How My Therapy Practice is different
I am a pro-active action-oriented therapist who will help you start changing your life in the first session. Whether it’s your primary relationship or lack thereof, your self-esteem, friends, job, or just basic unhappiness about your life, I’ll start by helping you make some behavioral changes that will make you feel better immediately. Then we’ll start cleaning up the issues in your life that are making you feel this way. I will help you “hold people accountable” for their actions, whether it’s an ex or your family or a boss.
Couples Counseling
I help couples remember why they fell in love. And with those couples who are full of anger and resentment, I help them resolve their issues when possible. If they can’t resolve the issues, I help them decide and figure out the details surrounding a possible divorce. Hopefully though, I can help you make love a lot less complicated so you can grow old together.
Individual Counseling
Whether it’s depression, self-esteem issues, anger, or something else, I can help you become stronger and healthier. If you’ve been in therapy before, but didn’t get anywhere, I can help you with some action-oriented direction for your life. I will help you become strong enough to confront and handle whatever issues and conflicts that you need to face in your life.
Singles and Dating Coaching
I help singles figure out why they aren’t having success in the dating world, whether it is unrecognized patterns of choice or behavior, hurt they’ve never resolved, lack of social skills, childhood issues holding them back, or just the rules of dating that they never learned. I can help you with your profile for online dating, help you strategize, spot red flags, how to flirt without chasing, and how to turn someone you’re dating into a lifetime partner.
Family Counseling
I help parents set boundaries with their school-age children. I help parents confront their adult children who won’t grow up. I help adult children handle their aging parents. I help addicts move on to become self-reliant individuals.
Abuse Victims Counseling
I help victims of abuse confront their perpetrators. I help disgruntled employees confront their bosses. I help anyone who feels victimized by someone else become stronger and able to feel safe in their environment again.
I will help you become strong enough to confront and handle whatever issues and conflicts that you need to face in your life.
Relationship Therapist Carolyn Bushong, L.P.C. can help you:
- Find the Man or Woman of Your Dreams
- Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship
- Help you stop making the same mistakes again and again
- Improve your love life
- Help you stop choosing “Bad” Men or Women
- Get others to behave toward you the way you want
- Learn secret dating techniques that work
- Clean up family issues
- Improve self-esteem
- Overcome Depression and/or Anxiety
- Improve sexual passion
The 6 major goals of my therapy are:
- You will gain self-reliance via strengthened identity.
- You will learn to set boundaries with consequences.
- You will develop emotional intimacy (and be yourself) in all your relationships.
- You will have better control over your life.
- You will be able to handle future problems/issues in a healthier way.
- You will stop analyzing and/or hoping and learn how to live a happier life.
Click here to read Carolyn’s article on Therapy Expectations
How My Therapy Evolved
My therapy began as a program to help women be independent whether single or in a relationship. Originally, I taught women how not to play victim to controlling men. I taught classes on assertiveness and guided women in how to strengthen themselves in every area of their lives, whether financially, emotionally, in their careers, sexually, or handling their girlfriends. I believed that if women were not dependent on men in any way, they would be happier and have more control of their relationships –assuming that this is what many women want.
Then as it became obvious that both women and men needed help, and as I learned that sometimes it is the man who is the victim to a controlling woman, my therapy evolved into a program for men and women to become healthy and have equal relationships together. What’s important to know is that out-of-balance relationships are unhealthy, create resentment, and ultimately end in divorce (or a lifetime of misery).
To have a healthy relationship, each person (whether male or female, straight or gay) has to work at making himself or herself happy. Most of us unsuccessfully try to make our mates happy, as our mates continually let us know that what we’re doing is not good enough– since they are still not happy. So, we end up feeling as though we ourselves are not good enough, that we’re lacking in some important way. We feel guilty for not being able to make our mate or ourselves happy (when it’s not even possible for someone to make someone else happy).
We have to give up the myth that we can make someone else happy, and work on ourselves and our own happiness.
My therapy and books are a progression for a healthy relationship from finding your own strength (Loving Him Without Losing You), to fixing your relationship mistakes (The 7 Dumbest Relationship Mistakes), to learning how to resolve issues as they arise (Bring Back the Man You Fell in Love With). They are for both men and women, although written for women (at the publisher’s request). As I wrote the books, I, as well as my clients have followed the programs listed in each book.
