If you are experiencing chronic illness in Virginia and it’s affecting your mental health, it may be time to seek support. Douglas Rizzo, a licensed professional counselor (LPC) and psychotherapist at Integrated Counseling Services, offers telehealth or online therapy out of Alexandria, VA, to adults and seniors who need compassionate and competent care.
More About Mental Health and Chronic Illness
A chronic illness is a disease or condition that requires long-term care or ongoing medical attention, and it may limit some daily activities. Some chronic illnesses appear to have little or no symptoms, but others are accompanied by pain and/or physical degeneration. Certain chronic illnesses are also life-threatening, which is a heavy burden to carry for the patient and their loved ones.
The impact on your mental health when you are dealing with chronic illness can be insidious. Being able to identify and take action when you are struggling will go a long way toward improving your mental and emotional well-being.
Likewise, if you can bolster your mental resilience, you will have more energy to engage in self-care and can avoid exacerbating your illness with increased stress. This is where Douglas, an integrative therapist at Integrated Counseling Services serving out of Alexandria, VA, can help Virginia residents cope with chronic illness using online therapy.
Our Approach to Counseling
Douglas’s approach to counseling is integrative, using various counseling frameworks or a combination of complementary frameworks to help clients work through and strive toward resolving their struggles and challenges.
Some of the frameworks include:
- Humanistic: focuses on self-discovery, growth, and present experiences.
- Interpersonal: focuses on relationships and is useful for patients with depression/mood disorders.
- Insight-oriented: focuses on how previous experiences shape who we are today.
- Cognitive-behavioral: looks at how our behavior, thoughts, and feelings are connected and how we can adapt behavioral and thinking patterns.
- Psychodynamic: focuses on how the unconscious and previous experiences affect you to help solve more immediate challenges.
Where appropriate, Douglas may also incorporate certain Eastern philosophical principles and teachings. Notably, an integrative therapist uses a whole-person approach, considering your physical, emotional, and mental needs. This is beneficial because it takes your mindset and your chronic illness into account when helping you build a toolkit to cope with challenges in your life.
Contact Information
Douglas, an expert therapist with over 34 years of experience at Integrated Counseling Services based out of Alexandria, VA, offers online counseling for clients, including seniors, dealing with chronic illness in Virginia. To find out more about our services, call us now at (703) 348-7647, so you can get the support you need on the journey to better mental well-being.