Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Varieties of Counseling Services
Individual | Couples’ | Premarital | Grief

Referrals

Earning Trust and Confidence

The Replogle Center provides a variety of therapy services including individual, group, and couples’ counseling for adults. Our work is rooted in the therapeutic alliance between therapist and client and guided by a mutual agreement on goals. We employ a variety of approaches, many of which include some aspect of mindfulness. We bring a respect for the past to our focus on growing self-awareness to move forward with goals and clear-cut strategies that utilize the latest research.

We hold our clients’ trust with the utmost respect and we know that discrete, confidentiality is at the core of successful therapeutic relationships. Trust and confidence in our therapeutic setting helps clients strengthen resiliency and access resourcefulness, and in many cases transform a painful experience into personal growth and development.

Varieties of Counseling Services

Individual
Counseling is a process that helps individuals identify effective strategies, both to cope with difficult situations and to achieve their goals. Most clients seek individual counseling due to recent stress or ongoing conflicts.

Individual counseling is a collaborative effort between client and therapist. It provides the client with an opportunity to openly talk about thoughts and feelings in order to gain a greater focus, while the therapist acts as a nonjudgmental guide.

A safe, supportive, and confidential environment is provided in which to address issues that are troubling. The goal is to help identify negative patterns and develop methods to avoid, cope with, and change these patterns.

Couples
Relationship coaching, also called marriage counseling or couples’ counseling, is an approach that helps couples recognize and resolve conflicts and improve their relationships. The decision to enter relationship coaching can be difficult, and our therapists will be sensitive and supportive throughout the journey.

Relationship coaching gives couples the tools to communicate better, negotiate differences, problem-solve, and resolve conflict in a healthier way to create the relationship they desire. We provide counseling services to couples struggling with communication problems, life’s transitions, and intimacy concerns. We strive to help couples find greater levels of intimacy, understanding, and balance.

Premarital Coaching
People spend years getting an education, decades to reach the top of their professions, yet most people devote minimal, if any time, to learning the skills that will enhance the most important relationship of their lives. Conventional wisdom suggests that the selection of a life partner determines to a great extent how happy and successful we are in life.

Every couple embarks on their marriage journey with differences and good intentions. Premarital coaching provides an opportunity to explore various facets of the relationship, including many that couples may not yet grasp as important.

Premarital coaching lays out skills needed to nurture a relationship; it helps couples identify strengths and potential areas for growth and explores healthy conflict resolution as well as other skills that contribute to long-term relationship success.

The premarital coaching program at the Replogle Center helps couples learn to share feelings and ways to work together toward mutual goals, establishing a strong foundation for a shared future and healthy, enduring marriage.

Our popular Premarital Seminar is presented four times a year on Saturdays. The seminar is built around decades of data from the successful Prepare/Enrich Inventory, developed at the University of Minnesota by Dr. David Olson. The Replogle Center is the one of the largest users of this powerful program, and couples from a wide variety of backgrounds continue to share positive feedback about the Center’s use of it, the Premarital Seminar, and its positive effect on their marriage journey.

Grief
Significant loss is a regular part of life. Loss in the death of a loved one, friend, or colleague; the loss of a job and income; the loss of a relationship; even the loss of our illusions and dreams can impact each of us. In the wake of such losses we usually experience a sense of grief with feelings of sorrow and sadness. Being a magnet emotion, grief sometimes attaches itself to other feelings such as anger, guilt, fear, bewilderment, anxiety, and relief.

Luther I. Replogle, the founding benefactor of the Replogle Center, was married three times. Each of his wives preceded him in death. He thus was particularly committed to encouraging the Center’s staff to help people deal with their grief.

That encouragement became the Center’s mandate. Through personal counseling, frequent workshops and seminars on the subject of grief, and an ongoing program of grief support groups, the Center seeks to help people shift the focus of their attention away from a preoccupation with what they have lost to an acknowledgement and appreciation of what they have left. This can point them to the acquisition of something new in their lives, to moving beyond being stuck in the trauma of past pain, and encouragement to move forward into a future of possibility and hope.

Loss is an integral and regular part of life, and grief is an inevitable consequence of loss. The Center’s commitment is to companion with people at such a time so that they know they are not alone in their grief and to encourage and strengthen them for their journey.

Issues Addressed in Counseling

Anxiety
Anxiety includes worry, dread, and the anticipation of something negative looming in the near future. It includes restlessness, distractibility, inattention, and problems with immediate memory. Sometimes anxiety is tied to a specific person, event, or place. Often anxiety is vague and ill-defined and its presence is not tied to anything specific; it is more free-floating.

Anxiety is often accompanied by unwanted physical sensations such as “butterflies” in the stomach’ muscle tension, headaches, tightness in the chest, hot or cold sensations in the arms and feet, dizziness, and nausea. Treatment approaches includes cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and can include medication when the symptoms are severe or there is a significant family history of anxiety problems.

Couples’ Challenges
Couples’ coaching (sometimes called therapy) is designed to help two people in a committed relationship improve the quality of their interaction. Often this involves looking at each person’s family of origin (the family in which one has grown up) to understand the meaning of certain relationship behaviors (such as silence, anger, humor, sacrifice, or commitment). It involves using new skills to communicate feelings and motives. Couples’ coaching is a valuable investment and can have a significant positive effect on a relationship.

Depression
Depression affects millions of people each year. Sadness is only one of the twenty-one symptoms of depression. Depression can also include changes in sleep, appetite, or sex drive (libido), as well as loss of attention, concentration, and memory. Often things that used to be fun or pleasurable no longer are. There can be increased irritability, sensitivity to criticism, and a general sense that things will never get better. Suicidal thoughts and behaviors can be part of the picture as well.

