Who is Aspire Counseling a Particularly Good Fit For?
We're a specialty practice, not a general one. We do our best work with trauma, OCD, complicated grief, teens, and anxiety that has gotten big enough to shrink someone's life. We're not the right place for couples therapy, primary substance use treatment, or psychosis, and we'll tell you that up front.
Expertise Depth
✳︎
Evidence-Based Methods
✳︎
Trauma Specialist
✳︎
OCD Treatment
✳︎
Anxiety Treatment
✳︎
Grief Counseling
✳︎
Expertise Depth ✳︎ Evidence-Based Methods ✳︎ Trauma Specialist ✳︎ OCD Treatment ✳︎ Anxiety Treatment ✳︎ Grief Counseling ✳︎
Who are we an especially good fit for?
-
Maybe you talked about it every week for a year. Your therapist was kind, and you liked her. But you still can't sleep. You still avoid that street. It still feels like it happened last month.
This is the single most common thing we hear.
There are several treatments with strong research behind them for PTSD: CPT, EMDR, Prolonged Exposure, and TF-CBT for kids and teens. We have clinicians trained in all of them. That matters more than it might sound. It means we can match you with a trauma specialist and with the treatment that actually fits your situation, instead of offering you the one approach your therapist happens to know.
We also offer week-long trauma intensives for people who want to do focused work in a condensed period rather than stretch it over months.
-
We engage stakeholders as partners, not spectators.
-
Some grief is painful and moves. Some gets stuck.
If the death was sudden or violent, if you witnessed it, if the relationship was complicated, if you're a year or two out and it hasn't shifted at all, that's often something different from ordinary grief. And it usually responds to different treatment.
Several of our clinicians have completed advanced training in using EMDR specifically for grief and loss. Others use ACT to help people carry the loss and still move toward what matters. And because traumatic grief overlaps so heavily with trauma, we can bring any of our trauma protocols to it. This is one of the areas where our outcome data is strongest.
-
Not every therapist who will see teens is good with them.
We work with teens on trauma, anxiety, depression, school avoidance, social struggles, and self-harm. Several of our clinicians came out of school settings or adolescent inpatient work before joining us, so they've seen a lot and they don't get rattled easily.
If your teen has already sat through therapy that felt pointless to them, tell us that on the phone. It changes who we'd match them with.
-
Panic attacks. Social anxiety that keeps you out of rooms you want to be in. A specific phobia you've built your schedule around. Health anxiety. Anxiety that's turned into avoidance you didn't quite notice happening.
The treatments here are specific, and they work. Exposure-based protocols for panic, social anxiety, and phobias. ACT and CBT for anxiety more broadly. The goal isn't to help you feel calm before you live your life. It's to help you get your life back while anxiety is still occasionally showing up.
-
You're doing well at work. People rely on you. Nobody would guess.
Meanwhile you're not sleeping, you're running at about eighty percent dread most days, and the standard you hold yourself to has stopped being useful and started being a problem.
We work with a lot of high performing professionals. It's a specific kind of anxiety and perfectionism, and it usually doesn't respond to being told to slow down.
What kind of therapy is this, exactly?
Our therapy is active and structured. You'll usually have something to practice between sessions. We measure whether it's working using validated questionnaires, and we adjust when the numbers aren't moving. The goal is for you to finish, not to keep coming indefinitely.
That last part is worth saying plainly. We're not trying to keep you in therapy. Our ideal outcome is that you reach your goals in a few months and go live your life.
Certainly, that doesn't happen overnight. Some things take longer, and progress is rarely a straight line. But we're always working toward an ending.
We also track outcomes. Clients complete brief validated measures regularly, and your therapist uses that data to see what's actually changing. If something isn't working, we'd rather know in week six than week thirty.
If what you're looking for is a standing weekly hour to talk through your week with someone kind, that's a real thing and it genuinely helps people. It's just not what we're built for. Your insurance company can give you a list of providers, and that's likely the most cost effective way to find it.
Why don’t we treat everything?
Because we started for a specific reason.
There were people in mid-Missouri who had been in therapy for years and still had PTSD. There were kids with OCD who had been taught to breathe through it instead of actually treated for it. There were grieving people being told to give it time. We saw that gap and built a practice around a narrower set of problems so we could get genuinely good at them.
