Counseling Services in Raleigh

Anxiety is powered by your body’s fight-or-flight system; it is actually trying to help keep you safe by giving you the energy to either fight or run. Anxiety counseling teaches you how to calm the anxiety storm. Using breathing exercises, re-framing thoughts, and a healthy lifestyle, we will help you learn how to respond effectively to anxiety-provoking situations. Anxiety therapy helps you re-wire your brain so that it stops sending that obnoxious fight-or-flight signal.

Depression robs you of your energy and makes you feel like you are trying to run through deep mud. You might even know what would help you feel better but just cannot seem to find the motivation or the willpower. Telephone counseling lets you begin your depression treatment from home. People have been giving me feedback lately that they hadn’t started therapy before because they just could not get out of the house. Phone therapy opened the door just enough to get them started.

Depression is treatable, and usually, medication is not needed. We will work together to find the steps you can take, and the pace that is manageable for you. You will challenge yourself, but in a way that feels within reach.

The complex issues that adults face in Raleigh-Durham include finances, relationships, parenting, work-life balance, personal health, and any emotional issues you may be struggling with, just to name a few.

We work to help you find the solutions you are looking for so that you can get back to enjoying a balanced life that charges you up instead of dragging you down.

Stress management is something that everybody needs to improve. In a large, modern metroplex like Raleigh-Durham there is no shortage of stressors: Traffic, finances, work-stress, and COVID-19, just to name a few.

When learning to manage stress, recognizing its early indicators helps you prevent it from getting out of hand. Once stress swells, it is important to have the skills to relieve it. Our work teaches you mindfulness so you can see stress coming, and gives you the tools to settle your nervous system.

All relationships involve similar dynamics. These dynamics are just communicated through ‘voices.’ A boss, for example, will say, “Nice job!” differently than a good friend would say it. The same dynamics that work in romantic relationships will work in friendships and professional relationships; they are just done slightly differently and in different voices (sometimes VERY different!).

I have completed Level II of the rigorous Gottman Method of Couples Counseling. I will help you identify what is preventing your relationship from being what you want it to be. I’ll also provide you specific tools to improve communication, manage conflict, and create connections.

“What were they thinking?! When I was a teenager we’d NEVER consider doing that!”

“In my day if we talked to our parents or teachers like that we couldn’t sit for days!”

Sound familiar? Teenagers are not just mini-adults; although they often seem to think that they are fully-grown adults! I have worked with teenagers and “tweens” since the 1990’s and know well how to connect with them and earn their trust.  I expect parents to be involved and willing to make changes themselves when needed.

Crisis counseling and trauma therapy doesn’t have to involve a detailed re-telling of the traumatizing event! Furthermore, having survived a trauma does not mean you have a “disorder” like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Ideally, our work prevents your post-traumatic stress symptoms from becoming a ‘disorder.’ The sooner you get started with therapy, the sooner you will return to normalcy.

Traumatic situations can range job or relationship loss, to violent crime and natural disasters. Remember, what is traumatizing for one person may not be traumatizing for another. It is OK to ask for help when you go through a difficult situation.