As just one new feature of the Pinnacle website, we now have a new welcome video. The short clip explains who we are as a mental healthcare team and why we are proud of what we do at Pinnacle Counseling. For more information, click here to view the clip and we look forward to seeing you soon.
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The start of the new year is a great time to think about changing your habits and lifestyle. Want to lose weight? Communicate better? Pay off some debt? Become more organized? No time like the present to move your life in a healthy, more positive direction. Go for it!
But be careful. A New Year’s Resolution is not a license to savage yourself for being too disorganized, too fat, too scattered, to poor, or too anything. You don’t need a successful (or super strict) New Year’s Resolution to be worthy. You deserve to feel good about yourself right now. Exactly as you are. Resolutions fueled by shame are destined to fail. So watch out for destructive if, then statements. Too frequently we place these types of statements between ourselves and our self worth:
- If I lose fifteen pounds, then I’ll feel beautiful.
- If I organize all my closets, then I can relax and enjoy my home.
- If I am out of debt, then I’ll feel secure.
- If I am married, then my life will have meaning.
- If I am perfect, then I’ll be worthy of self-love
Some of the above statements are flat-out wrong, dangerous. But some of them are partially true. If you are debt free, you will feel more financially secure. But can you feel more financially secure just by taking action to become debt free? That’s the trick. Give yourself the credit you deserve for your actions. Do not look only to your destination for satisfaction and peace.
Pinnacle Counseling offers counseling for children, ages 5-17, and their families. A therapist with advanced training and experience in working with young people will meet with the child in our play room designed specifically to provide a safe environment for children to express themselves. Play is believed to be the language of children, when they do not have the vocabulary, insight, or courage to process things verbally. Through carefully selected toys, games, books, activities, art mediums, and purposeful play children can make sense of their lives, heal, and learn new skills. Counseling for children can address different types of issues including reaction to stressors such as divorce or loss, traumas of all kinds, problems with family bonding and relationships, anxiety and depression, disruptive behavior, aggression, school problems, and ADHD.
How do you know if your child needs counseling?
Children often react physically and behaviorally to stressors rather than just putting their problems into words. This could because they don’t have the words or don’t have the insight to understand what is happening inside themselves. Looks for signs like changes in eating habits, changes in sleeping patterns including having nightmares, regression in behaviors (e.g, potty accidents, thumb sucking, baby talk), crying and tearful episodes, “touchy” and short fused moods, and withdrawing from people and activities they used to enjoy.
What is play therapy? How will it help my child?
Play therapy is a specific type of treatment, based on theory and principles. It is more than just typical play time, although your child may not realize that. The trained therapist uses different avenues in the session to help the child express themselves and learn new skills for coping. The therapist can also discuss with parents themes that come up in the child’s play, indicating areas of concern. As the child plays out things and engages in activities during session, he or she will get similar benefits to an adult spending an hour talking with a therapist.
If you have further questions or feel our services are needed for your child or family, please let us know! Visit our website at www.pinnaclecounselingNWA.com for contact information.
Rachael Nachtigal, LPC
Therapists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and others who study human behavior (parents, for example) actually know a great deal about how people move through major life changes. We move in stages. What is a major life change? We’re not talking deciding between the raspberry torte or bananas foster here.
Quitting smoking is a major life change. Quitting your job and moving to Montana is a major life change. Divorce is a major life change. Transforming your lifestyle from sedentary to active (a surefire way to lose weight) is a major life change.
That thing in the back of your mind that you’ve been meaning to do for a long time, the one that you’re sure will make everything better, that is a major life change.
Here are the stages:
- Pre-contemplation – Change, what change? I don’t need to change…
- Contemplation – I think I might need to change. How can I change?
- Preparation – I think I know what I want to do. Now I just need to do it….
- Action – I am doing it!
- Maintenance – I did it. Here’s how I make sure I keep doing it…
- Termination – Alright. Done. What’s next?
Change is possible. But it’s not always easy. In fact, sometimes it seems impossible.
Knowing what stage you’re in makes it a lot easier to figure out what you need to do to move forward.
Bibliotherapy involves using books, stories, and other forms of literature to help “reach” someone in counseling. This type of treatment does not have to include the typical list of self-help books aimed at bettering yourself by looking inward and also does not have to be doing strictly in the counseling office. You can work towards a better understanding of yourself by using your summer reading list as a form of bibliotherapy. The introspection while reading can be conscious, subconscious, direct, or indirect. You do not have to pick up a book with the intent to read, process, understand, and “feel better” immediately after reading. The phases of bibliotherapy are as diverse as the books on your summer reading list. If you pick up the latest in ‘chick lit’ from the New York Times Bestseller list, you will be taken on a romantic, witty, and likely dramatic ride through the trials of being a twenty-something in the wake of dating, job hunting, and balancing life as a young woman. On the other hand, if you choose a young adult Sci-Fi novel, you will fall into a world of the adventure of slaying dragons and finding yourself on a journey to discovering who you are and want to be. No matter what you read and what you try to get out of a book or reading, you can find something unexpected. The bibliotherapy you get comes from the journey you take with the main characters and how you apply it to your own life. This can come in the form of a favorite fantasy story to take your mind off of an 8 hour work day or could help you realize what it is in life that you truly value. Your summer reading list takes you on a quest through the words on a page to a place where you can be yourself and enjoy the story. On the path to enjoying any type of literature, you form the opinions, insights, and learn to embrace the acceptance of yourself and the joy that comes from walking in another character’s shoes, whether they are red ruby slippers or hiking boots stained with blood of a mythical creature.
