Counseling & Therapy Services in North Carolina

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of therapy that integrates mindfulness with self-acceptance, values clarification, and taking action. The acceptance part of the therapy focuses on helping the patient accept their problem and embrace the feelings they are having about their current issue rather than feeling guilty about those feelings. The commitment part of the therapy focuses on what actions the patient can take as a result of this acceptance and clarity. In simplest terms, the philosophy behind ACT is to teach patients to accept what is out of their control and commit to the positive solutions that lead them to a happy and fulfilled life.

While childhood should be a time of magic and wonder, it is sometimes difficult. Whether they have survived trauma, live with a mental health condition, or need help with a major life transition, children sometimes need therapy to maintain mental health.

Because children see the world so differently than adults, it’s important to take your child to a therapist who specializes in helping children.

Play therapy is a form of treatment that helps children who are experiencing social, emotional, behavioral, and relationship disorders to express their emotions, improve their communication abilities, and learn to solve problems.

This kind of therapy honors a child’s unique developmental level and looks for ways of helping by observing and interacting with how they play, which is the natural expressive “language” of children. Play therapy is most often used for children ages 4-12, though it can also be used in varying forms with teenagers and adults, as well as with children and their parents or caretakers.

Family therapy (also known as family counseling) aims to address the psychological, behavioral, and emotional issues that cause family problems. This type of therapy is used to help everyone involved deal with a difficult period, a major transition, or the mental health challenges of a family member. Family therapy can be conducted in a therapist’s office, during home visits, or virtually, through telehealth visits.

Couples therapy, sometimes referred to as marriage therapy or couples counseling, is counseling for couples who are in a relationship. The goal of this type of therapy is to help couples of all types recognize and resolve conflicts and improve their relationships. Through couples therapy, you and your partner can learn to make more thoughtful choices and decisions about rebuilding and strengthening your relationship or coming to the decision to end your relationship.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a popular type of therapy used in the treatment of multiple mental health conditions. In a CBT session, the patient and therapist work together to uncover patterns of thinking and actions that interfere with the patient’s quality of life. The patient can then learn ways to stop these destructive thoughts and actions.

MI is a goal-oriented, client-centered counseling style that works to explore and resolve ambivalence about getting better. Compared with non-directive counseling, MI is more focused and goal-directed. It departs from traditional Rogerian client-centered therapy through this use of direction, in which therapists attempt to influence clients to consider making changes rather than non-directly exploring themselves. The examination and resolution of ambivalence is a central purpose, and the counselor is intentionally directive in pursuing a set goal.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, teaches individuals the principles of being more mindful and shows them how to apply them to deal more effectively with feelings of psychological distress and the demands of daily life. MBSR can teach you how to respond to stressful situations in a more thoughtful way. The practice has been found to be a helpful addition to conventional medical treatments for chronic pain, depression, anxiety, and other physical and emotional problems.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy technique used to treat anxiety, PTSD, panic disorder, trauma, and more. After someone experiences a trauma, they often have trouble making sense of what happened. EMDR therapy reconnects a traumatized person to the images, thoughts, emotions, and body sensations associated with their particular trauma to help them process it and begin to heal.

Unlike other treatments that focus directly on altering the emotions, thoughts, and responses resulting from traumatic experiences, EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory to help change the way that the memory is stored in the brain and to reduce or eliminate the problematic symptoms associated with that memory.

Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) was originally used to help children and adolescents who had experienced sexual abuse. Now, this approach is being applied to children, adolescents, and adults who have experienced any form of trauma or abuse as a child.

TIC recognizes and responds to the signs, symptoms, and risks of trauma to support the health needs of people who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). Adopting trauma-informed practices can potentially improve engagement, treatment adherence, and health outcomes.