Being Better Counseling
Get accessible and personalized mental healthcare in-person or from the comfort of your home.
Why Seek Counseling?
Life is complicated. Overwhelming often, perhaps more often than not. Relationships, be they family, friends, associates, co-workers, partner(s), spouses, children, and/or society at large. All of these relationships are likely both necessary and provocative of both meaning and distress within our lives. And then there's the inner realm of our mind. The thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors that flow from them can be quite challenging. Questions, doubts, wonders, fears, yearning, and more likely rattle around within us frequently and leave us short of where we'd rather be. So we come to counseling to try and understand, cope, figure it out, make sense of it, find new ways, build new skills, resolve present and past grief/trauma, and simply be better.
Why Choose Being Better Counseling?
I've been working in the field of mental health/counseling for nearly thirty years come October of 2026. I've been in private practice ten of those years. My vast experiences in community mental health, and then these past ten years in private practice have taught me a great deal about life, people, relationships, struggle, change, loss, joy, achievement, depression, anxiety, substance use/misuse/addiction, other compulsive behaviors, and much more that can become part of our complicated lives.
The intersection of my three decades of learning, education, experience, and solid clinical skills stand to provide you with a dedicated, knowledgeable, understanding, patient, skilled, invested, and at times humorous perspective through which you can come to a better understanding of yourself, others, and this complicated world we inhabit.
My primary theoretical orientation that I bring to both my practice and my life is that of the Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT model). Acceptance Commitment Therapy is essentially a more modern approach to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and brings us to better understanding, management, and results in our life. These better results come from learning the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When we know how and why our brain does what it does, we can then develop skills of reigning in and using what it sometimes offers. Other times we are best served by discarding what our brain presents to us. There is more to the ACT model than that, to be sure, but what I know to be effective within ACT is that it gives us practical skills to use through our days as we navigate this complicated world. I will help you build an understanding of that model, gain insights, and hone skills from other aspects of the counseling world as well, in your pursuit of being better.
Your Part In Being Better?
Being open to getting started is the first part and you may be on the brink of that here and now. Before starting you'll want to ensure that your insurance benefits provide coverage for our work. It is important you learn exactly how much they cover, or don't cover, and learn about your deductible (if any) and any copay amount you may be responsible for each session. Contacting your insurance provider is the best way to know your coverage benefits and related costs.
Getting your intake paperwork completed and returned to me via the secure portal known as Simple Practice is how that happens. There is a link to that here on the website, and I'll direct you to that when we've established that our work together will be starting soon. Once we get your first appointment scheduled, we will establish our meeting modality (Zoom or phone call) and I'll send you a link/reminder the day before that and each session thereafter.
How Invested Are You In Being Better?
Not everyone comes to therapy for the same reasons. Some begin counseling because they realize they want and need something different for themselves. Other times someone is coming to therapy at the insistence or encouragement of other(s). Either way, both can benefit in similar ways provided they bring; an open mind, a willingness to learn, energy to do different things, courage to face challenges and do difficult things anyway, a commitment to address their health and well-being at large, and honesty and courage.
Ideally everyone in therapy is fully invested, but let's be honest, not everyone is. Change is difficult and usually is accomplished over time. Wholesale change is admittedly rare yet some may achieve it. The results you get will be a reflection of what you learn, what you practice, what you do, and the proficiency you cultivate with the skills of ACT and other therapeutic insights and supports that you acquire in any counseling process. I assure you I will be ready to walk with you in the process of counseling and hopefully achieve change as long as we work together.