If you’re thinking of starting therapy for the first time, you might know how to get started or what to expect.  At LifeSpring Counseling Services, we understand these concerns and have created the Starting Therapy podcast series to provide clarity and support. While we have lots of content on our website, we also wanted to make our content available in audio form.  Here’s a summary of this private, mini podcast series and the content you can expect to find.

Looking for a therapist in Baltimore or anywhere in Maryland? If you’ve never searched for a therapist before, you might not be sure where to begin. In fact, the process can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially if this is your first time seeking therapy services. Whether you’re searching for someone who “gets it,” hoping to work with a therapist who shares your background, or just trying to figure out where to start, there are more resources than ever to help you find the right fit.

For many adults in Maryland, the idea of starting therapy sounds great in theory, but the reality of carving out time for sessions feels overwhelming. Between work responsibilities, parenting, caregiving, and simply keeping up with life, therapy often lands at the bottom of the to-do list.

At LifeSpring Counseling Services, we work with a lot of busy professionals, parents, college students, and caregivers. Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I know I need support, but I don’t know when I’d even fit therapy in.” If this sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Here’s the good news! People are making therapy work, often in creative, flexible ways that fit into their real lives.

If you're living in Maryland, whether you're in Columbia, Silver Spring, Baltimore, or a quieter town in Harford County and feeling stuck in sadness or low energy, this blog is for you! Depression affects people from all walks of life, and it's more than just “a rough patch.”

If you’ve ever thought, “I’m just stressed. It’ll pass,” you’re not the only one! But sometimes, what we call “stress” is actually chronic overwhelm, and left unaddressed, it can take a serious toll on your mental and physical health. For many adults in Maryland, juggling work, family, and life’s curveballs, therapy offers a space to decompress, gain clarity, and reconnect with yourself.

Grief can often be described as a natural experience associated with the feelings and behaviors that exist after a death. This experience can extend to other hard, tough life events too, however. Events like the end of relationships, change of jobs, relocations, retirement, kids moving out of the home, end of an event, a health diagnosis, medical procedure, a natural disaster, a global pandemic, or an oppressive system can shake up someone’s life.

News headlines can be stressful in general. Having said that, the non-stop alerts about lay offs, fiscal cuts, human rights violations, and the next group of people being targeted with harmful legislative changes that we’ve been seeing lately are sure to create feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and overwhelm.

Deconstruction has recently become a buzzword for ex-evangelicals who have decided the church as it stands today goes against the basic principles taught by Jesus, to love your neighbor as yourself and to love God. Deconstruction is simply the act of getting rid of the harmful practices and beliefs we hold as truth and intentionally selecting practices that promote growth and healing. Believe me, it’s a lot easier said than done.

If you’ve been looking into therapy intensives, you’ve probably noticed that they come with a higher price tag than traditional therapy. Understandably, that might leave you wondering—why do they cost so much? And more importantly, are they worth the investment?

Therapy intensives are becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason. They offer a deep, focused approach to therapeutic growth that allows people to work through big emotions, life transitions, and unresolved trauma in a shorter period of time. But with so many different therapy intensives available, how do you know which one is the right fit for you?

If you’ve been searching for therapy options in Maryland, you may have noticed something new.  More and more practices are offering therapy intensives. Whether it’s EMDR intensives, trauma-focused intensives, or Brainspotting intensives, these deep-dive therapy sessions are gaining traction fast. But why? What makes therapy intensives so popular, and more importantly, is a therapy intensive right for you?

When it comes to therapy, many people conclude that using insurance is the way to go or that all mental health providers accept health insurance. But did you know that many individuals–right here in Baltimore and across Maryland—choose to invest in private pay therapy instead? While insurance can be a helpful tool for accessing mental health care, it also comes with limitations that don’t work for everyone.

With the current anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation from our current administration, LGBTQ+ people are being faced with a slew of issues, such as barriers to obtaining gender-affirming IDs, free speech bans, healthcare restrictions, and the dismantling of Civil Rights Laws. This is why we build resilience: so we can bounce back from these challenges and stand stronger than before. Here are some ways to build up resilience and seek out hope in the face of despair.

A topic that has come up in my personal life with male friends and in my work life with male clients is that of stoicism. This is a topic of genuine interest for me as a man who is a mental health professional as the practice of stoicism is problematic. This blog will outline what stoicism is, the messages it sends to men, and healthier ways of being for others.

There are a number of different forms that anxiety can take. Maybe it's generalized anxiety, where you just have excessive worry. You're just constantly worrying throughout the day. And then more specific anxiety where it can result in a very specific fear, maybe something happened that has created a fear of driving. And then there's also panic disorder where you break out in a panic attack out of the blue.

At LifeSpring, we work with children and adolescents and adults at our office. And one of the things that we are going to be talking about is an issue that Caroline does see come up with children. And that is the issue of specific fears that come up for children and specific fears that bring them into therapy. One of the things that Caroline specializes in at our office is anxiety.

We’re talking with Sara Sacada-Lovio, LCPC, who is a mental health therapist at LifeSpring Counseling Services. She'll be talking with us about demystifying the therapy process, which can be a great topic for someone who's been considering therapy or someone who has strong beliefs about therapy, even if you've never tried it. So this will be an opportunity to check some of the information that you already have about therapy.

The biggest myth around if you're struggling with procrastination is that you're just lazy. You're just not trying hard enough. You just need to buckle down and make it happen. It must not be that important to you if you're not getting it done. But this isn't true. Procrastination is an active process. It's the brain telling you, current me is not willing to experience this discomfort right now, so I'm going to pass it off to future me. But the problem is that we usually don't identify with that future version of ourselves. So when that future time comes, we just kind of get stuck in the cycle of passing that obligation off to our future selves, and this actually exacerbates that feeling of discomfort because the thing is still there. It's still moving over you. It's still hanging around. It's just being put off.

When you call our office, Sarah is the first person that you're going to talk to. If you send us an email, she is the person who's going to answer you. We also want to say that Sarah is someone who gets tons of compliments! We hear a lot of feedback from clients who are just so impressed with how she takes care of them and how she makes them feel comfortable when they call our office.

I don’t know about you, but I am a sucker for reality TV, especially when it involves tangled up relationships and drama. 90 Day Fiance is my absolute favorite reality series, not only because of the twisted story lines but because of the lessons we learn from their relationships, both positive and negative. Although not every relationship is the same, there are common truths and situations that relate to everyone’s relationship. February is the season of love, so what better way to learn relationship advice from some of 90 Day’s most famous couples.