Trauma-Informed YOGA
Our next Trauma-Informed Yoga session is starting soon! This is a 10 week session that focuses on connecting with your body and healing from trauma! This is a small private class with gentle movement and group support.
Trauma-informed yoga describes an approach to the practice that addresses the specific needs and symptoms of trauma survivors. Trauma-informed yoga is less about how poses are executed and more about the feeling of embodiment (being within your body) within a pose. Establishing presence and finding a sense of grounding can help you connect to your mind and body in a way that feels secure! Please join us!
Next session April 28-June30, 2022
Thursdays 7pm, $200
American Fork, UT
Adolescent Support & Skills Group
10 week group starting soon!
Summit View is offering a 10 week group for adolescents. The struggle to balance so many different aspects of our lives can be overwhelming. Managing stress, family, friends, school and navigating all the emotions involved in doing so can leave us feeling drained, alone and overwhelmed.
You are not alone in the way that you are feeling! Others have experienced and are experiencing struggles that are similar. Working together as a group can provide a major source of strength in our lives. Together, we will learn how to cope in healthy ways with our challenges. This course will assist individuals on their path to understanding, healing and most importantly, self-love.
Group Topics-
· creating a healthy environment
· understanding emotions
· stress and management
· bullying, social media, relationships
· parental relationships
· balancing life activities
· body image
· spirituality
· coping strategies
This group will provide-
· the chance to connect with peers
· a trained professional leader
· open forum for discussion
· tools for healthy lifestyle
10 Week Group
April 25 – June 27, 2022
Mondays 5:30-6:30 pm
$250 ($25 per group)
Gottman Marriage Workshops Now Offerred at Summit View Counseling
Workshops starting Soon!!
Brody and Mayalene Bates along with Tyler and Kelli Gordon will be offering a pilot workshop for limited guests and reduced fee! Don’t miss it!
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a fun, educational workshop based on the research of Dr. John Gottman, an American psychological researcher and clinician who has done extensive research on marriage stability. The workshop is specifically designed to help couples improve their friendship and manage conflict.
The workshop includes lectures, private couples exercises, and group discussions. It is structured as an educational workshop, not therapy, so no need to stress about sharing your personal problems with others!
Couples will learn and practice proven tools, including:
- Improve friendship, fondness, and admiration
- Enhance romance and intimacy
- Manage conflict constructively
- Gain skills to address perpetual and solvable problems
- Create shared meaning
Couples who should attend?
- Engaged and married
- Newlyweds to seniors
- Those who wish to enhance a good marriage
- Those needing better conflict management tools
- Those considering couples therapy, but don’t feel “ready” for formal therapy yet
**If you are dealing with severe relationship distress, emotional abuse, domestic violence, active addictions, or serious mental health problems this class is not appropriate and you should instead seek individual or couples therapy which we also offer.
Pricing: $250 ($25 off if you bring a second couple)
Included in your price:
- The book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
- Two Seven Principles workbooks
- Love Maps Card Deck
- Open Ended Questions Card Deck
- Workshop provided by Gottman leaders
This Workshop will be a weekend course.
Dates Coming Soon!
Location: American Fork, UT
Registration: Space is limited, so register now! Your space will be guaranteed on receipt of payment.
Please email bbates@sviewcounseling.com for more info.
The Sound Relationship
Dr.s John and Julie Gottman have a powerful and learnable method for anyone who wants to strengthen their relationship.
The Gottmans have been working with couples for over 40 years and have combined rigorous research and practical experience with couples in therapy to develop what they call The Gottman Method. This method of therapy provides couples with a deeper understanding of their partners underlying needs and “dreams within the conflicts”which exist in all relationships.
As I participated in this training I was inspired by a couple of key points that I recognize from my work with couples as being particularly problematic:
1. “All relationships have conflict”. Conflict is not about resolving the conflict, it has a greater purpose. It is the nature of relationships to have conflict exist. This is not something that indicates that the relationship is doomed. Conflict can in fact be quite healthy once a couple learns that rather than running or disconnecting from conflict they can manage it to gain a deeper understanding of their partner. When both partners do this they develop a mutual understanding, bonds of love develop, and the relationship becomes stronger.
