SERVICES

What It Is: Anxiety disorders are characterized by worried, fearful thoughts, and tense feelings. Anxiety differs from normal fear because anxiety revolves around a future response to a threat. How Counseling Can Help: Anxiety can be daunting to confront, but you don’t have to face it alone. Counseling can identify the underlying causes of anxiety, and teach ways to develop coping mechanisms and skills to develop new perspectives.

What It Is: If you feel an unshakeable, long-lasting sadness, you may be experiencing depression. Depressive disorders involve an extreme sadness or despair that interrupts your daily life, resulting in a lack of focus, feelings of worry and guilt, or even death. How Counseling Can Help: Counseling can help understand how depression impacts you internally, and reflect on “stuck” feelings and emotions. Research shows that an individualized treatment approach including traditional counseling can help successfully treat depression.

What It Is: Trauma- and stressor-related disorders involve the emotional responses to a terrible event, accident, or disaster in your life. Immediate responses include shock and denial, whereas more continual responses include flashbacks or mood swings. How Counseling Can Help: After experiencing trauma, counseling can help you take the first step to ultimately move forward. Counseling can help determine constructive ways to manage the emotional responses to your trauma.

What It Is: Everyone experiences stress - yet stress can become unhealthy when it interrupts your behavior, feelings, and functionality. When stress starts to take a toll on your mind and body, it can contribute to psychological and physical disorders. How Counseling Can Help: Therapy provides a space for you and a professional to talk out what’s making you stressed, and single out top stressors to address and mitigate with coping mechanisms and self-care activities.

What It Is: Addictive and substance-related disorders involve psychological and/or physical dependence on the use of alcohol, drugs, and/or certain behaviors and processes. In psychology, addiction is often an equivalent term to substance dependence, though addiction can also be applicable to behavioral disorders. How Counseling Can Help: Regarding addiction, counseling is a vital part of shaping the road to recovery. On top of education and support, therapy for addiction seeks to determine triggers, build a positive self-image, and replace negative behaviors with healthier ones. * If you’re struggling with both a substance-related issue and another mental health problem, ACE offers counseling for co-occurring disorders as well.

What It Is: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) centers around recurring, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and actions to get rid of those thoughts (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors can significantly inhibit or disrupt daily activities and interactions. Related disorders include body dysmorphia, trichotillomania, and dermatillomania. How Counseling Can Help: Counseling can examine the harmful thoughts that prompt the compulsions, and come up with plausible, less threatening alternatives. Furthermore, counseling can help work through feelings of shame, guilt, or worry associated with OCD and related disorders.

What It Is: Personality disorders occur when thoughts, feelings, and behavior causes distress or disruption in day to day function. A personality disorder differs from mood swings since it lasts over time. How Counseling Can Help: Psychotherapy can help you gain insight and knowledge about the disorder, plus the contributions to symptoms and effects. Through talking with a counselor, you can develop ways to manage symptoms and reduce behaviors causing strain on your life and the lives around you.

What It Is: While most commonly seen with couples, relationship issues and interpersonal problems can affect couples, families, or groups. Even individual counseling can touch upon fostering healthy relationships with those close to you. How Counseling Can Help: Counseling can help you get back on the same page with other people in your life. Many couples opt for counseling to meet their mutual needs for affection, companionship, loyalty, and intimacy.

What It Is: Sleep disorders cause problems with quality, timing, and amount of sleep at night. As a result, you may experience daytime irritability, distress, and poor cognitive function. Sleep-wake disorders are associated with medical or mental health conditions. How Counseling Can Help: Fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer with professional counseling. Various cognitive approaches can help you uncover and replace unhealthy sleep related thoughts, behaviors, and patterns with healthier attitudes and associations.

What It Is: The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics highlights the connection between wellness and nutrition - meaning both physical and mental well-being. Both facets contribute to establishing and maintaining personal goals that lead to a healthier lifestyle. How Counseling Can Help: Counseling can help assess and incorporate nutrition and wellness into your routine. You can also understand the impact that nutrition has on your health and behavior to focus on practical lifestyle changes to achieve your goals.

What it is: Mental health doesn’t stop off the field or court. Sports and athletics performance counseling concerns the mental health of athletes, and how that affects physical performance and overall well-being. How counseling can help: Sports and athletics performance counseling helps engage clients in conversations and activities designed to solve problems, overcome mental obstacles, improve confidence, and emphasize motivation.

What It Is: Personal growth is a process of self-awareness. It means taking the steps to address and change your behavior, attitude, values, actions, and habits to become a better version of yourself. How Counseling Can Help: Counseling can bolster personal growth by encouraging self-awareness, informed coping skills, and improved emotional regulation. Fostering resilience and empowerment will lead to stronger personal development and purpose.

What It Is: Clinical supervision in mental health counseling is a foundational relationship comprised of a supervisor and supervisee, in which the supervisor uses their experience and expert knowledge to objectively guide, support, mentor, and train a supervisee toward becoming a competent and qualified professional counselor. How Supervision Can Help: Clinical supervision in mental health counseling can help counselor-trainees gain the necessary experience legally required to become a competent and qualified licensed professional mental health counselor. Clinical supervision is an objective supervisory relationship that enhances counselor-trainees clinical competences enabling them to be more proficient and confident clinicians.