We treat a wide variety of symptoms, mental health disorders, and behavioral issues.
Get the individualized help you need, when you need it, from our team of licensed professionals.
Get the help you need to feel your best:
Our team of experts provides comprehensive and customized care to help improve your quality of life. We take the time to match you with a clinician who offers the expertise in your area of challenges so you feel comfortable in session.
Common Disorders Treated
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety is a natural and common emotion that everyone experiences at different points throughout their lives. Anxiety disorders, considered the most common type of mental health disorder, are persistent worry or fear that does not go away. In the US about 31.1% of adults will experience some type of anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Anxiety disorders can be broken down into different types, including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, health anxiety and phobias.
The good news is that anxiety disorders are treatable. Through CBT you can learn how to think and respond differently to your thoughts and emotions. Our clinical psychologists will help you to break down unhelpful patterns you may be stuck in, and learn more adaptive ways of coping with distressing feelings and thoughts. Please contact us with any questions.
Social Anxiety Disorder (also referred to as Social Phobia) is an overwhelming fear of being judged or critiqued by others. This type of anxiety can interfere with work, school or your social relationships. A person who struggles with social anxiety disorder feels intense fear or anxiety when they are forced to be in new social situations. This includes going on a date, a job interview, or interacting with new people. Some people with social anxiety disorder may fear eating or drinking in public.
Treatment
At CPC we can teach you tools to manage your social anxiety and help you to overcome this fear. Therapy will include learning how to restructure your thoughts about social interactions, along with general social skills training, both in and out of session.
- Racing heartbeat
- Breathing difficulty
- Sweating or trembling
- Dizziness or weakness
- Tingly or numbness in hands
- Feeling hot or a cold chill
Treatment
Oftentimes people that experience recurrent panic attacks live in constant fear of having another one. This causes them to avoid certain places, which can exacerbate the anxiety. Our expertly trained clinical psychologists can teach you strategies to manage your physiological symptoms and overcome your fear of having another attack. Treatment will be a combination of cognitive restructuring, relaxation training and behavioral interventions.
- Persistent worrying about current or future events
- Tendency to assume the worst-case outcome in plans
- Difficulty tolerating uncertainty
- Indecisiveness and concern about decisions
- Difficulty relaxing, or constant feeling of restlessness
- Trouble concentrating on tasks
Treatment
CPC’s psychologists can help you to manage your anxiety. You will learn how to tolerate uncertainty with less fear, and learn techniques to better manage anxiety-provoking thoughts that can greatly improve your quality of life.
In addition to persistent thoughts about their health, someone with health anxiety tends to spend an inordinate amount of time visiting doctors. They may also spend a great deal of time researching symptoms and disorders on their own, further interfering with their lives.
Treatment
CPC psychologists will help you to challenge and manage unhelpful thoughts about your health. You will also learn to live more comfortably with minor changes in your body including aches and pains. You will gain valuable tools to better manage your health anxiety and be able to be more present in your life.
Treatment
Your psychologist at CPC will work with you to develop an individualized treatment plan to help overcome your phobia. Through gradual exposure and thought restructuring you will learn how to feel comfortable around the feared object and go about living your life without the need to avoid it.
OCD
Common Types of OCD Obsessions are:
- Checking related to safety fears about themselves or others. This may lead to urges to check locks, ovens, or light switches a certain amount of times and a fear that if the person doesn’t engage in these behaviors something bad will happen to a loved one.
- Contamination related to fears around germs and cleanliness. This may lead to obsessive hand washing or avoidance of places or stimuli identified as contaminated.
- Symmetry and Ordering characterized by an urge to have things lined up a certain way.
- Harm OCD involves intrusive thoughts, urges or images of harming others or oneself. This may include mental images of harming others.
- Scrupulousity includes obsessiveness about following rules—often linked to religious and moral rules, which become a preoccupation for the individual.
Treatment
Treatment of OCD will begin with a thorough assessment of your symptoms, which will allow your CPC clinician to develop a treatment plan for you. Treatment will consist of Exposure and Response Prevention therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy—both of which will help to decrease your obsessional thoughts and reduce urges to engage in compulsive behaviors.
Depression
- Sad or anxious mood
- Feelings of hopelessness
- Irritability
- Feelings of guilt/worthlessness
- Decreased energy or fatigue
- Difficult game concentrating
- Sleep disruptions
- Appetite and or weight changes
- Suicidal thoughts or actions
- Loss of interest in pleasure
Treatment
Your CPC clinician will start by conducting a full assessment, including taking a developmental history, to determine contributing factors to your mood symptoms. The focus of treatment will be in identifying negative patterns of thoughts and behaviors that are perpetuating your symptoms. You will learn concrete strategies to change how you think and cope with your emotions.