Erika McCaghren
Anxiety can be confused with fear. Fear is a response to a very real and concrete danger that makes you want to pull away from or escape, because it could be a threat to your physical or emotional safety. The fear response can affect both the physiology of the body and the chemical balance of the brain. Anxiety is a generalized sense of dread about something that seems menacing but actually may not be menacing or may not even be out there. Feeling anxious may make it difficult for you to talk yourself out of this foreboding and you become trapped in an endless loop of “what ifs”. Anxiety can produce feelings of worry, stress, stomach butterflies, and other manifestations of anxiety. While this emotional and physical discomfort can be worrisome, anxiety can often be a valuable signal that “trouble is brewing” and signals you to pay attention to be a problem that needs to be addressed. If you feel your anxiety is getting in the way of daily functioning, seek professional help as there are many effective treatments to reduce, manage, or eliminate anxiety.
Therapists frequently give counsel and counselors frequently provide therapy. Sometimes counselors call themselves therapists and sometimes therapists call themselves counselors. If you are seeking help, it doesn’t matter whether the person you are speaking with is a counselor or a therapist. What matters is whether or not you’ve found someone who can help you. (See a complete list of mental health credentials here: Psychology Today: Therapist Credentials.)
The right person, whether they call themselves a counselor, therapist, or psychotherapist, can help you change your life. Finding someone to help in this endeavor is a very important decision. Our advice: shop around. Use the first appointment to see if you’ve found the right person. Don’t move forward unless you’re certain.
Here are a couple questions you should take with you into a first appointment:
- Can this therapist or counselor listen to me and talk to me and understand me in a way that helps me understand myself more honestly, more truthfully?
- Does this person have a deep knowledge base in the following areas: behaviors, emotions, self-deceptions, change, spirituality, and meaning?
- If I had to hear bad news, would I want to hear it from this person?
- Do I feel that he or she cares about me?
- Can I trust this person to help me change?
The first word of this compound word says it all “psycho”. No one wants to be associated with something that is strange, difficult to handle, and perhaps the worst of all: a scary, new experience. If you were to ask a friend or family member what psychotherapy is, they would most likely say something about paying a lot of money to talk about problems (and that’s putting it nicely). If you were to ask a counselor or therapist, we would describe it as a chance to be heard, without judgment through the ears and eyes of a professional, in the comfort and safety of a confidential session. The talking part might be easy…or hard depending on how you view your problems. If providing a safe place where clients can talk about whatever it is that is troubling them is the job of the counselor, what is your job as a client in psychotherapy? What do you have to know before you even walk through the door? Most first time clients wonder how we expect you to tell everything that you are thinking and feeling after just meeting.
These are common questions that can be answered. A client simply has to make the appointment with a counselor or therapist and come ready for the experience. Okay…that may seem a bit more intimidating than helpful, but it’s the truth. If you are open to the experience of psychotherapy as something completely different and refreshing you are on the road to understanding what it is and how it works. Before you walk through the door, you should know that you are not alone. Every single person you pass on the street has a past, a story, a journey. That road is paved with troubles, hardships, and bumps that throw off your sense of balance as you walk the road. This is where you have to believe that there are trained professionals ready to help and to listen to you. Why would a counselor want to listen to all of the “bumps” along the way in your life? Because we are trained to provide the safe haven for you to explore the inner workings of what is really going on in your life. There is no façade, just a real and honest experience with another person to ensure that you don’t trip on the bumps of life and walk, silent and hurting, through the rest of life.
If you are working through the bumps in your life and decide that the word psychotherapy is not as scary as facing it on your own…that is what we are here for.
Erika McCaghren
Therapists frequently give counsel and counselors frequently provide therapy. Sometimes counselors call themselves therapists and sometimes therapists call themselves counselors. If you are seeking help, it doesn’t matter whether the person you are speaking with is a counselor or a therapist. What matters is whether or not you’ve found someone who can help you. (See a complete list of mental health credentials here: Psychology Today: Therapist Credentials.)
The right person, whether they call themselves a counselor, therapist, or psychotherapist, can help you change your life. Finding someone to help in this endeavor is a very important decision. Our advice: shop around. Use the first appointment to see if you’ve found the right person. Don’t move forward unless you’re certain.
Here are a couple questions you should take with you into a first appointment:
- Can this therapist or counselor listen to me and talk to me and understand me in a way that helps me understand myself more honestly, more truthfully?
- Does this person have a deep knowledge base in the following areas: behaviors, emotions, self-deceptions, change, spirituality, and meaning?
- If I had to hear bad news, would I want to hear it from this person?
- Do I feel that he or she cares about me?
- Can I trust this person to help me change?
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We serve all of Northwest Arkansas, including Bella Vista, Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville and outlying communities, – with client-centered marriage counseling, individual counseling services.
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