MASHACH COUNSELING SOLUTIONS
STRENGTH FOR TODAY,
HOPE FOR TOMORROW
INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING
We specialize in Christian counseling that is effective, spiritual, and theologically grounded. Through counseling you will learn why you feel the way you do, and how to manage emotions and increase self-confidence.
Through looking inward (as well as upward), you will learn how to communicate with loved ones more effectively, and increase harmony in your relationships with your spouse, family, and loved ones.
Personal Issues
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Self-Esteem
- Codependency
- Anger
- Sexual Addiction
- Substance Addiction
- Career and Calling
MARRIAGE & COUPLES COUNSELING
Relationships are complex. The reason why some relationships work out and others don’t can seem like a mystery. If you are in a marriage or relationship that has reached an impasse, there is hope. We help couples with the following issues:
- Improving Communication
- Trust Issues
- Infidelity Recovery
- Decision Making
- High Conflict
- Remarriage and Blended Families
- Grief in the Family
- Codependency
- Parenting Styles
MCS’s understands that just as individuals that go through the same experiences can be affected differently so too relationships and marriage. Our approach with couples is to go through specific steps that utilize different strategies. For some couples, this process only needs to take a few sessions, for others, it may take several. This goal is to help couples address negative cycles while providing tools and skills to establish healthier ways of relating.
Every couple is different, so the path changes slightly based on what is needed and how each couple processes and learns. Our approach is pro-marriage and integrates hope-centered interventions based on extensive research.
Don’t wait any longer. Start turning your relationship around today.
1. Discernment Phase – Many couples who start counseling are in crisis. This may not always be the case, but the first step is to discern where both partners are at in the relationship. Willpower is the desire for change. If both partners are fully invested, there is much better prognosis for improvement.
2. Assessment Phase – Willpower must be combined with waypower, which means outlining a way or path for success. We might use an assessment such as that both partners can complete. The items both partners respond to in these assessments are based on extensive research and are intended to help couples identify growth areas as well as unique strengths of their relationship.
3. Development Phase – This is where the hard work really begins. After assessing the issues that need to be worked on, we start to address the toxic patterns that keep couples stuck. Some couples might temporarily feel worse as raw emotions emerge and unresolved problems are faced head on. But it is necessary to till the soil so lasting growth can take root. The idea of wait-power evokes the reality that change happens over time—patience is needed for transformation to occur. We then introduce new ways of communicating, connecting, and bonding. If couples put in the hard work, change will come.
4. Maintenance Phase – Our goal is to help couples create a holy sanctuary in their marriage—a space between them where they commune together with God and feel securely connected with each other. We encourage couples to keep implementing what is working as they develop a new pattern of attachment that is more mature, healthy, and based on holy love.
PREMARITAL COUNSELING
Premarital counseling is for engaged couples who want to ensure they have a strong, healthy relationship before they walk down the aisle. Premarital counseling can give you a better chance for a stable and satisfying marriage by helping you identify weaknesses that could become problems later down the road.
What is SYMBIS? It’s short for Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, and the assessment is a customized report that will prepare you for lifelong love. The assessment is based on solid research and covers various facets including: your personalities, your money methods, your communication styles, and how you approach conflict, among many other things.
TEENS
Frustrated? Worried about what others think of you? Feel like you’re hiding the “real” you?
Being a teenager is not easy. There’s pressure from teachers, coaches, church leaders, and parents. Sometimes expectations can feel so unrealistic. Even friends and other kids your age add to the stress.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s understandable that you also need some privacy. Maybe you need a place where you can express how you feel without being judged, in a place where you will be understood.
If your parent encouraged you to see this page they may be wanting to figure out how to help and love you best. Maybe you found this page by yourself, and you want to get some help. Good for you!
After talking with your parent(s) or guardian(s), you can set up an appointment or ask a question by clicking HERE.
ADDICTION
How does addiction take hold?
Addiction involves any behavior that becomes compulsive and out of control. People can not only get addicted to substances like alcohol and drugs; but, also non-substance compulsions like pornography or gambling. These actions ultimately serve one purpose: They numb. Addiction isn’t just about getting high; but, numbing and distracting underlying pain.
How do you overcome addiction?
Recovery from addiction is a journey. First you must surrender it to God, then find help from other people who will support you in your decision to find freedom. It is also imperative to work a program in order to find long-lasting freedom. Counseling can be a powerful tool to help you identify triggers, uncover root issues, transform your thinking, and ultimately find healing.
COUNSELING FOR PASTORS
Pastors and Church leaders need Counseling too. Few know or understand the loneliness, the pressure, the demand that is on the Pastor of a Church. MCS understands and has provided 5 reasons to consider:
REASON #1: CONFESSION: You need to confess your sins.
The Pastor’s Office quite often becomes the Church’s confessional; but, where does a Pastor go when he needs to share, to unload, to confess? It’s scary to tell another person about your personal failures, sins and struggles after all you’re a Pastor! Many Pastors typically don’t feel that there is anyone to whom they can confess their sins because they fear exposure, job loss, scorn, humiliation and even the destruction of their reputation, ministry, finances and family.