The type of treatment for depression depends upon its type and severity. It may include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), insight-oriented therapy, or psychodynamic therapy. Referral to a qualified physician who can evaluate the client for medication to treat depression is another option.

Life Transitions
Change is inevitable; growth is optional. And some change is really, really hard. There are many challenging life transitions that the Center’s staff works with, including

• moving to a new area
• divorce
• marriage
• death of a loved one
• retirement
• birth of a child
• a child moving away or leaving for college
• getting a new job or a job promotion
• losing a job
• dealing with a prolonged illness or disability in yourself or a loved one
• aging and retirement

Often life transitions are difficult in and of themselves. They are made more challenging because they cause us to questions ourselves—our self-confidence, our values, our beliefs in human nature—or to ask bigger questions about why we are here. In every big life transition, there is an opportunity for change and growth.

Loss or Grief
Grief is the physical, emotional, and mental condition that is experienced with the loss of something we held dear. Although the loss that prompts a grief response usually refers to a person in our life, it can also be in response to losing a pet, a job, a marriage, our health, a role, or a dimishment of one’s self. Grieving is a normal and natural part of being human. Although grieving has some general characteristics, each person’s grief and what is needed to do to move through it is unique to that individual.

Symptoms of grief differ from person to person but may include—but are not limited to—shock, numbness, mental rumination, preoccupation with death. problems focusing or remembering or getting things done, fatigue, insomnia, weight gain or loss, a sense of vulnerability, a desire to isolate, intense sadness, anxiety, anger, loneliness, confusion, helplessness, guilt, and feeling the weight of the world on one’s shoulders.

Because grief is a normal human reaction, counseling is not always indicated when one has experienced a loss. However, the counseling relationship can be a place where one feels safe to explore the impact and meaning of the loss on one’s life. This may be more important if someone does not have an adequate support system.

Grieving often involves a lot of second-guessing of one’s self, with questions about whether one should be farther along or whether one is feeling too much or too little. If these questions persist, it can be helpful to consult with a counselor to determine if one’s grieving is proceeding in a healthy manner.

Some losses are particularly difficult and more often require some assistance from a trained professional. All of our counselors are trained to help their clients grieve in a healthy way.

Parenting
Parenting is often described as one of the most difficult and challenging jobs in the world. Yet at no time in history has there been such an abundance of resources for parenting. While many parents have benefited from these, many also report confusion regarding the conflicting advice and philosophies offered by parenting experts.

Most experts and parents do agree that appropriate parenting goals include keeping their children healthy and safe while also developing and equipping them with the self-esteem, skills, and resources needed to succeed as an adult.

The Center has clinicians who work with parents on their own unique parenting challenges. This work might include helping parents with children who have significant behavioral or psychological issues, identifying and working through issues from a parent’s past that impact parenting approach and style, or helping couples develop unity regarding discipline and other aspects of parenting.

The Center staff believes that the parent-child relationship is crucial in healthy development, and we enjoy helping parents develop a safe, nurturing environment for their children with appropriate boundaries, limits, and discipline.

Peer Relationships
Some people are more social than others, but there’s a difference between having healthy peer relationships and having a full social calendar. The depth and intimacy of your relationships is of far more importance than the number of your friends, acquaintances, or contacts on your speed dial.

Strong and healthy relationships with peers actually enhance physical and mental health, while isolation and a sense of disconnectedness can lead to depression, anxiety, and physical manifestations of stress. In this fast-paced, social-media-infused world, finding and maintaining meaningful connections is a challenge.

Signs that you may benefit from enhancing relational skills include

You have a sense of isolation, even when surrounded by others
You feel like no one knows the true you
You desire close friends but are unable to find any
You feel unsure of how to risk closeness with others
You keep highly rigid boundaries in your present relationships
You have been told that you “over share” with others
Therapy provides the opportunity to learn and hone relational skills. A therapist can help develop the awareness of both strengths and areas for growth. Our relationships offer insight into how we view ourselves. Self-image undergirds much of our one’s relational abilities. Through an empathic and therapeutic relationship, it is possible to find healing for a self-image that may have been limiting one’s growth.

Self-Esteem
Self esteem has been defined as both a confidence in and a satisfaction with oneself. Healthy self-esteem is neither self-diminishing nor arrogant.

Self-esteem problems generally take two forms. The more commonly recognized one is seen in people who lack self-confidence. They put themselves down and expect themselves to fail and be a disappointment to themselves as well as others.

The other form of poor self-esteem is a person who is arrogant, boastful, and given to exaggerating his or her accomplishments. Someone who craves admiration and attention from others actually has low self-esteem too.

Counseling improves one’s ability to accept and be present with one’s self and provides strategies for building healthy self-esteem.

Stress
Stress is the amount of “stuff” coming at you that needs to be managed. Even positive events are stressful—such as the birth of a child, graduation, or a job promotion.

Strain is the negative effect that stress can take on us. Strain is the proverbial “weight on the shoulders” that comes from prolonged exposure to stress. Symptoms can affect nearly every site in the body, whether as tension headaches, shoulder and neck pain, back pain, general body weakness, gastrointestinal distress, fatigue, depression, anxiety, irritability, or angry outbursts.

Effective stress management involves attitude change and behavior change as well as learning effective exercises to reduce the harmful effects of stress

Individual counseling can help to construct and implement a healthy stress management strategy.

Referrals
We have expertise in a broad range of areas, yet we also know our limits. If we can’t adequately address your needs with our professional expertise or availability, we will try to provide you with an appropriate referral for services to help you.

See also these pages on the Replogle Center:
Well-Being
Events
History
Mission
FAQs
Resources
Staff
Graduate Education