Welcome to oak mountain counseling

Everyone can benefit from counseling, and seeking support in a time that you may need it is perfectly okay and normal. No matter what stage of life you are in or what you are going through, counseling provides the tools and support to help you feel understood and grow to become the person you want to be.

The first step in change is having the self-awareness to realize your struggles and committing to making a change to become a healthier version of you. You might think your struggles are very minor, or maybe you think there is nothing counseling can do for you. But counseling provides a listening ear to help you feel heard, understood, and cared for and gives you the tools to provide long-lasting benefits in your life.

Counseling can help teenagers understand their emotions, communicate in a healthier way, and develop coping skills to manage their emotions. Counseling can help children develop social skills and become more confident in school and sports. Counseling can help people trying to process grief and trauma and the lasting effects those have left on their daily lives. Counseling can help families communicate better and understand each other in order to strengthen the relationship. Simply put, counseling can help everyone, even if the only reason you are coming is to understand yourself better.

The benefits you obtain from counseling and your willingness to use the skills in your daily life can greatly increase your confidence, self-esteem, communication skills, and coping skills.

Counseling requires a relationship built on trust, and therefore confidentiality is the most important factor of counseling. Before starting counseling, you will be provided with the confidentiality disclosure agreement, which basically says what is discussed in sessions won’t be shared with anyone.

You might request for your counselor to share information or updates with your physician or lawyer, but the counselor can’t release information without your written consent by law.

The law and ethics require counselor confidentiality, except for the following situations:

- Suspected abuse or neglect of children, adults, and elders to the authorities (Child Protection, law enforcement agencies)

- If counselor has reason to suspect client is in serious danger of harming themselves or threatens to harm another person

Our counseling methods are specifically tailored to meet the needs of each individual, but overall the goal is to establish a safe and comfortable environment for each individual to express themselves. For children and teenagers, this might look like playing games or talking about hobbies so that they are able to relate and feel comfortable opening up to the counselor. For adults, this might look like talking about current life events, past life events, family and friends to develop a relationship where they feel heard and establish an understanding of what can be accomplished in counseling.

Once there is a base relationship built on trust and a comfortable environment, counseling sessions might include talking about your daily life and current life changes, past events that stand out, personal struggles that affect your daily life, thoughts and feelings that affect your self-esteem and relationships, or emotions or stressors that are overwhelming you. Each topic of discussion is based on the needs of each individual and the individual’s goals of counseling.

Counseling be a short term or long term depending on what you are hoping to accomplish, but we typically recommend weekly sessions of about 45 minutes to an hour each. For younger children, we might advice a shorter amount of time per session due to attention span.