Our counselors provide therapy in Cleveland, OH

My go-to approach for helping people in individual therapy is a mixture of supportive reflection, cognitive behavioral therapy, coping skills, psychoeducation, and solution-focused therapy. I prefer this combination because of the nuances of the problems people share and the help they need.

I teach the following tools in individual therapy:

• Self-soothing techniques: This can be done with something as small as a beverage of choice or food. This tool is used to bring calm by slowly consuming a beverage or food and focusing on the temperature, taste, smell, and texture and blocking out everything else around you.
• Interruption of automatic thoughts: This involves focusing on other things such as playing category games, naming 20 candy bars or colleges/universities, or naming all 50 states.
• Breathing exercises to help slow the heart rate down and breathing.
• Psychoeducation and reviewing thinking errors.
• How to correct automatic thoughts.

I know a client is making meaningful progress in individual therapy when they have difficulty thinking of things to address and work on over several (3-6) sessions.

Clients can supplement their time in individual therapy by spending time with their friends and family and sharing with them. Also, working out, journaling, doing leisure activities, joining groups doing fun things that they are interested in or want to find out if they will like. Using their coping skills.

To prepare for your first individual therapy session, you can think about what is bringing you to therapy that you want to get help talking through. This is your opportunity to introduce me to what is going on in your life that made you think, “I think I need to talk to someone to get help with this.”