JOURNEY COUNSELING
life is a journey
We believe that life is a journey, with ups and downs, twists and turns. At times during the journey life can be joyful and meaningful. At other times it can seem overwhelming, even hopeless. During these difficult times it can be life-giving to join with someone who has experience with helping people move through the challenges that inevitably come along.
At Journey Counseling Waco, the services we provide are aimed at helping people who are dealing with the questions and struggles of life, relationships, and spiritual concerns — to offer a way through the confusion, to bring healing from the brokenness and to help people discover their truest selves and deepest joy.
We believe in the inherent worth of every person as a child of God, and it is our hope to connect individuals, couples, and families with that truth at a deep level.
Anxiety is defined as nervousness, apprehension, and self-doubt that may or may not be associated with real-life stressors. Everyone experiences some level of anxiety periodically, but when feelings of dread and worry are unfocused, overwhelming, recurring, and not directly linked to stressful events, anxiety may leave a person severely impaired.
Depression is a sad or discontented mood that can leave a person feeling lethargic, unmotivated, or hopeless. In some cases, depression can lead to suicidal ideation. Depression may occur in a severe form, as in major depression, or in a more chronic, mild-to-moderate form, as is the case with persistent depressive disorder.
Relationships require work and are bound to face challenges large and small. Simple, everyday stressors can strain an intimate relationship, and major sources of stress may threaten the stability of the relationship. As long as each partner is willing to address the issue at hand and participate in developing a solution, most relationship problems are manageable, but when challenges are left unaddressed, tension mounts, poor habits develop, and the health and longevity of the relationship are in jeopardy.
We’ve probably all felt stress. Sometimes it’s brief and highly situational, like being in heavy traffic. Other times, it’s more persistent and complex—relationship problems, an ailing family member, a spouse’s death. And sometimes, stress can motivate us to accomplish certain tasks.
Trauma is a distressing event in which a person feels severely threatened emotionally, psychologically, or physically. Most people will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Many people recover from trauma, but for others, the effects of trauma are lasting, causing a person to live with deep emotional pain, fear, confusion, or posttraumatic stress far after the event has passed. Often, the support, guidance, and assistance of our EMDR certified mental health professionals is fundamental to healing from trauma.
Raising a human being can be a daunting task. Though babies may look uncomplicated, infants require a significant level of attention and care in order to grow up into a healthy person. On top of the day-to-day needs that young infants and children have, each child has their own unique personality--these personalities are in part encoded within their genes, and in part shaped by their caregivers and living environment.
Sometimes, marriages do not succeed. The end of a marriage can be a relief to some people, but it can also be an extremely stressful event. Even the partner who chooses to leave may experience a wide range of emotions and intense feelings that may be painful or difficult, such as grief, guilt, anger, confusion, fear, shame, and anxiety. If children are involved, the stress level within a divorcing family is likely to be even higher.
Bereavement refers specifically to the process of recovering from the death of a loved one. Grief is a reaction to any form of loss. Both encompass a range of feelings from deep sadness to anger, and the process of adapting to a significant loss can vary dramatically from one person to another, depending on his or her background, beliefs, relationship to what was lost, and other factors.
Sexual abuse is any form of sexual violence, including rape, child molestation, and similar forms of non-consensual sexual contact. Most sexual abuse experts agree that sexual abuse is never only about sex. Instead, it is an attempt to gain power over victims.
Anger is a completely normal, and usually healthy, human emotion. But when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it can lead to problems: problems at work, in your personal relationships, and in the overall quality of your life. And it can make you feel as though you're at the mercy of an unpredictable and powerful emotion. We offer counseling services for anger management, no classes are offered.
Join us on this Journey
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross