Counseling FAQs

I’ll start the first session by asking you questions about your history and going through the forms you filled out previously. This helps me better understand you, so I can tailor treatment to your unique circumstances. I don’t use a cookie-cutter approach to helping clients. I’ll ask questions about the concerns that led you to seek counseling, how they are affecting your life or relationships, and what you have already tried to make things better.

My approach is active and practical. I won’t simply sit back and listen. I’ll ask questions, offer observations, and help you identify patterns that are contributing to your problems. You don’t need to prepare a perfect explanation of what is wrong or know exactly what you want to accomplish before you come in. My job is to help you make sense of what is happening and then help you create meaningful goals for our work ahead. I want you to leave the first session feeling assured I can help you and clear about the goals we’ll be working toward.

Yes. Anxiety and OCD are highly treatable, and counseling can help you develop practical skills for responding differently to anxious thoughts, uncomfortable feelings, patterns of avoidance, and urges to seek reassurance.

Treatment involves more than simply talking about your worries. I use evidence-based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). These approaches can help you understand the patterns that maintain anxiety or OCD and learn new ways of responding to them.

ERP involves gradually facing feared situations, thoughts, or feelings while reducing compulsions and other behaviors that provide short-term relief but reinforce OCD and anxiety over time. ACT complements this work by helping you become more willing to experience uncomfortable thoughts and feelings without struggling with them or allowing them to dictate your behavior.

The goal isn’t to eliminate every anxious thought or feeling. It’s to help anxiety and OCD have less control over your decisions, relationships, and daily life so you can spend more time living according to your values.

It is common for one spouse to be more interested in starting counseling than the other. Your husband may be skeptical that counseling will help, uncomfortable talking about personal issues, or concerned that the therapist will take sides. Since most counselors are female, men often assume the therapist and his wife will gang up against him. He may even have heard stories about this happening to men he knows. It’s fine if your husband is resistant to marriage counseling and skeptical it could help.

In the first session, I’ll ask about the complaints each of you has and what you both want instead. Seeing that I pursue his complaints as actively as I do yours often encourages husbands to engage. My requirement for reluctant husbands is that they be committed to the goals we create together. My role is not to decide who is right or wrong, but to help both of you better understand the patterns that are creating problems and determine what changes would improve the marriage.

If your husband is unwilling to participate, you can still come to counseling on your own. I’ll help you better understand the interaction patterns in your marriage, identify your own contribution to the problems, and teach you tools that will increase positivity and closeness in your marriage. I’ve watched spouses in individual counseling single-handedly save their marriage!

The terms are often used interchangeably. Both focus on helping partners improve their relationship, communicate more effectively, resolve recurring conflicts, and develop greater emotional connection.

“Marriage counseling” usually refers specifically to married couples, while “couples counseling” is a broader term that includes people in committed relationships regardless of whether they are married.

Yes. You do not need to be married to benefit from couples counseling. I work with couples in committed relationships who want to strengthen their relationship, work through a specific problem, improve communication, or determine what they want for their future together.

The issues that bring unmarried couples to counseling are often very similar to those experienced by married couples, including communication problems, conflict, trust, intimacy, commitment, and differences about important life decisions.

Marriage counseling assumes both partners are committed to improving the marriage. Discernment Counseling is designed for situations in which one spouse is considering divorce while the other wants to preserve the marriage. In other words, the goal of traditional marriage counseling is to reconcile the marriage, while the goal of Discernment Counseling is to decide whether to work on the marriage.

Discernment Counseling may still be helpful when a spouse has mostly decided to divorce, but there needs to be at least some willingness to examine the decision and participate in the process. Discernment Counseling slows the decision-making process enough to help both spouses better understand what happened to the relationship, each person’s contribution to the problems, and to choose a direction for the future of their marriage. If one of the spouses is completely certain about divorce and has no interest in reconsidering or examining that decision, Discernment Counseling would not be appropriate.

