Therapeutic Services

Our therapeutic team are all licensed professional counselors, social workers, school psychologists, and marriage and family therapists. Our team understands the connection between the student, school, and family. When supporting our clients emotionally, we collaborate with the academic interventionist/EF coach working with the individual in order to gain a holistic understanding. As we provide individual counseling for our clients, it often becomes apparent that the family could benefit from support as well. Our practice therefore a multitude of therapeutic services.

  • Individual Therapy

    Life can be challenging throughout various stages of the lifespan. We help clients identify their emotions by providing them with the vocabulary necessary to discuss overwhelming feelings. Once being able to identify their feelings, we provide clients with coping strategies to help them regulate their emotions and increase their distress tolerance. This self-reflective work allows individuals to better understand who they are and how their choices impact their life. This therapeutic alliance allows for healing, self-understanding, and personal growth.

  • Family Therapy

    Family therapy is based on the concept that individuals cannot be understood or healed in a vacuum because they are part of a larger context, the emotional unit of their family of origin. Family therapy applies a systems approach which focuses on relationships between a group of people, rather than solely on an individual's thoughts and feelings.

  • Parent Coaching

    Parent coaching provides support to assist parents in learning how to use specific skills and strategies to address behavioral challenges and/or support their child’s growth. Through evidence based strategies and knowledge of child development, our parent coach can assist families in understanding the big picture and offer a neutral perspective. Parents are given individualized strategies to help them troubleshoot and navigate the many complexities of raising a child.

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  • Social Skills Groups

    Many individuals with executive functioning challenges, sometimes struggle socially as well. Research states that some EF skills (inhibition, shifting, emotional control) are related to the social skill, theory of mind. Theory of mind is the ability to understand that others have beliefs and thoughts other than our own. Those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), have a hard time with this, which is why these individuals need training with perspective taking. Evidence shows that EF and social skills are related. Those with stronger EF skills often have stronger social skills and vice versa. For example, someone with poor EF skills may have poor impulse control, not be able to understand someone else’s perspective, can have extreme mood swings, and not be able to adjust their behavior to their current audience. This type of person can be difficult to be around and have a hard time initiating and maintaining friendships. Explicit social skills training helps these individuals learn the skills that do not come automatically to them. We offer social skills groups for all age groups. These groups consist of one counselor and a maximum of 4 individuals. We mindfully create group cohorts that we feel can learn and grow from one another.

  • DBT Skills Training Groups

    Many individuals with executive functioning challenges also have difficulty with regulating emotions. This is due to the fact that emotional regulation, impulse control, and metacognition are all subcategories under the overarching executive functioning umbrella. We therefore offer DBT groups to help our clients manage and regulate their feelings. DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Dialectical means understanding how two things that seem opposite could both be true. For example, accepting yourself and changing your behavior may seem contradictory, but DBT teaches that it’s possible to achieve both of these goals simultaneously. This is an evidence-based approach consisting of four modules: core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Yoga & Mindfulness

We offer yoga at EFfective Educational and Therapeutic Services in order to truly address the whole child. We understand that significant stress and anxiety is often accompanied with social deficits and learning struggles. This constant state of stress can result in a physical experience within the body. Our biochemistry actually changes in response to stress.  Blood flow travels away from the brain towards the external limbs preparing for the fight or flight response. This physical response to stress is important to understand because it helps us to recognize that verbalizing our emotions is not the only way to cope with stress when challenges arise.

When children/adolescents lack self-awareness, connection to their bodies, and coping skills, they can struggle with emotional dysregulation and become paralyzed in the fight or flight response. When in this state, we often see behaviors and emotional experiences such as impulsivity, isolation, agitation, aggression, anxiety, and depression.  The stress itself is not the problem, but rather the response to the stress that causes us to either feel balanced and empowered or out of control and unable to cope.

Group or individual yoga instruction is available as a therapeutic service to further support children, adolescents, and young adults with social, academic, and/or emotional challenges.