News | Metis Center for Psychological Services | Psychotherapy and Assessment in Boulder, Erie, and Durango

What to Expect from Psychotherapy

By Matt Bynum, MA, LPCC These days, it feels like mental health is getting much needed attention in many circles. On both a national and local level, more and more people seem to be working to decrease the stigma of asking for help. This is truly wonderful. But there are still a lot of misconceptions and unknowns about therapy floating around. What is therapy exactly? Why do people go to therapy and what do they get out of it? What happens in the therapy office? What is the therapist’s role? What follows are some answers to these questions. Keep in mind that different therapists will have slightly different answers to these questions. In fact, there are as many “therapies” as there are therapists, because each clinician will bring their own experience, modalities, and approach into the room. Furthermore, if a therapist is good at what they do, they will do their best to adjust the therapy to fit your specific needs. What is therapy? Why go to therapy? Psychotherapy, (or counseling), is the process of regularly meeting with a mental health professional to work through problems and dilemmas in your life and gain some renewed sense of vitality or flexibility. People seek individual therapy for lots of different reasons. Be it addiction, past trauma, a break-up, major life transition, relationship issues, anxiety, depression, or strong desire to look at painful habits. That being said, it is absolutely OK to see a therapist if you are wanting some increased self-knowledge and personal growth. There is a common

I Forgot to Pay Attention!

Nine Common Symptoms of ADD By Sunda Friedman TeBockhorst, PhD, ABPP If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a conversation and realized that you don’t know what the person you’re talking to just said because you forgot to pay attention to him or her, you may relate to this title and wonder: is this Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)? Or, is ADD affecting someone close to me? Here are nine signs and symptoms common to those who may be affected by ADD. People accuse you of not listening – even when you are. Wandering attention is a core symptom of ADD. This often surfaces for people via interpersonal frustration and relational stress when people don’t realize you aren’t intentionally disregarding them or their concerns. You just lost your phone – again. Keeping track of personal possessions can be particularly tricky for those with ADD, who tend to spend more time than the average bear hunting down wayward possessions. Alternately, some have developed an intense focus on preventing this with certain rituals and routines, which must be adhered to inflexibly – which can be another sign of ADD. Doors have magical brain-erasing properties. Having to walk from one room into another – to tell somebody something, to retrieve an item, to do a task – can be a series of misadventures for the person with ADD, who may have to give this several tries before their short-term memory decides the jig is up and produces the nugget of knowledge about why the journey was started in

How To Remove The Stigma Surrounding Mental Health Conditions

Sometimes things happen in life and we don’t know how to deal with them. Or perhaps you’ve struggled with feelings of emptiness for a long time, but you don’t know how to cope. Talking to someone about how you’re feeling can have an incredible impact on your life, but the first step to doing so is removing the stigma surrounding counseling and seeing a therapist. At Metis Center For Psychological Services in Boulder, CO, we offer counseling for anxiety disorders, depression, and other mental health conditions. Whether you’ve just experienced a tragedy or you have a chronic condition, we can help. Learn more about how to remove the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and contact us today to schedule a counseling appointment. Address What’s Causing The Stigma Unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions about mental health issues that can lead to stereotyping and even discrimination. Whether you or someone else has stereotyped you, it can be even more detrimental to your overall health. Signs of stigma include a reluctance to seek counseling, a lack of understanding from your loved ones or employer, fewer opportunities at work and in your personal life, and even health insurance that doesn’t properly cover your expenses for mental health. Luckily, there are ways to address these effects. Seek Counseling It can be one of the most difficult steps in your journey to better mental and emotional health, but scheduling a counseling appointment can make the biggest difference. Counseling can help you identify negative thought patterns, help you reduce the symptoms

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How to Make the Most of Your Couples Therapy

If you and your significant other have agreed to go to couples therapy together, you want to make sure that you’re getting the absolute most out of your sessions. It doesn’t matter if you and your partner are in a great place with one another or if there are issues that you’re trying to work out, these sessions are ultimately tools to help you become the best team you can be. In today’s blog post, we are going to touch on a few of the ways that you can make sure you are making the most of the time that you have. Let’s dive right in. Set Goals for Yourself – Not your Partner It can be challenging to walk into a couples therapy session and not focus on your partner. While you may be attending couples counseling as a unit, you want to make sure that you’re still focusing entirely on the ways that you can improve. One of the best ways to do this is by setting goals for yourself, not your partner. Even though there are likely a handful of ways that you’d like your partner to change, do your best to avoid focusing on them. Instead, focus on the ways that you would like to change or improve your bad habits. Be Vulnerable There’s no doubt about it, therapy sessions can be overwhelming. The first few sessions that you attend can be especially tricky because you don’t yet have a relationship with your counselor. While it may be difficult for you to

Celebrate National Wellness Week

We’re happy to tell you that this week is National Wellness Week! So what is wellness and why does it need an entire week? We’ll be getting into that shortly, but before we get started, we’d like to address the importance of mental health. While therapy can be one form of ‘treatment’ for mental health, it’s vital that you do everything you can to take care of yourself. Just like the fact that you only have one body, you also only have one mind when it comes to your health. In today’s blog, we’ll be touching on some ways you can take care of your mental health. If you’d like to meet with a supportive and trustworthy psychologist, then contact us to schedule an appointment for therapy. What Is Wellness? The official definition of wellness is “that state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal.” Many may think that wellness is just for people who preach veganism and exercise several times a day. However, wellness is actually for everyone who wants to feel better mentally and physically. It’s the desire to make healthy lifestyle choices such as choosing to eat carrots instead of another cupcake or to go to the gym instead of going home to watch Netflix. Wellness is for those who want to actively pursue a lifestyle that will make them feel and look great. Wellness is an important concept to introduce in your life because it helps your mental, physical, and emotional state. However, it can be very difficult

