In Individual Therapy clients work one-on-one with a therapist to gently challenge routine approaches toward demanding aspects of daily life. It is here that clients are often encouraged to learn new ideas that bring about increased self-awareness and internal resiliency. Individual therapy is a collaborative effort between the client’s experience and the therapist’s approach; it takes time to develop and may evolve as the client’s needs arise. This process is meant to empower clients and to help them improve their baseline management of stress, anger, forgetfulness, confusion, and pain, amongst other common challenges. It is here that various therapeutic objectives are customized to meet the client’s specific needs in efforts to produce improved and sustained cognitive, behavioral, and emotional results.

In Couples Counseling both partners work together to alleviate the challenges of their relationship alongside their therapist. In these pairings, therapists must factor the needs of both clients equally in order to create new opportunities for the client relationship to develop. A couple may be frustrated with differences in financial priorities, incongruent cultures and religious beliefs, unmet sexual desires, fractured communication styles, inefficient support networks, varying parental techniques, medical concerns, and imbalances of domestic responsibilities to name a few. In each case, the relationship therapist tends to both of the client’s varying perceptions and emotional needs while assessing how to better join the pair’s unified objectives. Couples therapy incorporates a greater awareness of self amongst both clients in order to reveal the impact of each member upon the couple as a whole. This form of therapy seeks to install a mastery of communication skills that help to build a stronger emotional and functional bond between both partners based upon trust and unified decision-making.

Strategic Family therapy seeks to support the healthy growth of cohesive ties within each unique family unit. The function of family therapy is to help provide a safe space for skill-building and role negotiation. Managing divorce, marriage, disabilities, eating disorders, addiction, trauma, or various other needs involving behavioral modification are sometimes difficult for a family to handle without the aid of a trained therapist. Family therapy is meant to empower family members as they work together to identify and manage inevitable life transitions, daily stresses, and significant conflicts that are often reflective of individual family member frustrations. The impact of one family member not getting his or her needs met may affect the functioning of the family unit as a whole, therefore family therapy often serves as a helpful supplement to individual therapy, by helping family members to face any personal challenges that may arise within this work.

In Play Therapy, young children and sometimes adolescents are offered games, creative tasks, and other engaging activities during their therapy sessions in order to build a trusting relationship with their therapist. Play therapy offers a brief but often telling relay of a client’s history and important internal mechanisms, creating an accessible therapeutic window into the child’s mind. Play therapy can help to reveal a child’s communication deficits, struggles with regulatory behavioral patterns, as well as potential emotional and cognitive distresses. This type of intervention serves as a unique platform from which to acquire proficiency regarding behavioral management and mood regulation. By engaging the therapeutic process on his or her own terms, each child is invited to encounter a unique opportunity for self-exploration, expression, and skill-building. Parents are often invited to participate in this process if needed.

Psychological and neuropsychological assessments aim to measure aspects of a client’s cognitive abilities, behavioral patterns, and emotional functioning. Testing helps to target any potential needs for therapy or school/work accommodations by establishing an appropriate psychological diagnosis; it also helps to coordinate care with your doctors or any other agency that may require your most up to date psychological information. A comprehensive evaluation can take anywhere between several hours to multiple days, depending upon the type of testing needed. Typically, a one-hour initial diagnostic interview is followed by a customized psychological evaluation on a separate day. After the evaluation has been completed, patients will be invited to participate in a feedback session along with their therapist in order to review the final results of their testing. At this time, the therapist and patient will discuss the therapist’s follow-up treatment plans or clinical recommendations along with the patient’s impressions of the test results. Testing services can help to facilitate a better sense of understanding between a client and his/her environment by revealing the client’s individual strengths and challenges more clearly. Additionally, psychological testing can create opportunities for a more streamlined approach to follow up services.

At Illinois Behavioral Health Group, we know your time and energy are limited resources; that’s why we offer an affordable, convenient, and easy to use online therapy that can be enjoyed from the comfort of your living room. When stress prevents you from managing pressures at work, maintaining your physical health, or balancing important personal relationships, the quality of your satisfaction and productivity from day to day can be compromised. Virtual therapy at Illinois Behavioral Health Group can help you to meet your needs AND skip the commute to the therapy office altogether. If you are coping with a mobility-limiting disability or injury, are experiencing inflexible work hours, are caring for an individual that is dependent upon your attendance at home, or are simply caught off guard with in-climate weather, our clinicians are ready to help you secure convenient therapeutic support whenever and wherever you need it most.