Services & Specialties

a. Cognitive Behavioral – There is evidence that CBT is effective for the treatment of a variety of problems, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, and psychotic disorders.

b. Dialectical Behavioral – DBT combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness largely derived from meditative practice.

c. Psycho-Dynamic – the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a client’s psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension. It also relies on the interpersonal relationship between client and therapist more than other forms of depth psychology.

d. Gestalt – is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual’s experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person’s life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

e. Client Centered – The goal is to provide patients with an opportunity to develop a sense of self wherein they can realize how their attitudes, feelings and behavior are being negatively affected and make an effort to find their true positive potential. In this technique, therapists create a comfortable, non-judgmental environment by demonstrating congruence (genuineness), empathy, and unconditional positive regard toward their patients while using a non-directive approach. This aids patients in finding their own solutions to their problems.

f. Solution Focused – It focuses on what clients want to achieve through therapy rather than on the problem(s) that made them seek help. The approach does not focus on the past, but instead, focuses on the present and future. The therapist/counselor uses respectful curiosity to invite the client to envision their preferred future and then therapist and client start attending to any moves towards it whether these are small increments or large changes. To support this, questions are asked about the client’s story, strengths and resources, and about exceptions to the problem.

g. Interpersonal psychotherapy – (IPT) is a time-limited therapy that focuses on the interpersonal and on building interpersonal skills. IPT is based on the belief that interpersonal factors may contribute heavily to psychological problems.

h. Narrative therapy gives attention to each person’s “story” by means of therapeutic conversations, which also may involve exploring unhelpful ideas.

i. Expressive therapy utilizes artistic expression as its core means of treating clients. Expressive therapists use the different disciplines of the creative arts as interventions. This includes the modalities dance therapy, drama therapy, art therapy, music therapy, writing therapy, among others.

j. Existential – is based on the belief that human beings are alone in the world. This isolation leads to feelings of meaninglessness, which can be overcome only by creating one’s own values and meanings. Existential therapy is philosophically associated with phenomenology (phenomenology is the study of the structure of experience).

k. Rational Emotive Therapy – One of the fundamental premises of REBT is that humans, in most cases, do not merely get upset by unfortunate adversities, but also by how they construct their views of reality through their language, evaluative beliefs, meanings and philosophies about the world, themselves and others.

Works with couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It views change in terms of the systems of interaction between couples. It emphasizes relationships as an important factor in psychological health. It has a belief that, regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an “individual” or “family” issue, involving intimate partners in solutions is often beneficial.
Examples of issues and skills improved upon in couples counseling at NNCS.

a. Conflict Resolution
b. Communication Skills
c. Sexual dysfunction
d. Infidelity & Trust
e. Financial Conflict
f. Domestic Abuse
g. Addictions
h. Parenting

Family Therapy – is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It views change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members. It emphasizes family relationships as an important factor in psychological health.

Family therapy has a belief that, regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an “individual” or “family” issue, involving families in solutions is often beneficial. This involvement of families is commonly accomplished by their direct participation in the therapy session. The skills of the family therapist thus include the ability to influence conversations in a way that catalyses the strengths, wisdom, and support of the wider system.

Play Therapy – generally employed with children aged 3 through 11 provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a natural, self-guided, self-healing process. As children’s experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves and others.

In general, these therapies are aimed at adopted or fostered children with a view to creating attachment in these children to their new caregivers. According to attachment theory, the child forms a strong emotional bond with caregivers during childhood with lifelong consequences.

Sensitive and emotionally available parenting helps the child to form a secure attachment style which fosters a child’s socio-emotional development and well-being. In extreme and rare conditions, the child may not form an attachment at all and may suffer from reactive attachment problems. Principles of attachment parenting aim to increase development of a child’s secure attachment and decrease insecure attachment.

EMDR – Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. This is a therapy to resolve the development of trauma-related disorders caused by exposure to distressing, traumatising, or negative life events, such as rape or military combat. The goal of EMDR therapy is to process these distressing memories, reducing their lingering influence and allowing clients to develop more adaptive coping mechanisms.

