Anger Management Counseling

Does your relationship need better anger management skills? Do you and/or your partner raise your voice with each other? Do you interrupt your partner and/or talk over them? Or, on the other hand, do you hold everything in to avoid an argument? Learn about healthier ways to stay calm and discuss the problems. Did you know that the first principle of every negotiation is that you need to stay calm in order to negotiate with another person?

Grief Counseling

We grieve many losses in life, such as the loss of another person, the loss of health, the potential loss of a marriage, loss of a job, loss of income after an accident, the loss of trust after an affair, or even the loss of a dream unfulfilled. Rick is well-versed in helping people grieve their losses in life. Learn the stages and physical symptoms of grief, and learn how to respond in a healthy way to a grieving partner.

Co-Parenting Conflict

Learn effective parenting skills that will help you navigate through your relationship problems with your children. For example, Rick teaches that a good parent is really a good teacher and shows clients how to educate rather than punish their children--- that each problematic situation they present is an opportunity for them to learn and grow into a healthy functioning adult. Children learn what they live.

Sexual Dysfunction

Did you know that one in five marriages are sexless marriages--- sexless being defined as having sex three times or less in a year. There are numerous physical and/or mental reasons why your sex life may need some change. Clinically, you have to experience desire in order to achieve excitement and orgasm. Did you know that couples who plan sex tend to have much better sex lives than couples who put little effort and planning into it?

Premarital Counseling

Learn how to have a healthy relationship by learning what healthy couples do that dysfunctional couples don't do. Learning healthy skills at the beginning of your journey together will save countless disagreements down the yellow brick road of marriage. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

Depression and Anxiety

Depression and anxiety are flip sides of the same coin. Are you depressed with anxious mood or anxious with depressed mood? Negative and irrational thinking is one cause of mood disorders--- among other factors. To overcome negative thinking, one must challenge one's negative beliefs that may trigger depression and anxiety. Rick uses techniques such as hypnotherapy, guided imagery and progressive relaxation to treat anxiety issues. Rick can help you learn to relax and improve your sense of wellness and self-esteem.

Stress Management

Our everyday lives are often filled with overwhelming stress that can leave us depleted of the balance we need to live a healthy lifestyle. If you are a single parent, you may experience overwhelming stress while juggling work and home life with children. Stress can also trigger many different stress-related physical illnesses as our immune systems may break down under distress. Learn how to cope with your stress and live a healthier lifestyle.

Spirituality Counseling

Life is a school for learning! How do we handle life's deaths and turn them into resurrections? Whatever doesn't kill you can make you stronger if you can learn the lessons of the soul being taught in that negative experience. It has been said that we don't learn as much when everything is smooth-sailing as when we are drowning. Can we take life's lemons and create lemonade? Can we finding existential meaning and purpose in the bad experiences that we suffer? Rick is an experienced Pastoral Counselor that can help couples get a spiritual perspective on their trials in life.

Divorce and Post-Divorce Counseling

During and after a devastating divorce, it is frequently very helpful to talk to someone in order to sort out where one's life is headed in the future. Can we adjust to the new circumstances rather than let it incapacitate our lives post-divorce? Additionally, some couples that mutually agree to divorce may want to use therapy to minimize the post-divorce conflicts--- especially when children are involved.

For example, when there is a “his house, her house” situation involving remarriages for one or both former spouses, the children may have a difficult time accepting the new step-parents and their authority. Also, a biological parent may have a hard time in accepting any disciplining of the children by their new spouse, creating further marital as well as possible post-marital conflicts with the former spouse (who may then drag their former spouse back into court), etc.

Alcohol, Drug and Other Addictions

Rick has over 30 years of experience in helping others with problems related to alcohol and drugs. He educates couples in the brain chemistry of an addicted brain verses a normal brain. He helps people understand why it is a disease and not just moral willpower. He educates couples about the rules and the chemically dependent and codependent roles in addicted family systems. He can guide you through the various emotional and psychological problems underlying the addictions. Rick's approach to treatment is multi-modal with a variety of processes to help you or a family member overcome alcohol, drug and other addiction problems.