Our counselors provide therapy in Roanoke, VA

As a licensed professional counselor (LPC), my go-to approach for helping people in individual therapy is using a person-centered perspective: meeting you where you are as an individual, learning what your personal goals are, and helping you to develop a plan to make them more manageable so you can build confidence and have more motivation throughout the process. I find a lot of benefit in utilizing tools from other theories to help in this process, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with specific use of reframing and redirecting thoughts to help improve emotional stability; motivational interviewing (MI) to help discover your goals in times of feeling stuck or being unsure; as well as mindfulness techniques and rewriting your narrative to give you additional tools to change how you see yourself and your situation in the here and now.

As an LPC, I often teach the following tools in individual therapy: boundary setting, reframing a thought, stopping a thought, redirecting a thought, SMART goals, the self-coaching model, mindfulness techniques, emotional regulation, various coping skills, etc.

As a therapist, I know a client is making meaningful progress in individual therapy when their response to similar stressors diminishes, their ability to change their focus and redirect their thoughts becomes more apparent during sessions, they are consistently able to keep up with their activities of daily living, and they are able to make other changes within their lives with little to no discussion prior to the decision they make on their own.

Clients can supplement their time in individual therapy by reading a recommended book, journaling about their thoughts and emotions, watching educational videos, listening to helpful podcasts that increase their understanding of specific coping skills, using mindfulness tools, etc.

To prepare for your first individual therapy session, you can write a list of what has been happening to bring you to therapy, medications you are currently taking with dosages, goals that you may have for yourself, questions you may have about therapy, and/or what your thoughts are about the frequency of sessions.