Group Therapy – where the group context and group process is explicitly utilised as a mechanism of change by developing, exploring and examining interpersonal relationships within the group.

Examples of group therapy types provided at NNCS:

a. Anger management – General anger management. Not a domestic violence program. Both men and women may attend. Anyone struggling with handling emotions and stress in a productive manner impacting negatively relationships. <More Information>

b. Child abuse Parenting – This 52 week State of California and Court approved group is for parents or caregivers who may have abused his or her child(ren) and need help in coping with the challenges of parenting. Provides parenting skills, increased awareness of frustration levels, and explores client’s own family history of abuse.  <More Information>

c. Domestic Violence – Offenders only – This is a 52 week State of California and Court approved intervention program designed to help men who have abused violently their spouse. The goal of the program is to stop intimate violence with hope of preserving families and relationships. <More Information>

d. Depression and Anxiety Recovery – This group is for clients who are suffering from depression or anxiety and individual counseling and medications are not providing the desired symptom relief. This group is a psychodynamic and dialectical treatment approach.

e. Trichotillomania – “Hair Pulling” – This is generally a women’s group given that this is predominately a problem for women. The hair pulling includes anxious unaware twisting and pulling at head hair, eyelashes, eyebrows resulting in bald spots, removal of most or all eye lashes and eyebrows. The pulling provides an emotional tension release for the individual. This is group is a psychodynamic and dialectical treatment approach.

f. Postpartum depression – is a form of depression, which can affect women, and less frequently men, typically after childbirth. This group is focused at improving social support system and aide in the emotional attaching to the infant. The group addresses the social stressors that are know factors in bring about postpartum depression. (Formula feeding rather than breast feeding, a history of depression, cigarette smoking, low self esteem. childcare stress, prenatal depression during pregnancy, prenatal anxiety, low social support, life stress, poor marital relationship, infant temperament problems/colic, maternaty blues, single marital status, low socioeconomic status, unplanned/unwanted pregancies.)

g. Children’s expressive art & play – focus on anxiety, depression, social and behavioral issues. (Emotional Deregulation) Generally for children aged 3 through 11 provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a natural, self-guided, self-healing process. As children’s experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves and others. Parent involvement is encouraged.

This program is generally for young adolescent males who have sexually perpetrated against a younger sibling or other child family member. Although the perpetration may also happen to other young children but are generally known to the family such as neighbors or close personal family friends.

Often the teenager’s behavior has been brought to the attention of the system and is required by courts to participate in sexual offender counseling. This counseling will focus on the teen accepting responsibility for the abuse, becoming educated as to the negative impact on the victim, developing victim empathy, identifying triggers leading to the abuse, exploring the teens own history of abuse, identifying emotional and self esteem issues, identifying family dynamics that contribute to the abuse occurring. Family therapy is often incorporated.

Treatment term is between 6-12 months but may last longer depending on teen motivation and progress.

This is for parents of divorce who are either in the process of divorce or have been divorced and are experiencing difficulties in communicating about their children, resolving differences, and struggling with custodial sharing of the children.

The co-parenting is a direct service with both parents present at the same time with the therapist who helps the parents navigate their communication problems, provides suggestions as to possible solutions to conflict points, documents the issues brought to the sessions and agreed upon solutions, educates about the negative impacts on children of continued parental acrimony.

Anticipated number of sessions to complete is between 6 and 8 less if the parents are motivated to resolve their differences. This service is not covered by medical insurance. <More Information>

Parent-Child Reunification/Relationship Repair – This program is designed to repair and reunify parent and child relationships. Sometimes a parent’s relationship with their children is interrupted for a period of time.

The causes can be multiple but whatever the reason a court has usually ordered reunification counseling for the child and parent who are estranged. This is not an evaluation service to make custodial recommendations to the court.

Custodial recommendations are typically made by the family law court mediator, an independent clinical psychologist assigned by the court to complete a 730 evaluation, or by minor’s counsel (Attorney) who is appointed by the court. The goal of this program is to repair and improve relationships between children and parents in compliance with orders from courts. Insurance does not cover this service.