Just as a Pastor’s Office should be a safe place of confession for your Congregation, a Counselor’s Office can be a safe place for a Pastor to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and confess the unconfessable. Imagine being able to have that same sense of relief when you talk to someone who can, must and will protect your confidentiality, and who will give you the safe place you need to confess your sins as your Congregants do when they leave your Office.
REASON #2: INTEGRATION: You need to integrate the broken pieces of your identity.
We’re all broken in different ways. Like shattered pieces of glass from a broken mirror, our lives become disintegrated and fractured. Many of us will choose one big piece, and then perhaps two, three or four smaller pieces, of the shattered mirror to navigate through life, relationships and changing circumstances. We learn to project the piece of our image we want everyone else to see. Counseling will help you to get all those pieces put back together and integrated into one whole, healed and complete person. This is vital to Pastors who may otherwise live in a state of disintegration, and then end up living a double life.
A Counselor can help you to identify those big pieces of your life and which are being pushed to the side, kept in a box or brought out only in certain circumstances. A Counselor can help a dis-integrated Pastor who is in danger of blowing up his life to become whole, integrated and internally connected so that he is one person, no matter where he is or who he is with.
REASON #3: TRAINING: You need to learn how to be a better Counselor yourself.
Many Pastors have no formal training in Counseling and often put on their best “pastor face” while simultaneously feeling totally helpless, inept and unqualified when assisting those in their care. I often silently wondered to myself, “How can I ever help this person? I have no idea what to say or do!”
Getting counseling, as a Pastor, will help you learn to counsel others. You will learn, in part, by watching your Counselor. You will also learn how to listen, ask the right questions, give feedback, when to talk and when to be quiet, how to end a counseling session, and how to help someone set goals and track their progress.
Most Pastors should not be doing long-term counseling with church members unless (1) you’re trained to do it, (2) you’re good at it and (3) you have time to do it along with all the other things you’re doing. If you can’t check all three of those boxes, you should be referring people who need counseling to people who can actually help them. The sign outside your office door that says “PASTOR” does not mean you know how to counsel all the people in your church, and it doesn’t mean you have to be their personal therapist. Pastor, you should not feel guilty about that at all!
REASON #4: EMPATHY: You need to empathize with people who come in for counseling.
When people walk through your door they are often nervous and insecure. Seeing a Counselor yourself will give you empathy for the people who come in to talk to you because you will know how they feel having experienced it yourself. You will know what they’re feeling when they come in to see you, and that will make you work harder to listen, to empathize, and to do all you can to help them feel loved, safe and cared for.
Pastor, if you go to counseling, you will get to feel what every person who comes to your office feels, and that’s a good thing. It will make you a better Shepherd.
REASON #5: CATHARSIS: You need to dump all the stuff you’re carrying in your head and heart.
Pastors are under the microscope more than any other profession. They are scrutinized and criticized by those very people they endeavor to care for and by their peers. Pastors feel that they are alone, isolated, attacked, and that there is no one for them to talk to. That there is no one to help them process all the “stuff” they feel.
Pastors often struggle with resentment, defensiveness, anger, disappointment, feelings of failure, insecurity, inadequacy and loneliness. No one can hold that much negative, toxic, poisonous emotional baggage in their heart without serious consequences. Everyone needs a place to dump their “stuff”. But if a pastor dumps to the wrong people, it will only add to his sense of fear because, again, some people will not allow a Pastor to be human. That’s why Pastors need a Counselor. They need someone who will let them vent, who will role-play with them so that they can work out how to talk to their critics, and someone who can help them grow by learning from criticism, conflict or whatever else they’re dealing with. And if you’re seeing a Counselor, you don’t have to risk losing another friend. The Counselor is in an entirely different category.
Being in ministry also means that we are with people, helping and supporting them through the worst things they’re experiencing, and it’s simply not natural for one person to be involved in so much pain. Pastor, have you ever really stopped to think about all the pain you’ve walked through with others? Has that pain made you sick, hardened, weak, paranoid, tired, overwhelmed, depressed, cynical or resentful? If so, you’re a prime candidate for counseling.
The bottom line is that Pastors are under served in the area of care and personal healing. Their marriages struggle, they struggle with finances, parenting, sexuality, personality quirks and every other kind of human brokenness—just like all the people they’re pastoring. SO—here’s my encouragement. See a Counselor. You won’t regret it. It may be one of the best things you will ever do.
CAREER COUNSELING
Whether you are dealing with a life transition or your own performance, we can help you discover the person you feel called to be personally and professionally.
Career and Calling
- Gain inspiration as well as practical job seeking strategies that get attention.
- Personality testing and assessment.
- Discover your strengths and talents.
- Chart out a life plan and devise effective goals.
- Leadership
- Stress
- Procrastination
- Perfectionism
- Decision-Making
