Benefits of Group Counseling:

● Discover that you’re not alone in how you feel

● Learn from others who have similar problems

● Gain multiple perspectives on your concerns from different group members

● Feel more connected to others as group cohesion develops

● Become more aware of yourself through genuine feedback from others

● Pick up new interpersonal skills that you can use in your daily life

● Internalize the lessons you’ve learned by helping others in the group

At Positive Choices, we offer a variety of Support and Skill Building Groups and are offered as follows: Coping with Depression, Coping with Anxiety, Build your Self-Confidence, Building a Stronger You, Trauma Support Group, and other groups designed toward children and adolescents.

Court-ordered therapy is meant to be a catalyst for change, for an individual or family who, is at any time, involved in the legal system and subsequently ordered by a judge or magistrate to participate in therapy with a mental health provider. Throughout the 7th Judicial District Court in Concordia Parish, court-ordered therapy is used to persuade litigants to get the help they need, when they are unable or unwilling to seek it out on their own.

If a judge has ordered that you or a loved one must participate in individual therapy sessions, special consideration should be made to seek out a therapist with these qualities:

● The court-ordered therapy should always be provided by a clinician with forensic experience, who is clear about the way that patient-therapist confidentiality, or “privileged” communication will likely be waived.

● During the very first meeting, the therapist/counselor should explain to the patient that he or she could be instructed by the Court to openly communicate the information disclosed within the therapy sessions.

● He or she should also explore how the fact that therapy was court ordered could impact the patient’s motivation, openness to disclose information, and attempts to present in a positive light.

● The therapist will also need to have a firm grip on basic information pertaining to the court system, Louisiana’s statutes, and comfort with testimony and cross examination. This is an important factor in choosing the right clinician, as it is likely that the clinician may be subpoenaed in court to testify as a fact witness.

Although it may seem too difficult, it is possible to repair your relationship after an affair. You can rebuild trust and a new level of intimacy, maybe even more than you had before. Individuals and couples can learn a lot about themselves and their relationships from affairs, and we hope to help you use this time for healing and growth in order move forward, in or beyond your current relationship. How Couples Counseling at Positive Choices can help:

● Break Free from Negative Patterns: Couples often get caught in negative patterns that keep repeating, leading to perpetual conflict and distance. Couples feel as if they are reliving the same arguments, or feel so distant they’re like roommates. This is when couples say they feel stuck, every time they try to work on the relationship, they feel as if they keep jumping on the same merry-go-round that just keeps going around and around, getting nowhere.

● Go Beyond Communication Skills: Couples will not just learn “I statements” or how to “fight fair.” They will experience a very different kind of communication, speaking from the heart. We will help you find that you already have the skills to communicate with your partner when you feel supported and safe enough to express yourself.

● Increase Trust & Security in Your Relationship: When you learn how to break your patterns, and connect on a deeper level, you will feel closer to your partner, and will experience increased trust and security. This is what will give you a more lasting change in your relationship, so you can see a long future together again.

● Improve your Sexual Intimacy: Couples counseling is not just about emotional intimacy, but also about sexual intimacy. The benefit is, the more secure your relationship becomes, the more you’ll be able to improve and revive your sexual relationship as well.

The following are some components of Community Psychiatric Support Treatment:

● Assist our clients/members and their family members to identify strategies or treatment options associated with their mental illness to overcome the affects it may have on the individual’s daily living, financial management, housing, academic and/or employment progress, personal recovery or resilience, family and/or interpersonal relationships and community integration.

● Individual supportive counseling, solution-focused interventions, emotional and behavioral management and problem behavior analysis with the individual, with the goal of assisting the individual with developing and implementing social, interpersonal, self- care, daily living and independent living skills to restore stability, to support functional gains and to adapt to community living.

● Facilitate and coordinate strengths-based planning and treatments to identify strengths and needs, resources, natural supports and develop goals and objectives to utilize personal strengths, resources and natural supports.

● Assist our clients with effectively responding to or avoiding identified precursors or triggers that would adversely affect them and identify help clients and their family to recognize and effectively respond to a potential psychiatric or personal crisis.

● Restoration, rehabilitation and support to develop skills to locate, rent and keep a home, landlord/tenant negotiations, selecting a roommate and renter’s rights and responsibilities.

● Assisting the individual to develop daily living skills specific to managing their own home, including managing their money, medications and using community resources and other self-care requirements.

Counseling is a process that can help people identify more effective strategies both to cope with difficult situations and to achieve their goals. While some people who seek counseling have chronic emotional difficulties, most are dealing with normal life events and are simply in need of an objective listener – someone who doesn’t judge and who can help them see new alternatives. Individual counseling is a collaborative effort between you and your counselor. Our goal is to provide an open, supportive, and confidential environment for you to address the issues that are concerning you.