Seeking Help

Counseling and Therapy:

Benefits of Counseling and Therapy: 

Healing from past experiences or trauma: 

While it can be difficult to work through traumatic experiences from your past, you need to heal to live your best life. Therapy and counseling help you to leave your trauma in the past, and help you to experience life to the fullest extent.

Changes for a better lifestyle:

Counseling and therapy have been proven to improve your emotional and psychological well-being, improving your life by helping to shift your outlook on the world. Counseling and therapy can also help you to lead a happier and more fulfilling life grounded by your newfound emotional intelligence. 

Coping with strong emotions: 

Therapy serves as an opportunity for healthy emotional expression, which can help you to better understand your emotions. A therapist or counselor can help you deal with strong emotions instead of having them bottled up or erratically expressing them to other people. This way of expression is unhealthy and can have negative effects on you and your relationship with your loved ones. Strong emotions are not meant to be dealt with alone and should be dealt with by licensed professionals trained to deal with these strong emotions, and help you to better understand them.

Feel more comfortable with facing new challenges: 

Therapy can lead to a positive outlook in life, which is helpful in our fast-paced world. Therapy and counseling also help you to handle changes and challenges in your life, offering insight into decisions that can benefit you and help you to live your life to the best of your potential.

Types of therapy (Included but not limited to):

Cognitive-behavioral therapy: 

CBT helps with conditions like depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. It is a type of therapy designed to positively change a person’s mindset and thought process, and eventually their behavioral response to challenging situations. CBT is based on the belief that a person’s thoughts can affect how they respond to life events and make decisions.  

Interpersonal Psychotherapy: 

IPT is a type of therapy aimed at treating mood disorders that could stem from a person’s interpersonal conflict and relationships. This therapy is also designed to reduce overall distress, whether it be internal distress or distress coming from outside a person’s life, such as friends or family. IPT offers helpful strategies for problems focusing on four main areas listed below.

• Interpersonal deficiency - such as social isolation or being stuck in “unfulfilling” relationships

• Grief- whether it be with a recently lost loved one or from the past

• Hard Life Transitions - such as moving, divorce, or retirement

• Conflicting relationships between loved ones, partners, friends, family, and coworkers

Family Systems therapy:

FST is a type of therapy centered on the belief that what happens to one person in the family affects everybody, whether directly related to the family or not. FST helps family members find common ground and establish mutual understanding, making the family closer as a whole. This therapy not only creates healthy family relationships but also can help in fostering healthy mental health for each individual in the family. 

Mental Health Apps and Online Resources:

Meditation and Relaxation:

• Headspace: calming app; public two-week trial

• Health Minds Program App: focuses on meditation and mindfulness; free app

• Stop, Breathe, & Think: made especially for kids and adults; free app

Coping with anxiety and or depression:

Sanvello: a program for reducing stress and depression that offers counseling coaches and support groups

• Meru Health: program that deals with clinical anxiety or depression; uses an app and therapist, referral from health care provider is necessary

• PTSD Coach: App offering information about post-traumatic stress disorder, daily ways to cope with PTSD, and vital resources to treat PTSD

Peer Support Groups:

Psychology Today/Psychology Today Teens: Psychology Today is a helpful website offering a range of support groups for all backgrounds, audiences, and places in Texas