AT DC VA Counseling Psychotherapy, we believe mental health is as important as physical health. Mental health is integral to living a healthy, balanced life. Emotional and mental health is important because it’s a vital part of your life and impacts your thoughts, behaviors and emotions. Being healthy emotionally can promote productivity and effectiveness in activities like work, school or caregiving.
AT DC VA Counseling, our mission is to help people to achieve or recover their mental and emotional health.
So, they can have functional and happy lives. We want people to thrive and not survive. There is plenty of pain in the world, and some of it is part of life. However, we don’t have to suffer unnecessarily. Counseling can help people successfully address a vast array of mental health issues. For some it helps to overcome addictions, better deal with mental disorders, unresolved grief issues, childhood or family traumas, have fulfilling jobs and relationships. For others, therapy could be just about helping you increase your personal insight (get to know yourself). Moreover, develop healthy coping skills for daily life and, have an overall better quality of life.
At DC VA Counseling, we are committed to helping people heal from their inside out and grow in self-knowledge and self-acceptance through our Counseling Methods.
We offer different types of therapy or counseling modalities. Among our approaches, we also offer opportunities for healthy, interested individuals to seek positive self-growth, self-improvement, change, and advancement in personal, educational, career, relationship, and life goals. If you only need a hand to figure out a few things, we have a place for you as well (only consultation sessions are also available).
Our approach is founded on the concept of basic goodness as well as the natural need for connection. So, part of therapy, it is to rediscover or get you back to your true essence (peeling off the layers of junk that life piled on you). Most of the unhealthy behaviors tend to be brilliant strategies for survival that helped you once, but do not help you any longer. Or you might be in a current situation that is still unhealthy. Counseling can help you to find better options for your life that don’t have to be at the cost of your wellbeing.
The 3 Pillars of Our Work / Counseling Methods:
1) Effective Diagnosis and Treatment:
Effective diagnosis is able to determine if the client has a mental disorder or is simply experiencing adjustment difficulties. Depending on that, we proceed to develop a personalized treatment plan. It is important to avoid miss or over-diagnosing. At DC VA we avoid using labels or black and white diagnoses, that might be not beneficial for you. We use them as needed, but keep an overall holistic view of you as a person and, most importantly, know that diagnosis is helpful but not definite. We know that people are fluid. People tend to have most symptoms (on a gray spectrum) from different diagnoses, more than just fitting in a box. Therefore, our treatment and approaches reflect that view.
2) Positive Psychology
It is a recent branch of psychology that “studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.”[1] Positive psychologists seek “to find and nurture genius and talent,” and “to make normal life more fulfilling,”[1] not to cure mental illness.[1] Martin Seligman is considered to be “the father of positive psychology.”[2][3]
3) Prevention
Because we believe that mental health is a crucial component of our general wellbeing. In the same way that we visit the dentist, eye doctor, cardiologist, and general physician, regularly to check the good state of our body’s organs. We should also visit the specialist to check our emotional health frequently and ask for help when necessary.
The idea that “therapy is only for crazy people” is nothing but an old fashioned myth. Today crazy is the person that does not look for help with all the resources available and continues to live in pain or unsatisfied.
“Counseling Therapy helps people to either achieve or recover their mental and emotional health so they can have functional and happy lives.”
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Counseling is about getting to, understanding and healing that parts of you that aren’t with your goals in life. That is why sometimes, you need to go deeper. There is no other way around.
At our center, we specialize in therapeutic modalities facilitate. So, you don’t continue to pile shame and guilt because you can do what you want to do or be who you want to be. You just might need help. I invite you to learn more about our Counseling Methods and how EXPERIENTIAL MODALITIES can help with that!