For those struggling with addiction, I don’t require abstinence as a condition of counseling. For some people, abstinence is the safest and most realistic goal. For other clients, their goal is to reduce the harm it causes them while they continue drinking or using. In these cases, counseling may begin with reducing use, understanding the function the substance or behavior serves, identifying triggers and consequences, and deciding if a moderation approach is realistic. The appropriate goal depends on the substance or behavior involved, the severity of the problem, your circumstances, and what can be done safely.

Compulsive sexual behaviors and pornography use can become problematic when they become difficult to control, interfere with relationships or responsibilities, conflict with your values, or continue despite significant negative consequences.

Counseling can help identify the triggers and patterns associated with the behavior, develop strategies for responding differently to urges, address shame and secrecy, and work on underlying emotional or relationship issues that may be contributing to the problem. When a partner has been affected, counseling will also likely address issues around disclosure, damaged trust, boundaries, and the process of rebuilding the relationship.

Yes. AA and other 12-step programs have helped many people, but they are not the only approach to recovery.

Alternatives include programs and approaches based on cognitive-behavioral principles, motivation, skill development, mindfulness, and peer support. Examples include SMART Recovery (Self-Management & Recovery Training), Recovery Dharma, Refuge Recovery, Life Ring, Harm Reduction and Moderation Support (HAMS), and Moderation Management.

The best recovery program is the one that most resonates with each person seeking help. Sometimes people pursue only one program while others participate in multiple programs, gaining access to a wider variety of tools and strategies. Trying different programs can help you decide what will provide the right combination of counseling, support, structure, and lifestyle changes to support your recovery.

CRAFT stands for Community Reinforcement and Family Training. It is an evidence-based approach designed to help family members who are concerned about someone they love who has a substance use problem.

Rather than relying primarily on confrontation or detachment, CRAFT teaches family members practical ways to change how they respond to their loved one's substance use. This can include improving communication, setting effective boundaries, reinforcing healthy behavior, reducing behaviors that unintentionally support continued substance use, and encouraging treatment when opportunities arise.

CRAFT also places importance on the well-being of the family member—not just on changing the person who is using substances.

You cannot force another person to change, but that does not mean you are powerless.

Counseling can help you identify which of your responses to your loved one are helpful and which may unintentionally make it easier for the problem to continue. You can learn more effective ways to communicate, establish boundaries, reinforce positive changes, and respond differently to substance-related behavior.

Therapy models, such as Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT), can also help family members recognize opportunities to encourage treatment without relying on repeated arguments, threats, or confrontations.

Yes. In fact, counseling can be very useful when the person with the addiction has no interest in getting help.

We can focus on what you can control: how you communicate, the boundaries you establish, how you respond to substance use, and how you take care of yourself. We can also develop strategies for encouraging treatment while reducing patterns that may unintentionally enable the problem to continue.

You do not have to wait for your loved one to be ready for treatment before getting help for yourself.

Police officers often face experiences that can be difficult to explain to someone outside the profession. Shift work, repeated exposure to trauma, organizational stress, public scrutiny, hypervigilance, relationship strain, and the culture of law enforcement can all affect officers and their families.

Having worked in law enforcement gives me firsthand understanding of that culture and many of the pressures that come with the job. You don't have to spend the first several sessions explaining police culture or worrying that normal reactions to the job will be misunderstood. I’ll help you identify your goals and give you practical strategies to address the problems that brought you to counseling.

Yes. Many of the challenges associated with law enforcement are also experienced by firefighters, dispatchers, other first responders, and their families.

First responder work can affect sleep, stress levels, schedules, relationships, communication, emotional availability, and the ability to transition between work and home. Spouses can also experience the effects of unpredictable schedules, worry about safety, and changes they see in their partner.

Counseling can address both the individual impact of first responder work and the ways the job affects a couple or family.

When you seek counseling privately, your participation in therapy and what you discuss are confidential and aren’t routinely shared with your department. As with any therapy, there are legal and ethical exceptions to confidentiality, which I will explain to you before we begin. If you are applying for a first responder position, it is possible the agency you would like to join may ask for current and past counseling records as part of the background hiring process. If you have concerns about confidentiality, we can discuss them before you disclose sensitive information so you understand what is—and is not—shared with anyone outside of counseling.