FAQs

Everyone deserves to find peace, pain-free living, and balance in their lives. Individual counseling aids this process through techniques of self-exploration, creative expression, and personal awareness. Counseling provides the tools needed for individuals to find the happiness they seek by helping them understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The relationship between you and your counselor is the foundation upon which effective change takes place.

Humans are complex beings composed of physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual systems that are always seeking alignment. Health and illness involve all of these systems, and when one is not balanced, it affects the others.

Every therapy session is unique and caters to each individual and their specific goals. During therapy sessions it is standard to talk about the primary issues and concerns in your life. It is common to schedule a series of weekly sessions. Sometimes individuals who are going through a particularly difficult challenge may request more time per session or more than one session per week. Therapy can be short-term, focusing on a specific issue or longer-term, addressing more complex issues or ongoing personal growth. There may be times when you are asked to take certain actions outside of the therapy sessions, such as reading a relevant book or keeping records to track certain behaviors. Between sessions it is important to process what has been discussed and integrate it into your life. For therapy to be most effective you must be an active participant, both during and between the sessions.

Sexuality is all that you are and how you relate to the world around you. There are 5 Circles of Sexuality: 1) Sensuality: an awareness, acceptance of, and comfort with one’s own body; physiological and psychological enjoyment of one’s own body and the bodies of others; 2) Intimacy: the ability and need to experience emotional closeness to another human being and have it returned; 3) Sexual Identity: the development of a sense of who one is sexually, including a sense of maleness and femaleness; 4) Sexual Health and Reproduction: attitudes and behaviors related to producing children, care and maintenance of the sex and reproductive organs, and health consequences of sexual behavior; 5) Sexualization: the use of sexuality to influence, control, or manipulate others.

Sex therapy is a unique and specialized form of professional counseling designed to help women and men address their concerns about sexuality, sexual function, and sexual expression. While other issues may arise during therapy, these may include concerns with:

• Desire or frequency discrepancies
• Arousal or inability to reach orgasm
• Sexual anxieties and inhibitions
• Painful intercourse
• Sexual identity or orientation issues
• Premature ejaculations (rapid ejaculation)
• Erection problems
• Medical problems affecting sex
• Unusual sexual desires or behaviors
• Issues related to sexual expression or function
• Sexual fetishes
• Fertility optimization 

Like any therapeutic experience, sex therapy involves talking, listening and education. A trained therapist works with the client in a private and confidential setting to clarify their particular issues. During therapy, the therapist provides education about pertinent sexual issues, including anatomy, physical response, and healthy sexual behavior. Therapy will never involve any form of sexual or inappropriate physical contact between therapist and client, nor will the performance of any sexual activity be part of any therapy session

Each day provides an opportunity to heal ourselves, to learn from our experiences, and to grow into greater beings.  When we are out of touch with our inner spirit the daily trials of life take their toll on our bodies and we become ill in one way or another.  If we do not learn to heal our own wounds, expecting others to heal them for us, the healing is only temporary.  Counseling through NLP techniques opens the hearts and minds of individuals to the possibility of self-healing, offering support along the way, through open dialogue and activities.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a hands-on learning experience to restructure your brain’s response to triggers that may currently cause stress, anxiety, and/or pain. NLP is a unique model of how people learn, motivate themselves, and change their behavior to achieve excellence in any endeavor. NLP is valuable wherever human communication skills can enhance results – in education, counseling, relationships, parenting, public speaking, sports performance, pain management, and many other areas. NLP uses language and activities to help restructure brain response, which is particularly helpful with chronic pain and suffering. Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a bilateral tapping method, is one of the core techniques Dr. Milspaw utilizes in her work with all clients. This method involves the client tapping on certain natural stress-reduction points on their body while identifying core beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations that are causing distress. For more information on EFT and the tapping method, visit acepnow.com and energypsych.org.

Although NLP and EFT can be used as a method of therapy, the applications are much broader.  Even when used as a therapeutic intervention, it is basically a process of teaching people how to use their minds to enhance their life.  Most therapies are remedial; that is, directed towards solving problems from the past.  NLP and EFT goes much further in teaching the skills that promote positive change, which in turn generates new possibilities and opportunities.

The term “hypnosis” comes from the Greek word “hypnos” meaning “sleep.” Hypnotherapists use inductions that bring about deep relaxation, also known as alpha or theta state or trance.  A person in this deeply focused state is unusually responsive to an idea or image, but this does not mean that a hypnotist can control the person’s mind and free will. On the contrary, one would never do anything under hypnosis that they would not do under ordinary consciousness.  Hypnosis is not brain-washing or mind control, rather one is in full control and can come out of trance at will.  Hypnosis can teach people how to master their own states of awareness and reach personal goals such as healthy eating and smoking cessation.

During hypnosis, your body and mind relax and your subconscious mind becomes open to suggestion. Like other relaxation techniques, hypnosis lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and changes certain types of brain wave activity. In this relaxed state, you will feel at ease physically yet fully awake mentally and may be highly responsive to suggestions (that we negotiate during the pre-induction portion of the session).  If you are trying to quit smoking, for example, the therapist’s suggestion may help convince you that you will not like the taste of cigarettes in the future.  Smokers undergoing hypnosis can actually re-experience how awful they felt after their very first cigarette.

Everybody passes through a natural state of hypnosis many times a day – while falling asleep and waking up, getting caught up in a movie or book, spacing out at a traffic light.  In fact, that little breaks your mind wants you to take every 60-90 minutes where you feel a little sleepy and want to poke your head out the door for some fresh air is a natural brief state of hypnosis called the “ultradian rhythm.”  Hypnotherapy feels wonderful…it’s like falling asleep while someone is reciting relaxing, peaceful words to you  Upon emerging from a session, people typically make comments like “wow” and “that’s the most relaxed I’ve ever been.”