2. Creating “Shared Meaning” is essential to building a healthy relationship. This can happen in several different ways that can be unique to each couple. Celebrating holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or other significant dates are some ways shared meaning is developed. Experiences like having and raising children can automatically create shared meaning in a relationship.
3. Positive feelings and moods (sometimes called Affect) can be learned and enhanced by each partner. This creates less friction and tension during conflict. Conversely negative affect can have the opposite effect causing conflicts to feel more harmful and polarizing.
There was so much incredible information and many useful skills taught at this event. One of the great things about the Gottman Method is that once skills are taught and practiced in therapy they are easily integrated into the problems areas within a relationship.
If you feel like you or someone you know might benefit from therapy and The Gottman Method contact us. We’d love to help you!
-Brody Bates, CMHC
For more information on The Gottman Method follow the link below.
SUICIDE and its many RIPPLES
“Place your hand over your heart, can you feel it? That is called purpose. You’re alive for a reason so don’t ever give up.” Author Unknown
Suicide is all around us. Most likely you, and those you love have been tragically affected by a suicide of someone close. It’s real and it’s serious.
My family is one of those. We lost a vibrant, fun, humorous, athletic, and kind son and brother at a very young age. It left a mark of darkness on families, friends, schools, church, community, and generations. It also left a desire for more compassion, more empathy, more openness, and more hope. A reminder to savor the moment, let go of resentments, and live completely.
The ripples of suicide are many.
Many people affected.
Many dark days.
Many questions.
Many emotions.
Many regrets.
Many memories.
Please help yourself and others stay safe from suicide. There are answers, solutions, and help.
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/suicide-prevention/suicide-prevention.htm
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/suicide-prevention/suicide-prevention.htm
Experiential Experiences- Now Offered at Summit View Counseling
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” – John Muir
As I gallop my horse through the tall, serene, musical aspen trees I feel a sense of quiet and calm; I feel invigorated, connected, joyful, and inspired. I hear my horses hoof beats. I smell the wildflowers and horse sweat. I feel the sun, and my body is grounded in movement.
I grip the rock and look down at my feet for the next best foothold, I realize the options are, well, lousy, so I pick the best one for my balance and heave upward. I am 30 feet up and feel the coolness of the limestone and the weight on my toes in my snug climbing shoes. I feel the chalk under my fingernails. I hear the stream trickling below. I am completely in the moment.
My husband Brody and I both have powerful connections to the outdoors and physical movement. Experiential therapy can help provide experiences of connection, release, awareness, flow, and growth. Experiential therapy provides activities and settings that are naturally healing and challenging. It isn’t just playing, it isn’t just being outside, it’s still therapy, but so much more!
At Summit View Counseling, Experiential Therapy is a specific therapeutic intervention with an experienced, skilled therapist or recreation therapist, that can help the client address personal trauma, roadblocks, and unhealthy patterns/thought processes. Experiential Therapy can result in the client becoming proactive over reactive, improving problem solving skills, connecting with genuine thoughts and behaviors, improving self confidence, decreasing impulsivity, finding a sense of empowerment,and increasing spiritual connection.
Join us at Summit View counseling in our new Experiential Experiences! Both individual and groups! We are now offering:
HIKING
Put on some trail shoes, bring your water and lets hike!
BIKING
Have a bike? So do I, lets go chat and ride!
STAND UP PADDLE BOARDING
We’ve got the boards, come stand up and paddle!
This may be just for you! If the therapy office setting is intimidating or uncomfortable, lets go out and experience! Connect with your body first; connect with your mind and emotions in turn! Please contact us for specifics!
Here is a great video about mountain biking for women healing from sexual trauma, check it out! https://youtu.be/xCbRgngaH3Y
Person-Centered Approach
Carl Rogers, American Psychologist, is well know for his Person-Centered Approach. Sounds pretty great if you are the person, right?