That comes with a tradeoff. We're not for everyone, and not everyone needs us.
If you're looking for something we don't offer, we'd much rather tell you on the first phone call than three sessions in. And we'll do our best to point you somewhere better.
Who are we probably not the right fit for?
We're not a good match when the main thing someone needs is couples or family therapy, primary substance use treatment, care for psychosis or mania, or a higher level of care than weekly outpatient therapy. We also don't take insurance, which makes us the wrong choice for some people.
More specifically:
Couples, marriage, or family therapy. We primarily do individual therapy. While bringing a parent into a session with a teenager or having a spouse come to leran more about how to support a client happens, couples/marriage/family counseling is not our focus.
Substance use as the primary concern. If getting sober is the main goal, you'll be better served somewhere built for that. Worth noting: if you're seeking treatment for trauma, OCD, or anxiety and you also drink more than you'd like, that's a different situation and often a good fit for us. Say so on the phone and we'll talk it through honestly.
Psychosis or mania. Outpatient individual therapy without psychiatry, case management, or crisis coverage isn't the right container for this.
Anyone who needs a higher level of care. Some situations call for intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, or inpatient treatment. Weekly therapy isn't a substitute.
Anyone who needs to use insurance. We're private pay. That lets us treat what you actually came in for without session limits or diagnosis requirements, but it isn't realistic for everyone. Our rates are here so you can decide.
We are also not a crisis service. If you're in immediate danger, call or text 988, or go to your nearest emergency room.
What if you're not sure whether we're a fit?
Call us and ask.
We take matching seriously, probably more seriously than most practices. We'd rather spend extra time getting you with the right clinician than fill a slot quickly. And we refer out more often than most, because a bad match wastes your money and your time.
If we're not what you're looking for, we'll say so, and we'll try to point you in a more useful direction.
A note about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
There are two separate things to say here, and we want to be clear about both.
We treat self-harm and suicidal thinking right now. Several of our clinicians have spent significant portions of their careers doing exactly this work, in inpatient psychiatric settings, in community mental health, and in higher acuity outpatient care. Our founder spent most of her career treating people who were truly, deeply hurting, helping them build lives worth living and learn strategies that actually work in the hardest moments. She was hired by NASW Missouri to travel the state training other clinicians on assessing and treating suicidal clients, including a keynote at their statewide conference. When a client's risk level rises, our team consults together about it.
We are just now re-launching our comprehensive DBT program. We offered one during our first few years. Then we stopped, because we weren't in a position to deliver all four components well, and we'd rather not offer DBT at all than offer a partial version of it.
We're rebuilding it now, deliberately. Six of our clinicians are in an ongoing DBT consultation group. Most of them have already complete comprehensive DBT training and used it previously. However, we're going back through the full 40 hour training together anyway, along with additional coursework, and we've brought in outside DBT experts for team orientation and for ongoing consultation as we implement.
We're not doing that because we need it to be competent. We're doing it because fidelity matters and we want this done right. The people looking for the intensity and the life changing experience throwing yourself into this program can provide deserve and need clinicians who take the work seriously.
So if you need full DBT with a skills group and phone coaching today, we're not that yet, we’re happy to give you referrals to people offering it immediately or get you started with one of our therapists knowing it may be a couple of months before the skills training and phone coaching components are fully in place.
Starting Therapy at Aspire Counseling
If you’re ready to have support as you work toward better mental health and are looking for supportive, effective therapists, we’d love to help.
1.
Contact Aspire Counseling
First, you’ll speak to a member of our Client Care team. Please let them know anything specific you are looking for. The more details you can give them (I didn’t do well with this other type of therapy, I’ve been given this diagnosis, etc) the better we can match you.
2.
Meet with a Skilled Therapist
You’ll start with a short 30 minute free consultation for you to ask the therapist any questions you may have & make sure you’re comfortable working wtih that therapist.
3.
Complete the Assessment
You’ll meet with your therapist and they’ll do a full assessment including setting treatment goals. After that, people typically meet weekly for the first 8 weeks to ensure you’re making progress toward your goals.