Frequently Asked Questions
Who needs counseling?
Most anyone can benefit from counseling! There is almost always room to grow in our relationship with ourselves and others. Some people might decide to seek therapy if they find that intrusive thoughts or unhelpful coping patterns are affecting their daily life in ways that prevents them from functioning at the level they would like to. Some people come when life situations are extra stressful and they want non-judgmental support from a professional outside of the situation. Many of us have experienced something traumatic in life, and would like to process through the thoughts and feelings with someone trained to help.
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Parents sometimes choose to bring their child if things at school, home, or in both settings are stressful, or a child is reacting in ways that parents or teachers are having a hard time understanding or responding to. Sometimes parents come because they would like more effective ways to interact with their child.
People sometimes need support in communication or boundary setting in relationships with others. Some people want to check in prior to a big life event like the transition to college, marriage, addition of a child, or career retirement. Some need support after a large event like a death, job loss, health event, or other highly stressful/traumatic incidents.
What will counseling be like?
Each person is an individual with individual needs, and no two sessions are exactly alike. As a broad overview the first session is usually spent going over intake paperwork to gain a full history, talking about information the client needs to be successful in counseling, an idea of how many sessions counseling may last and what techniques may be used, and some time for the client to ask questions and begin work. Subsequent sessions usually begin with where we left off the previous session, or with whatever the client brings that particular session.
Counseling with adults involves back and forth conversing, typically the counselor is in a listening role for much of the time, psychoeducation (gaining information to better support and cope with struggles and mental illness), skills practice, goal creating, problem solving, and a number of creative therapeutic techniques as needed. The client drives the speed and direction of each session
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For children play is a primary language of communication, and play therapy can look very different than traditional talk therapy. Our therapists have a variety of items in their offices to allow children to access play as their primary agent of change. For more information on play therapy please visit: https://cpt.unt.edu/what-play-therapy
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Do you accept my insurance?
At this time we are out-of-network on all insurances. We are a self-pay practice at this time for a variety of reasons. First, we can provide services to anyone that inquires quickly, efficiently and through truly personalized services, not bound by commercial insurance timelines and mandates. Many clients, particularly those with high deductible plans, find that they are paying full fees for services up to their deductible anyway, and that they don't require enough therapy services to meet their annual deductible. Second, being a self-pay practice allows our clinicians to focus 100% on client care rather than billing issues. For more information, see our fees page.
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