Counseling and Educational services, PllC
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helping Individuals, families and communities get and be better together
"..and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12
What you can expect
The idea of sharing intimate and difficult details of a person's or family's life with a stranger makes some feel unsafe and insecure. These feelings can make people hesitate to look for the help they need. Sometimes, information about what to expect helps people overcome these concerns. If you are one of these people or just want to know more before choosing our services, this page is for you.
treatments WE USE
Dr. Holcombe believes strongly in integrating practical Christian-based values with proven evidence-based approaches to maximize your spiritual, physical, social, and psychological health. For more about the treatments he uses, click above on "Treatments that work."
Not INTERESTED IN "ChRISTIAN COUNSELING?" Still CALL...
You should still call Dr. Holcombe! He will not try to convert you to the Christian faith during treatment sessions. He uses the latest in the science of psychology explicitly all the time and the Christian Bible/ value system explicitly only when requested/ welcomed. He uses the values inherent in Scripture implicitly all the time in how he honors and treats others with acceptance, compassion, and kindness. Dr. Holcombe has provided behavioral health services to people from multiple life-perspectives and belief systems that do not necessarily align with his for decades. While he believes everyone will appreciate how his commitment to a Christian world-view motivates him to pursue a deep commitment to highly value all, he does not engage in the process of explicitly using Scripture in counseling for those who do not hold to the authority of the Bible as their document for life.
Your first visit
The first time Dr. Holcombe meets you and/ or your family is an "intake session." This session lasts for approximately one hour. The primary goal is to form a strong, collaborative working relationship which forms an important foundation for overcoming the concerns that bring you in for care. As a result, Dr. Holcombe approaches this session, and every session, with compassion and caring. As part of building this relationship, Dr. Holcombe spends more time asking questions than in regular treatment sessions. The purpose is to develop a thorough understanding about the issues for which you are seeking help. Many of the questions asked will be relevant to your problems while others will not. All of the questions are important to ask because there is no way to know which are and are not important until the answers are provided.. You can help Dr. Holcombe prepare for this session and make more valuable use of your treatment time if you contact the office at the number on the bottom of the page. We will coordinate with you to get the initial paperwork to you via a secure email system to complete before your first session. If you provide completed paperwork early enough before the appointment, Dr. Holcombe can review it before the appointment so you and he can focus more specifically on your needs more quickly. Additionally, this will enable you to have a bank-level encrypted secure messaging system with which to interact with our services via email.
Future sessions
Sessions after the "intake" are referred to as "follow-ups." During these sessions, you work with Dr. Holcombe to follow a treatment plan tailored to your needs. The treatment plan includes targeting a defined problem or "diagnosis(es)", prioritization of which problems or issues to tackle first, and how to do this. As a psychologist, Dr. Holcombe uses behavioral and talk therapy methods - not medications. Depending on your needs and values about medications, Dr. Holcombe may or may not recommend you seek medication treatment in addition to the treatment he provides. Research suggests your chances of getting and staying psychologically healthy with medication alone are often not as good as it is with talk and behavioral therapies. This is because good therapies teach life-skills important to addressing problems while medications are medical interventions that may enable but do not teach life-skills. The kind of therapies Dr. Holcombe uses are specific to your needs and based on the best researched therapies available. While Dr. Holcombe is very willing to work with individuals without involving others in the person's life, if that is what the individual wants, he believes in the importance of working with families and/ or communities to help you achieve and maintain psychological health - hence the name "Better Together."
How often/ how long will I need to see dr. holcombe
Dr. Holcombe's goal is to help people get better as quickly as possible. The speed of working through issues depends on several factors: 1) what the issue is, 2) how long the issue has been a problem, 3) how ready the person is to make needed life changes, 4) the support systems a person has to help enact and sustain changes, 5) and how committed a person or person(s) is/ are to solving the problem(s). Dr. Holcombe often encourages outside session assignments, and those who complete these assignments are also likely to heal more quickly. Some research suggests people are more likely to get better in a shorter period of time if they attend sessions more than once a week. As a result, Dr. Holcombe will work to offer you multiple sessions a week while understanding that circumstances in a person's or family's life may not make multiple sessions a week possible. In addition, some may find a mix of individual and group sessions to be particularly beneficial based on the problem with which they or their family are struggling. When Dr. Holcombe believes a person will benefit from group treatments in addition to the others services offered, he will share this recommendation and the rationale for the reasons such a group may be more beneficial than individual treatment services alone.