Sandy Deas

Let's be honest- we all struggle. Sharing openly and honestly about our struggles is powerful. Life's difficulties take many forms but often our tendency is to go it alone, to hide it, to wait for it to go away. Counseling is seizing an opportunity to move towards greater fulfillment, whether that is for an important relationship, helping your child/family, resolving problems from the past that replay themselves in your today or coping with difficult life circumstances and illnesses. Counseling is a worthwhile investment in a valuable you; life is too short to do otherwise. I tailor my work to the issue at hand. I specialize in play therapy with children, adolescent issues, parenting, family/couple relationships, problems with anxiety and/or depression, managing mental illness, grief/loss, decision making, coping with life changes, spiritual issues and resiliency. One of my overall goals is to offer a nonjudgmental environment where real people can search for real growth and hope. I believe we each have the power to make life giving choices even in hard circumstances.

My hope is to make counseling affordable. I do offer a sliding scale. I am on Aetna and Medical Mutual's provider list.

I believe psychotherapy can be helpful on belief, skills, relational, behavioral and spiritual levels. We can each run into problems in life and not be able to make sense of what we ourselves or others are doing to contribute. We become confused or we believe strongly we know what someone else is doing to make a situation awful and cannot see what to do or how we contribute. Psychotherapy should offer an atmosphere of acceptance in which to explore what our basic beliefs about self, others and the world. Psychotherapy helps us step outside of ourselves to see what those beliefs might be, how we came to believe those ideas and how to adjust them to have the most fulfilling life possible. Psychotherapy also helps us determine if we have all the skills and behaviors we need in life- do we know how to ask for help, set boundaries, take care of ourselves, interact well with others, cope with our anger, to list some examples. Psychotherapy helps explore how to develop skills for living. Therapy can also help us see our relationships in a more objective light, our contribution, how others react to us and how we can change what is in our power to change (which is usually ourselves/our reactions/our boundaries and not others). Finally, psychotherapy can combine a look at your spirituality and your thoughts, relationships and actions to lead to the most fulfilling life.

Psychotherapy is your investment in your life and relationships. It comes at a cost both financially and emotionally. If you have questions or concerns or dissatisfaction, talk to your therapist about it! You are coming to see someone who helps people with relationships- this is the very type of person you should be able to approach about whether or not counseling is helpful, if the relationship between the two of you is what you want it to be. This type of conversation might actually hit on some topics that are exactly what is at the heart of your problems and it will help your therapist to know what you want. Tell your therapist what did not work in a previous therapy situation- it is always helpful to know what you were looking for that you did not receive. In short,do not be afraid to bring up your concerns- a therapist should be one of the very best people to hash through these type of issues.