Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Depression in Lancaster & Virtually in Reading, Pennsylvania

When you need counseling and therapy in Lancaster or Reading, PA, our services for individuals and couples are here to help. Our range of evidence-based treatments deliver the support that you are looking for.

Everyone can benefit from counseling and therapy, no matter what may have happened or might be happening in your life. You don't have to wait until you are in crisis or dealing with a significant problem to find counseling or therapy beneficial, but it can be especially helpful if you have a specific issue that you would like to address. Our counseling services in Lancaster and Reading, Pennsylvania, offer help for a number of issues, including depression and trauma. We also offer couples therapy to help couples strengthen and rebuild their relationships, as well as address any problems that you might be having.

Counseling for Depression

Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders in the United States. An estimated 16.2 million adults in the United States (6.7%) have had at least one major depressive episode in a given year. Major depressive disorder is the most common type of depression, with other types of depression including persistent depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, seasonal depression, and postpartum depression.

Therapy and counseling are used as ways to treat depression, often together with other types of treatment, such as medication, lifestyle changes, and more. There are various talking therapies that can be useful, and patients might learn techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to help them change their thought patterns and manage their mood.

Depression is a commonly treated issue at our clinic, and our expert therapists use a mix of different treatment modalities to help our patients. Therapy can help people with depression to address specific issues and circumstances in their life that affect their mood, and well as help to make depression more manageable.

Therapy for Trauma

Trauma can be the result of many different things, from a singular event to a long-term issue. Some people who have experienced a trauma or traumatic period in their life might have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) but not everyone who has trauma in their past has necessarily been diagnosed with one of these conditions. Trauma can cause a range of symptoms, including anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hypervigilance, mood swings, and more.

If you want to move forward from trauma, counseling and therapy can help you. Various treatments and therapies might help you, including CBT, DBT, and other talk therapies. EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) has been shown to be one of the most effective methods for treating PTSD and trauma. The treatment involves addressing your trauma in short doses while the therapist directs your eye movements. It might be effective because your attention is diverted, which makes the memories less emotionally intense. The aim is that, over time, triggering memories and thoughts will have less of an impact.

EMDR is one of the most evidence-based treatments for trauma and is endorsed by the World Health Organization and American Psychological Association as a treatment for trauma. The APA has noted its effectiveness for treating symptoms of acute and chronic PTSD, while the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense jointly issued clinical practice guidelines, which strongly recommend EMDR therapy for treating PTSD.

Couples Therapy

When you need help with your relationship or marriage, couples counseling can help you. Some people choose to have couples counseling alongside individual sessions, which helps them to address both their own mental and emotional health, as well as the issues within their relationship. Couples therapy and marriage therapy are designed to help you to work through your issues together. It can help you to communicate in healthy ways and strengthen your relationship. Attending couples therapy with us if you are in Lancaster, PA, or Reading, PA, can give you the chance to build trust, understanding, and intimacy.

Our therapists use evidence-based methods to help couples to reconnect and work together. A number of treatments are used to help couples move past the issues that may be affecting their relationship, including both individual problems and interpersonal issues. Ongoing couples therapy can be combined with individual therapy to help couples get the best results. It can often be personal problems that are affecting the relationship and may need to be worked on separately in order to get the best results. We also offer sex therapy, which can be useful both for couples and individuals who want to address certain intimacy issues.

When you want to improve your mental health and relationships, our therapy and counseling services offer you the support that you need. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help.