one of many modes depending on the individual’s preference such as talking, artwork, telling stories, drama, or play.
Gain knowledge and work through their emotions
Effectively recovery in cases of abuse
Understand problems by breaking down into manageable parts
Make positive choices
Work on self-esteem and self-worth
Acquire social skills
Identify behavioral concerns
Work through grief due to divorce, death, move, etc.
Help identify challenges and develop tools to address them
Give them a voice to speak by assuring support to overcome the problem

Treatment approach most likely will include:

Behavioral Therapy were parents and children learn to promote desirable behaviors and reduce unwanted behaviors.
The parents also, because a life of a child or a teen is intensely linked with the parents.

Family Therapy

Family therapy focuses on your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors while understanding that others have their own too.

The counselor is there to:

Encourage and support the family
Guide them in effective communication
Discuss their expectations
Teach emotional regulation
Demonstrate fair fighting and conflict resolution
Help them understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy boundaries

It’s about developing knowledge as to how it all impacts each other and the relationship. To work as a team, not against each other.

Substance Abuse Counseling

Substance abuse is the repeated harmful use of any substance, including drugs (legal or prescription), alcohol, or substances that aren’t even classified as drugs for mood-altering purposes.

Abuse occurs when you aren’t using the substance the way it was intended/recommended or you are using more than was prescribed. This use causes significant impairment in various aspects of your life.

In counseling the underlying causes of addiction would be addressed because just removing the drug does not instill understanding in order for one to move forward. After one hasn’t been using and been sober, counseling would be aimed at rebuilding their life. It looks at solving the problem that made the substance so attractive in the first place. It would focus on education, prevention, and recovery such as:

Person’s emotional state
Stress reactivity
Coping skills
Educational and job opportunities (depending on age)
Their environment
Support system
Purpose of life

Parenting Counseling

Kids who need the most will ask for it in the most unloving ways. At times, this is hard to understand because as a parent your own emotions could get in the way. Unfortunately, there is no book that walks parents through their own emotions, emotional regulation, or how to separate your emotions from your child’s during a difficult time.

This is where counseling with a focus on parenting could be useful. Parents become equipped to take care of their family by understanding and identifying their needs, along with every individual in the family. It aims at providing tools, guidance, and support to parents in an unbiased, healthy manner without them having to worry about being judged.

Some benefits:

Develop a better understanding of your parenting style. To gain knowledge on how various problems could potentially change that style.
Begin to uncover the pros and cons of your inherent way of parenting.
Helping you utilize your strengths to overcome your weaknesses.
Learn techniques to handle conflict, which indirectly teaches your child that conflict can be healthy and can be worked through in an assertive manner.
Manage parental expectations – Sometimes a parent’s expectation doesn’t match the child’s expectations or the child might not be able to fulfill those expectations. Learn how to reevaluate what is expected and how to move forward with other options.
Learn how to help your children gain the ability to recognize their own emotions.
Work to foster not inhibit self-esteem and self-worth.
Work through issues that are interfering with the family dynamics.
Learning to discipline and set limits for your child – Guiding your child by providing structure, stability, and consistency (which are key components in parenting).
Lastly, you will realize that no one is a perfect parent, this removes the pressure of having to parent perfectly.

Veterans

The stress of combat can persist during and long after one’s duty has ended. These emotions affect the veteran and their loved ones.

Due to the traumatic environment in which active military serve, veterans are at a significantly higher risk for developing certain mental health concerns such as posttraumatic stress (PTSD), depression, anxiety, traumatic brain injury (TBI), substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and anger management.

Factors such as the following can contribute to all the above conditions:

Poor health
Unemployment
Financial difficulties
Upon returning home, feeling disconnected, that no one is able to relate to their experiences or offer meaningful emotional support
The grief of losing one’s friend during combat
Survivor’s guilt

Mental health professionals who work with veterans will assess each person individually and take all symptoms and life experiences into consideration before starting treatment. Just because a person serves in the military doesn’t necessarily mean that is the cause of their struggles. A mental health condition may have no relation to the time in the military.

Counseling for the family members

Military life and deployment can take a toll on each member in the family. The need to adjust may lead to increased tension between family members.

Children and teenagers may become irritable or rebellious
The parent at home may have to cope with the increased burden of caring for the family alone
Family members may feel anxious, alone, or unsupported
Adjust to changes, if the family member returns seriously injured
There may be a range of emotions as one reintegrates
The returning family member may have experienced personality changes or developed mental or physical health concerns
Children may have been born or reached a different stage of development
Marital bonds may have weakened

Reiki

Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing which is used to reduce stress and induce relaxation. The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words Rei which means “God’s Wisdom or the Higher Power” and Ki which is “life force energy”. So, Reiki is actually “spiritually guided life force energy.”

Reiki is administered by the practitioner gently laying hands above you and channeling the energy. It is based on the idea that the unseen “life force energy” flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If your “life force energy” is low, then you are more likely to get sick or feel stress. If our “life force energy” is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.

Reiki is simple, natural, and safe method for healing and self-improvement. It has been shown to be effective in helping virtually every known illness and works in conjunction with other medical or therapeutic treatments.

For more information or to schedule an appointment – Please go to link below:

www.echcounseling.com/contact

Cost:

30 minute session $85

60 minutes session $125

Support Group

Groups (Support/Skill Building/Therapy) provide an opportunity for people to come together to share experiences, develop necessary skills, learn coping mechanisms, be educated on relevant topics, and discuss common presenting problems.

Group members can:

Share coping strategies
Feel empowered
Feel a sense of community
Explore their feelings
Offer support and encouragement to other members and receive the same in return

Group leaders can:

Educate/Provide information regarding group topic
Demonstrate how tools could be utilized
Learn coping skills
Discuss strategies
Utilize a range of therapeutic approaches