How does counseling work?

In counseling or therapy, your counselor listens to you without judgment and tries to understand you. She helps you feel comfortable and manage your emotions. She guides you to discover ideas, thoughts, memories, experiences that overwhelm you and helps you process them so that they no longer affect you as much. She helps you set goals for what you want to achieve, motivates you, gives you advice based on scientific evidence, helps you solve problems and understand more clearly what you are going through.

It is usually more effective and faster to see your counselor every week, for 1 session of 1 hour. The number of sessions recommended depends on the type of treatment you need. For example, if you have mild anxiety it could be 6 to 8 sessions. If you come for couples counseling, the average would be 10 to 12 sessions.

Here at La Vida Fearless Counseling we do not prescribe medications, but if the frequency and intensity of your symptoms is being difficult to manage, you and your counselor may decide that you would benefit from taking medicine such as for depression or anxiety, and you could be referred to a doctor or psychiatrist. That will be a decision that you and your counselor make together.

What a good question! The biggest success we have seen is when you make your appointments a priority, when you apply throughout the week what you earn in session, and when you take notes (written or mental) of the things you want to discuss in your next session or the progress that you have seen. But the most important thing is that you come to your session believing that you can feel better and trusting that the treatment you receive will help you. Counseling is provided in English and Spanish.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Trauma -Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)

Eye Movement Disensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Gestalt Therapy

Existential Therapy

Person Centered Approach

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Brief Therapy

Strengths-Based Therapy

Gottman Method for Couples