Individual Therapy
In individual therapy, each therapist meets with you one-on-one in a comforting environment where you can work through your deepest struggles. These struggles are often relationship or family issues, anxiety, grief, depression, and stressful transitions. These may sound like very different challenges, but they have similarities. They are overwhelming. They hold you back from experiencing joy.
Working with a counselor, we explore your story together. Based on your individual goals, we can incorporate various methodologies like cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, trauma-informed counseling, and family systems therapy, among others. Each therapist incorporates her training and experience with mental health and the client’s natural coping skills to help find ways to grow and change. If requested, we also can integrate Christian faith into the therapy from the Bible, theology, and some Christian authors. However, none of us imposes our faith on our clients, and are happy to work with people from different belief systems.
Pre-Marital and Pre-Engagement Counseling
Pre-Marital and Pre-Engagement counseling is a wonderful opportunity for couples to have thorough discussions about their relationship strengths, areas in need of growth, and their future. Becca Coley, LPC-S, Megan Beckman, LPC, Michaela Lanier, LPC-A, and Chandler Allen, Graduate Student Intern are certified to facilitate the PrePare/Enrich assessment. This is not a pass/fail test that determines if you should or shouldn’t get engaged or married, but instead a research-based inventory that helps you evaluate how you relate to each other in specific areas of marriage like communication, financial planning, family of origin issues, and personality type. As we use the assessment to walk through these topics, we also take into account your present support systems and walks with God.
Walking through the assessment can help an engaged couple to prepare for the transitions and changes that are to come in marriage: an exciting, wonderful, and challenging relationship. It is an opportunity to strengthen your relationship and build tools to equip you for what is to come. For a pre-engagement couple, the assessment is a chance for you to thoroughly consider compatibility, communication, and strengths so that you can feel confident as you decide whether to commit to the next step in your relationship.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR therapy offers an alternative approach to talk therapy that focuses on supporting the brain’s natural healing process. It was originally created as a treatment for trauma and PTSD, but it has been found to be effective in treating anxiety, depression, and other distressing life experiences. EMDR has been extensively researched and shown to be an effective approach for many individuals.
Peyton Mizell, LPC-A offers EMDR sessions. These sessions are both structured and tailored to the individual needs of each client. Peyton will work with you to explore your personal history and current challenges, develop necessary coping and regulation skills, and move through the desensitization and reprocessing stages at a pace that is appropriate for you. During the EMDR process, you will be asked to focus on the targeted distressing memory or experience while simultaneously engaging in bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements or tapping. This process may help the brain integrate the memory more effectively, reducing its emotional intensity. While the event will be remembered, you will no longer be stuck in the associated stress response (i.e. fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). Our brains know how to process and heal from distressing experiences, but some events and memories get stuck. EMDR offers the necessary support to facilitate that healing process so that those memories can be processed in a more adaptive way.
If you are interested in starting EMDR therapy or want to learn more, please reach out to see if it’s a good fit for you. You can also find additional information about EMDR at https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/.