Insomnia
Treatment
CPC psychologists will begin by examining your sleep environment and any factors that may be creating disturbed sleep. Psychoeducation will be provided to help you understand variables in your life that may need to change including your sleep routine and proper sleep hygiene. Using cognitive behavioral therapy, your City Psychology Center (CPC) psychologist will work with you to restructure your thoughts around sleep and identify unhelpful thoughts that may be affecting your sleep. Our psychologists will help determine if insomnia is the primary problem, or if it may be associated with other mental health disorders including anxiety or depression that need to be treated in conjunction with your insomnia.
Life Transitions
Life changes that occur, even changes that we consider positive, can sometimes trigger strong emotional reactions such as stress or anxiety. Our clinicians can help you to cope more effectively with these transitions, and feel more empowered to handle change.
Treatment
In therapy, you will learn concrete tools to manage your emotions more effectively, or to help with decision making that may be needed. Whether it is attending or graduating from college, changing careers, having a baby, managing a death or divorce, you will learn how to cope with the change and not feel so alone in your life transition.
Specific Childhood and Adolescent Disorders
ADHD
While symptoms of ADHD can look different for different children, many children diagnosed with this disorder have difficulty controlling their impulsivity and sitting still. Common feedback from teachers may include that your child “frequently interrupts.” It may also appear that your child has difficulty completing assignments or staying organized with tasks. They may also present as lacking in their social skills or described as “less mature” relative to their peers.
At CPC our team of child psychologists will begin by conducting an in depth assessment of your child. This will help us to tailor the treatment plan to fit their needs, and gain a comprehensive clinical picture of what is going on with your child. With the help of your child’s therapist, your child will learn strategies to manage their symptoms leading to an increase in their confidence and general happiness.
Emotional & Behavioral Disorders
This refers to a broad range of disorders that affect children. While conflict, anxiety or oppositional behavior are common during childhood development, especially during times of transition, a child with a behavioral childhood disorder will have chronic symptoms that do not adjust on their own or with time.
Symptoms to be aware of
- Observed changes in their performance at school
- Social withdrawal or isolation
- Changes in your child or teen’s sleep patterns
- Oppositional behavior with adults fear of separation that impacts functioning
- Selective mutism
We Can Help
Your CPC psychologist will start by conducting a comprehensive intake of your child’s symptom presentation, and discuss any behavioral changes that have been observed. This will help us to create an individualized treatment plan that targets your child’s emotional or behavioral difficulties. Your child will learn concrete strategies to manage their emotional distress and or behaviors, along with new ways of reframing unhelpful or negative thoughts.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Treatment
PTSD has been shown to respond effectively to treatment with exposure. With this type of therapy, you will be exposed, in a safe environment to stimuli that may remind you of the trauma, including specific places, images or objects. The goal is for you to learn how to be around these triggers without them causing significant distress. With treatment, you will feel more in control and the traumatic event will no longer feel like it is taking over your life.
Relationship Issues
Treatment
CPC clinicians are experts in couples therapy. We will start by conducting a thorough intake from each partner in the couple, that will help guide the treatment plan. Through exercises in session, and activities assigned outside of sessions, you will develop better communication skills and greater emotional connection from therapy.
Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders
Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs) can start during or after pregnancy and can affect a woman of any age or background. In fact, 1 in 4 women struggle with a mood or anxiety disorder during the postpartum period, and 80% of women suffer from “baby blues.” While having hard or anxious moments during or after pregnancy is normal, mood and anxiety disturbances that interfere with your daily life, affect your relationships and ability to attach to your child, or are persistently creating distress, may be considered a PMAD and benefit from proper therapeutic treatment.
While there is not one cause for the development of a PMAD, we know there are certain variables that can increase the risk of a woman’s likelihood to develop one. These factors can include, but are not limited to – a history of mood disorders in the past, a family member who has struggled with a PMAD, infertility issues, miscarriage, lack of social support, and marital stress.
Treatment
Research has shown that getting effective treatment for a PMAD early can have a profound impact on the health of the mother and the baby. At City Psychology Center, we take a holistic approach in our work, first working to understand the systems at play that are affecting a women’s mental health and problem solving with our clients in a collaborative and warm environment to help them feel better. Our goal is to help our clients learn how to identify their unhelpful thoughts, change environmental factors or behaviors that may be impairing their mental health, and stop unhealthy cycles that may be contributing to their distress. We work to be as flexible as possible with our sessions (e.g. offering virtual or the option of bringing a baby to session), knowing that the demands of pregnancy, or having a baby, can make getting to therapy complicated.
In addition to individual therapy, we offer support groups for new moms, led by a psychologist with expertise in the area of PMADs. In addition to the skills you will learn, the ability to access support from other new moms in a safe environment, has been shown to be highly effective. Please contact us for more information.
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