My experience and training allows me to provide a wide variety of services in counseling and therapy. In communities like Orange Beach and Gulf Shores that is just the kind of counselor that is needed, someone who can work with any kind of counseling or therapy from academic success to suicide prevention, from grief to post traumatic stress disorder, and from test anxiety to incapacitating social anxiety.
My counseling and therapeutic methods focus on your presenting problems and finding effective and lasting ways to help you resolve them.
Having worked as a counselor in a college means that I am able to quickly establish a trusting relationship that validates and respects your concerns, feelings and actions in your life. It means that I have experience in brief therapies and that will enable you to move on when you “feel better enough” to do so.
Below I will describe how my training and experience can help in six areas of Services provided by Coastal Life Counseling. You can click on each area and it will take you to a page with more information.
Life’s Transitions – As we progress through the developmental stages of our lives, sometimes there are problems in adapting to changes or functioning in our lives. That’s where my experience in counseling and providing therapy can help you. I have knowledge, experience and training in detecting common problems that occur during the transitional times in our lives, and will help you determine what is normal and beneficial for your life. As a counselor working in a community college I worked with students 16 to 80 years old. The problems were very representational of the community at large. Births, death, job changes, divorce, marriage, relationships, all are areas where we can struggle. Sometimes it only takes a few sessions to get to a place where you feel better; but sometimes there are deeper, more resistant areas that need work, like poor self-esteem or past traumas that keep you from moving on.
Behavioral Health – Studies show how what we believe, what we feel, and how we act can affect our physical health. Our actions can lead to risky behavior, gaining or losing a lot of weight, to not following doctor’s orders or developing addictions. Things that happened to us in the past may affect how we react to similar situations in our lives in the present. Every person who has any control over their daily activities chooses to behave in a way that is determined by what they believe and how it makes them feel. Why do we struggle with our weight, taking the medications we need, or following doctors’ orders? My training and expertise can help you in these areas when you find yourself struggling. With your permission, I can even work with your doctors and you to help you feel better about getting the medical help you may need.
Mental Health Concerns – Basically these are the areas where there is a diagnosis, such as anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, compulsions, sleep disorders, etc. This is my favorite area. Diagnosable disorders may seem to be overwhelming, but they are not as horrid as you may fear. There are always ways to improve your life with therapy and help in empowering you to overcome barriers and to manage life. Generally there are several goals to be worked on in therapy with these diagnoses. I can work with you and your psychiatrist or doctor if needed. Sometimes it takes this kind of integrated care to be effective.
Substance Use and Addictions – When I first began studying about addictions, I was fairly discouraged about being able to help. But the more I learned, the more I realized that this is an area I would love. It takes a comprehensive plan to overcome “addictions.” There are several levels of readiness that have to be reached to have much success. There needs to be a plan to learn new skills, new ways of living and new ways of handling problems that one’s drug of choice “almost” handles. It takes never giving up, persisting, and picking oneself up however many times it takes to finally be recovered. It takes working with other helpers and a support team.
Relationships, Couples, Marriage and Family – No one operates in a vacuum. We depend and interact with each other. We can cause great happiness and we can cause great pain for each other. In the schools where I counseled almost everything that a student comes to counseling for is about friends and friends relationships, couples, sexual orientations, love, marriage, childbirth, mothers, fathers, and family. Discord in our relationships can disrupt our entire lives. It is very complicated and yet it can be so simple. Sometimes other mental health problems or counseling concerns is based in a relationship problem. It may only take a few sessions to help you get back on the path in your relationship and it may be more complicated and need more exploration and skills building.
School, College and Careers – I include this area, because it is an area I was expert in before becoming a counselor. I worked in high schools and in colleges, which makes me a great resource for you if you are college bound or are a parent navigating the transition. I have a working knowledge about scholarships, financial aid, admissions, educational planning, degrees, majors, careers, and much more. I also have experience, training and knowledge of the development of young adults and navigating the college environment. All the concerns (relationships, addictions, mental health, behavioral health and transitions) above are also in this field, as you can imagine. It’s better to be mentally prepared for college life and succeed than to be faced with the realities and fail as do 50% of students in their first year in college. See my academic counseling pages to see how it all works together to help a high school child become a successful college student.
Please note that career decisions are not only for the transitional high school to college student. It is also for the non-college post-secondary person. It’s also for the person who is unhappy in his or her current work.
