Services

Our Mental Health Counseling Services

We offer a unique combination of therapeutic approaches designed to help you develop effective new strategies, enhance self-awareness, and move forward in your life.

Skills

Learn how to be more mindful, tolerate stress, reduce emotional vulnerability and improve communication.

Insight

Examine your core beliefs, where they come from, and how they shape the way you feel and relate to others.

Action

Live your life in harmony with what is most important to you. Learn how to set yourself free, with a sense of confidence and mastery.

Specialties

A variety of evidence-based therapies are available to help you make positive changes and enhance your quality of life. J. Higgins Counseling offers expertise in a group of complementary therapy models. When used together, in service of your personalized goals, they create a powerful synergy. The following tabs identify and describe those specialties.

ACT

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a mindfulness based therapy designed to enhance psychological flexibility.

  • Learn to be more present
  • Develop the ability to observe your inner experience
  • Experiential in nature so uses lots of metaphors and real-life examples
  • Enhance willingness and acceptance
  • Build skills to disentangle yourself from thoughts and emotions that leave you feeling stuck
  • Clarify your values and align your goals accordingly

DBT

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a skills training program that anyone can benefit from.

  • Develop mindfulness skills to enhance self-awareness of thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations
  • Learn to get through the most difficult situations without making things worse
  • Learn about emotions and how to make them work for you, rather than against you
  • Decrease vulnerability to unwanted emotions
  • Learn how to shape emotional responses
  • Enhance your ability to do what works when it comes to interacting with other people

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)

  • Originally developed for PTSD, EMDR can be used to heal from a broad range of challenges
  • Helps the brain process stressful memories and allows normal healing to resume
  • Changes relationship with the memories, not the memories themselves
  • Has been extensively researched
  • Typically requires 60-minute sessions
  • Efficient and effective

SCHEMA

Schema Therapy:

  • Schema is short for Early Mal-adaptive Schema
  • Schemas are core beliefs we hold about ourselves, the world, and how we relate to others
  • Learn to identify relevant Schemas, their origins, and their activating triggers
  • Learn how to respond more effectively when Schemas are triggered
  • Works well in combination with ACT so we do not get stuck in patterns of Schema thoughts
  • Works well in combination with EMDR which can reprocess the memories underlying mal-adaptive Schemas

First Responders, Military & Veterans

J. Higgins Counseling specializes in treatment for:

  • Law Enforcement Officers and other First Responders
  • Military service members
  • Veterans

Affiliations

J. Higgins Counseling is affiliated with:

  • Western New York Trauma Collaborative
  • Western New York Trauma Recovery Network