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How To Get Out Of A Funk

The summer is getting hotter and hotter every week and instead of getting out of the house or the office, you can barely move from your bed. The Colorado sun may be high in the sky most days, but all you want to do is lay in bed and stare at a wall. While you know you don’t have depression, sometimes, you feel that there must be something wrong with you that you can’t find the energy to get up. You should know if you are familiar with these moments that there is a solution. You don’t have to live in a funk for the entirety of your life. Sometimes, you may be happier than other times and that’s okay. As long as you know how to cope with it, you’ll be prepared the next time all you want to do is lay in bed. Say Goodbye To That Funk At Metis Center® For Psychological Services, we offer therapy services to help your mental health. With such a small focus on mental health in society and our day-to-day life, you may not think that therapy can help, but talking about what’s bothering you is a great way to get out of a funk. Everyone goes through a period in life where they may feel at a loss. Perhaps, a person you were seeing left you and you’re struggling to get over it. Maybe a loved one died and put you in an uncomfortable funk that seems to settle into your entire being. It’s understandable that sometimes

Please Join Us: Trauma-Informed Yoga

Trauma-Informed Yoga 4-week series Thursdays in June and August 2018 4:30 – 6:00pm $75 for the series OR $20 drop-in per class Click here and here to learn more about Why Yoga for Trauma? No prior experience necessary. Email Caroline@MetisCenter.net if you are interested! Yoga restores the natural rhythm of our nervous system, which is disrupted by trauma. Yoga teaches us how to self-regulate and stay present with our experience. Yoga has been shown to have greater success in lessening symptoms of trauma than talk therapy in controlled studies. When taught with a sophisticated understanding of the mind-body connection, yoga can help us to discover strength and flexibility, not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well. Over time, we develop confidence and trust in our ability to deal with whatever comes our way. Trauma lives in the body and 50-60% of adults experience at least one instance of trauma in their lives. When we experience a threatening or distressing event, either acute or developmental, our nervous system does its best to protect us. It tells our body to kick into high gear, producing a tremendous amount of energy with which to run away or fight. Sometimes our brain assesses the situation and concludes that we cannot succeed in either fighting or running away and so we freeze. This is an adaptive, intelligent response at the time. However, it is also when trauma occurs. All that energy gets stuck in the body because it does not have a chance to express itself physically. Our nervous system becomes

A New Type Of Therapy To Try

If you’ve never gone to therapy before, then you might feel overwhelmed by the many different approaches you can take advantage of. Even if you’ve been going to therapy for some time, it can be very difficult to determine what’s the right type of therapeutic approach you should take. There’s cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement, cognitive processing therapy, and so many others that can help you work through issues that you feel are holding you back. As a therapist, we want to make sure that we can take the right approach to ensure your needs are being met and that means knowing what type of therapeutic approach will work best for you. One of those type of therapy that we now offer at Metis Center® For Psychological Services is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. For further information on our therapeutic approaches and how we can help you move toward a more positive life, contact us today. What Is Acceptance And Commitment Therapy? To better understand what this type of therapy is, we’ve broken down this therapeutic approach. The basis of ACT is to focus on mindful strategies that help to increase your psychological flexibility. This type of therapy will help you figure out your own core values and your goals to make you more confident and conscious in each moment of your life. By working to pair together your core values and your goals, you’ll be able to align your behaviors with these two factors and you’ll see some changes take place in your life. For example,

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Combat Your Anxiety In 2018

Anxiety is something that millions of Americans struggle with everyday. If you’re one of those Americans, then you know how terrible it is to have this possibly debilitating disorder. Whether you have anxiety due to panicky spiraling or you have social anxiety, our counseling services can help you tackle the issues you may be dealing with. At the Metis Center For Psychological Services, we have created a supportive and non-judgemental environment that can help you open up to an individualized approach to counseling. We know that counseling can be difficult, but by creating a personalized approach, we’re able to help you sift through the issues that might be holding you back from reaching your full potential. Resolutions To Try In The New Year Since it’s a new year, you probably want to have some resolutions planned out either to help you deal with your anxiety or to focus more on self-care. These resolutions can offer you some assistance with your anxiety or they can help you focus more on taking care of yourself. If you’re not one for resolutions, then make a goal to try at least one of these out in the year 2018. If you’re interested in counseling, then contact our facility today. Talk About Your Anxiety A lot of people don’t like talking about their anxiety because they think there’s something wrong with them and talking about it just proves it. There’s nothing wrong with talking about anxiety. As a matter of fact, you’ll find that when you mention it, more people will

Is Cognitive Behavior Therapy For You?

Going to a therapist can be both a liberating and a scary endeavor. You might have to explore subjects you don’t want to talk about and you might feel uncomfortable going over your past. However, therapy allows you to focus on specific events that have caused you to feel hurt. With therapy, you can begin to focus on healing and how you can feel content again. At the Metis Center For Psychological Services, we strive to offer an abundance of therapeutic approaches that will allow you to heal and move forward. One of those therapeutic approaches is cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. What Is Cognitive Behavior Therapy? You might have heard someone mention cognitive therapy before, but what is it? How can it help you? Is it the right direction you want to go in for therapy? Cognitive behavioral therapy is a therapeutic approach that allows you to move forward and focus on healing. This form of therapy targets the interactions you have between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When you see the correlation between your mental stability and your behavior, you’re able to alter your well-being and adapt better to your environment, both psychologically and physically. Cognitive behavioral therapy was developed on evidence-based practices that are geared toward improving your mental health. This form of therapy targets the development of personal coping strategies for problems that are current and will help you break harmful patterns in cognition. It will allow you to change your emotional regulation and behavior by focusing on developing coping strategies that