Play Therapy – For all ages

Child

There are definitely great agencies in the greater Des Moines/West Des Moines area that offer play therapy, and Real Connections Counseling is one of them. Play therapy is definitely an excellent way to help children heal. Play therapy is usually applicable to younger children (generally ages 3-11), as well as tweets & teens. As a child’s trauma experiences occur they cannot verbally express how the trauma affects them. Play therapy provides a way for children to express their experiences and feelings in a language that makes sense to them…play! Play for a child is a natural, self-guided, healing process.

Couples & Families

Our agency is unique when it comes to play therapy because we also apply play therapy to couples and families. Adults play too! Many couples begin to struggle when they forget how to play. When they first date, couples naturally play with each other verbally, physically and mentally. When life settles into a routine, they often stop playing.

What is Your Specialty?

People say, “What’s your specialty?” Our specialty is relationships, and families. We have backgrounds in and specialize in depression, infertility, miscarriage, chronic disability, pain, grief & loss, trauma, military experience, PTSD, sensory integration disorder, and play therapy. We approach therapy from a relational model, also called a “systemic model.” Systemic means that we believe that all behavior changes will result in changes in the systems, such as your family, in which you will interact. Healthy relationships support mental health, and mental health supports good relationships.

We’ll use tools from narrative, behavioral, Gottman, Relational Life Therapy, play therapy, and multigenerational to promote your healing and growth. We’ll make adjustments throughout therapy when adjusting makes sense to move you to the next level. 

We continue to gain training throughout our career. As members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), we maintain the highest level of professionalism and expertise so we can offer you our best. We’re always glad we can be with you when you go through the gutsy, the messy, the tough, and the confusing. We’re privileged to guide you through.

What is Counseling?

Counseling is a trusting and honest partnership geared to form your flourishing life. Our counseling partnerships require communication built on integrity, trust, and honor. Communication in counseling will occur with great care, in a safe and understanding environment. We’ll talk, do activities, ponder new things, and even sit in silence when we need to. From the moment you walk in our counseling office, we want you to know you are in a good place.

A Session

Our first session together will be an overview. We discover where you are emotionally and cognitively. We try to understand your heart, your needs, and what you would like to be different. Mostly, the first session is about the first parts of discovery about you, and what your concerns, and goals for therapy are.

Throughout your counseling we’ll address issues, confusion, actions, obstacles, and emotions. Together we’ll strive to make positive changes, and guide you to better things, including a better you, and improved relationships.

We’re here for you. Our heart is to help you strive to make life better. As you grow, we’ll teach strategies that will allow your life and relationships to flourish. We won’t just look at surface behaviors, but also the beliefs that create them.

Relationship Garden

So much about the “good life” is the quality of our relationships. We look forward to walking with you through this process. We’re about real connections. Our heart for you, is in our name: “Real Connections Counseling.” The way to real connection is an enriching, exciting, but sometimes difficult way. But like growing a garden made of all the best foods, such as beans, squash, carrots, and tomatoes, the garden includes weeds. Weeds, if allowed to grow, overtake and ruin the good food. We help you “weed,” and work what can be a most rewarding, and nourishing relational garden.

A flourishing garden is as much about pulling weeds at the root so they don’t return, as it is watering, and feeding the good plants. A relationship isn’t much different. When you allow bad, negative stuff to flourish, your relationship will be overrun, and potentially destroyed. We help you “pull” the negative stuff that’s hurting you, analyze and process the hurt, and send the hurt away. We also learn how to tenderly grow and fortify the good stuff about you, and your relationships. When we do, what’s good about you not only flourishes, but also becomes strong, healthy, sweet, and remarkable.

When you learn to feel relief from the heaviness of anger, pain, shame, and/or grief, you can begin living in renewed hope.

What to Expect at Your First Session

So you want to know what to expect on your first day? Good! Many, like you come into their first session apprehensive and unsure, but hopeful. Therefore trust is imperative. Trust begins with your first steps into the Real Connections Counseling Center, and the first clasp of our hands.

Come early. Settle into the environment. Look through a magazine, a paper, or a book from the bookshelf. Simply sit and breathe.

Forms: A Counseling Relationship Done Right

We’ll begin by gaining information about your lives, and your situation. We’ll ask you to complete paperwork, if you haven’t already done so. Paperwork includes our professional disclosures that help you learn about us, and our intake form also helps us learn about you. Information such as your personal history, your current situation, your relationships, and your hopes and dreams, allow us to right away pursue quality, insightful, wholistic and holistic therapy throughout our time together.