“We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet [active] listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.” – Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers Client Centered or Person Centered therapy is one of the most utilized, familiar, and empowering forms of psychotherapy we use at Summit View Counseling. However when it was being developed Rogers approach was a radical departure from the more clinical and sterile forms of therapy happening at the time.
The classic Rogerian question asked by a therapist might be something like, “but how does that make you feel?” or maybe a more reflective question such as “it sounds like you are feeling ….”. Questions and statements like these can seem stereotypical or wrote however they highlight an important aspect of therapy which Carl Rogers recognized as essential to the process of positive change. This aspect of change is that people can change from being “potentially competent to [being] fully competent” (McLeod, 2015). He believed people to be ” fully autonomous individuals who are capable of putting in the effort required to realize their full potential and bring about positive changes in their lives” (Ackerman, 2017). He was stepping away from the role of advice giver or director that characterized therapy up to this point. I picture patient and therapist on a tandem bicycle (because I love bicycles) the patient steering their direction and the therapist providing support and empowerment, close enough to see their direction and offer suggestion or redirection if there is risk ahead.
What makes Person Centered Therapy effective? Here are the two key elements!
It’s non-directive. Therapists allow clients to lead the discussion and do not try to steer the client in a particular direction.
It emphasizes unconditional positive regard. Therapists show complete acceptance and support for their clients without casting judgment.
Rogers identified five characteristics of the fully functioning person:
1. Open to experience: both positive and negative emotions accepted. Negative feelings are not denied, but worked through (rather than resorting to ego defense mechanisms).
2. Existential living: in touch with different experiences as they occur in life, avoiding prejudging and preconceptions. Being able to live and fully appreciate the present, not always looking back to the past or forward to the future (i.e., living for the moment).
3. Trust feelings: feeling, instincts, and gut-reactions are paid attention to and trusted. People’s own decisions are the right ones, and we should trust ourselves to make the right choices.
4. Creativity: creative thinking and risk-taking are features of a person’s life. A person does not play safe all the time. This involves the ability to adjust and change and seek new experiences.
5. Fulfilled life: a person is happy and satisfied with life, and always looking for new challenges and experiences.
Person Centered Therapy is at the core of our approach to helping people make positive changes in their lives. Like Carl Rogers It is our belief that individuals have the necessary resources to make these changes within themselves. Sometimes it might just take some help from a supportive person, like a therapist, to recognize and access those resources.
If you are feeling stuck, sad, lonely, or lacking motivation to make changes contact us at Summit View Counseling we can help!
-Brody Bates, CMHC
References
- McLeod, S. (2015). Person centered therapy. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/client-centred-therapy.html Person-centered therapy. (n.d.).
- Ackerman, C. (2017). 10 Person-Centered Therapy Techniques Inspired by Carl Rogers. Retrieved from https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/client-centered-therapy/ .
Marriage: Stagnant to Soaring
Emotional bids accepted brings connection…Emotional bids ignored brings disconnect!
John Gottman, is a psychological researcher and clinician who specialized in marital stability and divorce prediction. He teaches about “bids” from a partner, which are basically requests to connect. Bids can be physical, verbal, serious, casual, but most of all they are important to respond positively too! Accepting emotional bids can change an interaction and a relationship instantly. Click the photo below to connect!
“M’s Trails”
Summit View Counseling will be sponsoring a mom’s and kids hiking group this summer! We will be hiking on Thursday mornings at 9:30 for a few hours! Now, lest you be worried about your hiking condition, these may better be described as a slow paced nature walk! We have kids age 15mo-5 years currently hiking with us, which means we walk slowly and pick up many rocks and sticks (and sometimes try to eat them)! We bring lunch/snacks and eat whenever the kiddos get hungry. We stop to climb on rocks and scramble through bushes–mostly we just enjoy being outdoors and having unstructured time! Several things are recommended: sunscreen, enough water (not all trailheads have water), good shoes for everyone, baby backpack/carrier for kids under 2 1/2. Please contact Mayalene on Facebook or through Summit View email to receive weekly updates!
Our mountains are beautiful year round! Come and enjoy them with us!
For a great article on benefits of hiking with your kids, click below!