Ralph Whetstine, Psy.D. & Associates, P.C.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Cognitive & Behavioral Therapies for:
Individuals, Couples, Adolescents, & Families
Are you seeking a counselor with a track record of service in Chicago's northwest suburbs for individual therapy, family therapy, counseling for teens or couples therapy?
Adults and teens with depression, substance abuse issues, and emotion regulation issues, anxiety, and problematic parent-teen interactions, and anger management problems. Skills training for emotional regulation, self-esteem, stress management, life transitions, relationship stress, communication, time management and goal development.
Psychotherapy
At the heart of what frequently motivates one to enter therapy is a desire for an enhanced experience of life, to feel more fulfilled and empowered, or a need to return to a previous level of functioning. Although many regard barriers to fulfillment as problems, I like to emphasize the value of understanding emotional barriers as the path to attaining one’s goals. Often what prevents us from attaining goals and limiting our sense of fulfillment are habits of thought and behavior. These habits, at one time, served our efforts to grow and develop as individuals; now they stand as the barriers that we can seek to understand and address to move forward.
Habitual barriers are activated in our current life circumstances. Habitual and, at times, unconscious thoughts and behavioral responses can have a negative impact on relationships and can leave one feeling mystified as to why one is not achieving to one’s full capability. Despite the apparent challenge our emotional and behavior habits can create, they still serve a function in our lives. One’s habits have a reason for existing; they won’t just go away. The Psychotherapy intervention is a process of discovering the original function of one’s habits, learning to recognize triggering events and allowing them to exist in one’s life in the area that these habits are actually helpful and support life goals.
This approach is a therapeutic conversation; it is responsive to the unique needs and desires of each individual. It is also a structured approach in which I seek to provide recommendations of specific action. While no one technique is adequate to capture every facet of the human experience, this approach can provide a useful avenue to one of the most challenging parts of the human change process, getting started. The structured approach can reassure the individual of progress in a variety of areas that are being addressed: learning about habitual ways of being, finding a path to new habits, decreasing such symptoms as stress, anxiety, depression and improving relationships.
I believe the client is a Participant who actively makes the steps for change and together I work with the Participant to develop new effective habits for enhanced living.
Consultation
Consultation is also available for those seeking to address specific issues and situations such as communication challenges between couples and families, parenting, and financial challenges. Consultation is typically time limited and focused on attaining short-term results.