You’ll also complete the HIPAA form (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). United States legislators designed HIPAA to provide privacy and confidentiality standards that protect patients’ medical records.

You’ll find all of our forms here. We invite you to complete them now, and have them ready when you arrive. You’ll save time at the appointment, and we’ll be able to move right into what you came for, and what you need! –Forms–

Trying Is Not Practice

Life and relationships take practice. There’s hardly ever a quick fix. Remember that “trying” is not “practice.” You’ll build skills, one usually doesn’t automatically have them. Counseling can’t be a one time, “I/We tried, and it didn’t work.” We’ll practice consistently from session to session. You don’t have to get it right immediately. Like any skill, with practice, change and a better life is possible. Practice rarely makes perfect, but it can make beautiful. Our desire is that, with time and support, you will know healing, and renewed hope.

It’s time to give us a call. We look forward to helping you.

Marriage Counseling

With Marriage Counseling, we work with a married couple to help improve, stabilize, or restore their relationship. Monique and I prefer your relationship, so our initial goal and direction will be to help you recognize what your relationship was, is, and could be.

We may discuss your past, your family of origin and its impact on your marriage. Sometimes we concentrate on the baggage you brought to the relationship before, and even after you were married. And maybe we will focus on your relationship dance. When couples dancers are out of step they jeapordize the dance, and even the other’s safety. Likewise, your ‘unhealthy dance moves’ today potentially jeapordize your relationships… maybe you are stepping on each other’s toes! Read more …

Marriage Counseling

Couples Counseling

As with Marriage Counseling, we will approach therapy with a preference to the relationship. Sometimes the reason for therapy is that you want to start your relationship in a healthy way. You make a great decision to set your relationship straight, from the beginning.

Perhaps you have baggage from other relationships that you want to work through together, before you make a stronger or lifelong commitment. Maybe you have concerns about commitment, and want to discover that path together. Maybe you want to make sure your relationship is solid enough so you can tend to your children in the best way possible after your divorce. We will help you. Whatever your reasons for therapy, we’ll to help you take steps together, to better your relationship. Read more …

Couples Counseling

Family Counseling

This family exists through the grace of adoption

Choosing family counseling? Making that ultimate choice for family counseling can’t be easy, but I know you’ll be glad you did. When you do, the first thing you’ll hear is, “We applaud your courage!” You’ll need determination. Your hard work and attentiveness to the process can create positive and long-lasting changes for your family.

Nervous? That’s Ok!

Family counseling can be the primary choice for you! Choosing to allow another person to train on your issues and find your strengths and weaknesses can cause angst, and maybe embarrassment or self consciousness. But we assure that family counseling benefits you, and can move you from frustration and confusion, to clear, determined, and happy. We know you’ll find our counseling center to be a safe place where you can find your hope again.

Couples may also need family counseling periodically as they work though marriage, or couples counseling. You may also pursue family counseling for you and your older children as your younger children work out their issues through play therapy.

Oh The Confusion!

Familial relationships can be confusing, troubling, frustrating, and sometimes destructive. Maybe your family is blending with another family, and merging communication and tradition expectations and preferences can be huge and difficult changes to manage. Often, families struggle through transitions, such as deployments, moves, and a death in the family. Sometimes children, or a spouse had been physically, emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually abused. Your physical safety is our utmost priority. Your emotional, psychological, and spiritual health is our next priority. No matter what you’re here for, you can heal!

You Can Do This!

Consider taking your family to counseling. You can do this. Sometimes even multi-generations of family in counseling allows for clearer relationship change and growth, and better personal and relational lives. When each member hears and processes the same information at the same time, all gain opportunities to grapple with perpetuated problems. We encourage you and your family to use a counselor or counselors (co-counseling) at Real Connections Counseling for guidance. Our counseling center is a safe place to work out and process difficulties, and challenge each other. You can help each other grow, and change your story together! Read more…

Family Counseling

Group Therapy

Group therapy allows a therapist to provide support, learning, and therapy to multiple people at the same time. Better yet (we think!), group therapy allows the group to help each other. Others with similar needs and concerns are in the same room with you, and that alone creates fantastic opportunities for you! How? A group member’s life experience often proves a valuable resource for the other group members. You make each other better!

The group therapy collective learning experience allows for a level of support and knowledge that goes beyond one-on-one therapy. Group therapy works especially well for topical learning, such as life skills, living with a disability, and parenting. Read more …

Group Therapy

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”

–Amelia Earhart