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The Ability to T H R I V E is within you!

Individualized Plan
Special Techniques
Skills You'll Learn

Fundamental to the success of our work together is the collaborative relationship created right from the start. Your personal goals are of the utmost importance. We will work together to identify what we want to achieve in counseling, approximately how much time we'll spend working toward those goals.

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Each individual responds differently to various methods, therefore your treatment plan will be unique for your goals and the methods used toward those goals.

Best treatment practices for childhood-originating PTSD is based on the tenets of emotional processing theory. Prolonged exposure is an evidence-based treatment for PTSD. This does not mean exposure to persons who are the source of PTSD, but exposure to stimuli that PTSD clients avoid. They are the cues to distress. It could be the avoidance, such as social anxiety stemming from their trauma(s), creates problems in their growth, obtaining a job, seeking education. It may be that the exposure must happen in "imaginal exposure." Imaginal exposure is a pairing of relaxation (sometimes hypnotic experience) paired with exposure to the feared event, place, person(s). Since both extreme relaxation and extreme excitation cannot exist concurrently, eventually after several sessions the fear is extinguished to a large extent. 

 

Processing (articulating and elaborating on corrective learning) is a very important aspect of the process and includes traditional cognitive-behavior thought replacement and restructuring. 

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Prolonged Exposure is recommended by the VA and Center for Deployment Psychology. That, in combination with hypnotherapy has proven to be very effective.

 

Relaxation is a prescribed behavior, that as evidence shows, with regular use diminishes the density of the amygdala (the center of anxiety, fear, excitation) for better regulation of emotional experience.

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An important aspect of clinical counseling is that it is based on many years of research done by respected institutions around the United States and around the world. The methods used at Thrive Clinical Counseling is evidence-based research-based techniques.  

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Your plan will be based on your stated goals and will be a unique combination of some of these techniques:

  • Clinical Hypnotherapy

  • Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy

  • Emotional Processing Therapy

  • Prolonged Exposure Therapy

  • Extinction Therapy

  • Exposure--Relaxation Therapy

  • Grounding Exercises

  • Mindfulness Meditation

  • Redecision Therapy

  • Systematic Desensitization (panic)

Most importantly counseling is about the acquisition of new skills. You'll learn better methods of coping with stressors cognitively with management of what you tell yourself about the events of your day, through learning how to physically turn around the heightened alarm state created by PTSD, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety.

Some skills you may learn in therapy are:

Changing your anxiety set point with:

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  • Self-hypnosis or mindfulness meditation

  • Challenging anxious thoughts 

  • Prevent panic attacks

  • Reduce the amount of time you feel panic

  • Stop avoidance behavior

  • Address the secrets you've been keeping

  • Recognize self-defeating behavior

  • Address recurrent trauma-related dreaming

  • Challenge negative-biased thinking

  • Address hopelessness thoughts

  • Feel more comfortable in your body

  • Challenge shame-filled thoughts

  • Confront your fears through prolonged exposure and relaxation

  • Challenge thoughts about your mood

  • Create a more positive image of yourself

  • Teaching others how to treat you

  • Acceptance and change demand paradoxes

  • Recognize and change self-sabotage

  • Use positive distractions 

  • Create or join a support group

  • Coping with social anxiety

  • Reduce intrusive remembrances of your trauma

  • Coping with stress

  • Adjusting to new situations

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