Ascend Counseling provides outpatient counseling to adults for a variety of reasons. Some of the common issues that are seen include: trauma, anxiety, anger management, depression, communication issues, addiction, sexuality issues, and personal growth. We prefer to tailor the treatment based on a person’s personal needs with keeping specific goals in mind. It is important that a person feel comfortable expressing themselves in a safe and non-judgmental environment and we strive to provide that. We do not provide marriage counseling services.
We also provide substance abuse assessments for individuals that have been charged with a drinking & driving offense or other substance abuse related legal problems. Often an attorney or district court will require that you complete a substance abuse assessment as part of the legal process. We offer face to face in the office as well as telehealth assessment services.
Trauma can be described as a difficult experience that leaves a person feeling overwhelmed, frightened, and/or helpless. Some people return to normal quickly after experiencing a trauma; however, other people need counseling and/or support to get better.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) – EMDR is a form of therapy that involves some sort of back and forth movement such as your eyes moving back and forth while you think about an issue you are dealing with. Through the completion of more than 20 research studies, EMDR has been proven to be one of the most effective forms of therapy for treating trauma. Studies have shown significant improvement in up to 90% of persons who participate in EMDR.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – This form of therapy involves looking at how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are interrelated. It involves examining unhelpful thought patterns and unhelpful ways of reacting to situations. The end goal of CBT is to change your patterns of thinking and behavior which then changes the way you feel.
Traditional Talk Therapy – This form of therapy involves having the client discuss their current stressors, life situation, and trauma history while the therapist listens and asks appropriate questions to help the client examine and process their experience. Some clients find this form of therapy to be effective because it helps them to think through things and make decisions on how to handle situations in their life. It can also help the client to view their issues from a different perspective.
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Anxiety is feeling overwhelmed as though you can’t handle what is happening. Anxiety is feeling extremely shy and unable to interact in social situations. Anxiety is constantly worrying about what might happen in the future. Anxiety is having episodes where you feel like you are having a heart attack and you can’t breathe; however, there is nothing physically wrong with you (having a panic attack). Anxiety is second guessing everything you do and thinking you should have done something differently.
There are many therapeutic methods used to treat anxiety. A few of the more common methods include cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and traditional talk therapy.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – This form of therapy involves looking at how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are interrelated. It involves examining unhelpful thought patterns and unhelpful ways of reacting to situations. The end goal of CBT is to change your patterns of thinking and behavior which then changes the way you feel.
Exposure Therapy – In this form of therapy you would create a list of anxiety producing events and then rank the items in your list from least anxiety provoking to most anxiety provoking. Once you have your list, you expose yourself to each item starting with the least anxiety provoking situation. As you do these things, you process your thoughts and feelings regarding each experience.
Traditional Talk Therapy – This form of therapy involves having the client discuss their current stressors and life situation while the therapist listens and asks appropriate questions to help the client examine and process their current situation. Some clients find this form of therapy to be highly effective because it helps them to think through things and make decisions on how to handle situations in their life. It can also help the client to view their issues from a different perspective.
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A person is considered to have an addiction when they cannot stop taking a drug or drinking even when they want to. The urge to use a drug, drink alcohol or engage in an addictive behavior (ex. gambling) is too strong to control even when the person knows it is causing them harm. The substance use will often cause problems with taking care of everyday tasks. For example, a person dealing with addiction might call in to work due to having a hangover or their physical health may decline as a result of the substance use.
There are several ways to treat addiction. Treatment methods that can be used in outpatient counseling include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) – EMDR is a form of therapy that involves some sort of back and forth movement such as your eyes moving back and forth while you think about an issue you are dealing with. Through the completion of more than 20 research studies, EMDR has been proven to be one of the most effective forms of therapy for treating trauma. Studies have shown significant improvement in up to 90% of persons who participate in EMDR. There are several specific treatment protocols that are used when treating addiction using EMDR including the DeTUR protocol, Feeling State Addiction Protocol, and the CravEx protocol.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – This form of therapy involves looking at how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are interrelated. It involves examining unhelpful thought patterns and unhelpful ways of reacting to situations. The end goal of CBT is to change your patterns of thinking and behavior which then changes the way you feel.
Traditional Talk Therapy – This form of therapy involves having the client discuss their current stressors, life situation, and trauma history while the therapist listens and asks appropriate questions to help the client examine and process their experience. Some clients find this form of therapy to be effective because it helps them to think through things and make decisions on how to handle situations in their life. It can also help the client to view their issues from a different perspective.
Below you will find several links from which you can learn more about addiction.
There are many types of support available to persons who are struggling with addiction. There are support groups, podcasts, websites, and blogs. Below are links to a few support resources.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. This is a form of therapy that involves some sort of back and forth movement such as your eyes moving back and forth while you think about an issue you are dealing with. Through the completion of more than 20 research studies, EMDR has been proven to be highly effective. Initially EMDR was used to treat trauma; however; additional research and experimentation has shown EMDR to be effective in treating several other issues including severe anxiety and depression.
It is unknown for sure exactly how EMDR works; however, there are some theories about what happens when a person does EMDR. One theory is that trauma memories are stored in a different part of the brain than other adaptive thoughts. When a person participates in EMDR, they are asked to think about different aspects of the trauma memory which brings that memory to the front of their mind. While the person thinks about the memory, they engage in some sort of bilateral movement (example, back and forth eye movement) which helps the person to process the trauma memory and link it to helpful, adaptive thoughts. This process helps decrease the intensity of the traumatic memories and the emotions associated with those memories.
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Info and articles about EMDR:
Videos about how EMDR works and it’s effectiveness:
CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This is a form of therapy that involves examining how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors are interrelated. Specifically, CBT has the underlying belief that our thoughts determine our feelings and our behavior. When you participate in CBT you will learn techniques to manage difficult feelings, thoughts and behaviors such as relaxation skills. You may also look at unhelpful thought patterns.
The main focus of CBT is looking at how you think about situations and learning to recognize which thoughts are helpful and which thoughts are not helpful. As you figure which thoughts are unhelpful, you learn ways to deal with the unhelpful thoughts. One of the underlying beliefs of CBT is that once you can recognize unhelpful thoughts, you can change the way you think about what’s happening which will in turn change how you feel and act (behave). When doing CBT, you will sometimes have homework such as keeping track of times when you get upset during the week or practicing skills such as relaxation.
Below you will find several links to help you learn more about CBT.