About Cope Well Counseling

Tammy Alsing is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and owner of Cope Well Counseling Associates. She has been a therapist for over 25 years and has extensive experience working with adults, adolescents, couples, families, corporations, and the military community. Cope Well Counseling upholds the highest professional and ethical standards of practice. Whether you need help improving yourself, your relationships, healing past hurts, coping with grief and loss, or adjusting to life transitions, rest assured that you’ll be in competent and compassionate hands as you receive the individualized care you need. You’ve taken a big step in looking for what help is out there. Reach out to Cope Well Counseling and get started down a happier and healthier road! It’s time to learn how to cope well so you can live better!

TAMMY ALSING, MA, LMHC

Licensed Mental Health Therapist, MA, LMHC

Serving the Tampa Bay Area

Reach out to Cope Well Counseling Associates, they’ll help get you started down a happier and healthier road! It’s time to learn how to cope well so you can feel better!

WHO WE SERVE

Individuals can learn to cope with mental health issues, stress, interpersonal issues, grief, anger issues, low self-esteem, and many other issues throughout the process of counseling.

We offer relationship counseling to help partners improve their ability to communicate, set realistic expectations for marriage, develop conflict-resolution skills and help couples establish a positive attitude about seeking help down the road. We also offer premarital counseling for those who would like to ensure their relationship gets off on the right foot.

Children go through changes in their moods and behaviors as they grow. Some of these changes are predictable, but sometimes kids have emotions or behave in ways that disrupt their well-being. Counseling provides a safe place for kids to process their thoughts and emotions and learn better ways for coping.

Family therapy or family counseling is designed to address specific issues that affect the psychological health of the family, such as major life transitions or mental health conditions.

There are many benefits of groups. For example, hearing from others with similar issues helps you see that you’re not alone in having personal life challenges.

We have extensive experience and knowledge dealing with this population and its very unique situations.

If you want to learn more about a particular mental health topic or improve your own mental wellness in a short period of time, our workshops and public seminars may be right for you.

A leader’s values, level of integrity and work ethic have a direct influence on company culture, and many times, on a business' profitability. Let us help you improve your bottom line by ensuring your staff is operating at its best.

As the parent of a struggling child, you often find yourself wondering what you can do to help them feel better. It seems like you've tried everything, but nothing seems to work, at least not for very long. Through counseling you can learn effective parenting skills that will have a life-long positive impact on your child.

WHAT WE TREAT

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five adults experience a mental health condition every year in the United States. A mental illness/disorder is a condition that affects a person’s thinking, feelings or mood. Such conditions vary in degree of severity, ranging from mild, to moderate, to severe and may affect someone’s ability to relate to others and function each day. Each person will have different experiences, even people with the same diagnosis.

 

While we sometimes use diagnosis, we use it as a guiding tool for the treatment process. At Cope Well Counseling we believe it is critical for us to see our clients for who they are – genuine and unique human beings struggling to stay afloat in the midst of their personal situations. We will help you understand the behaviors, emotions, and ideas that contribute to your mental health disorder and help you learn how to modify them, regain a sense of control and pleasure in life, and learn healthy coping techniques and problem-solving skills.

 

With the right treatment, people can and do recover from mental health conditions that are significantly impacting their lives. For many people, the first step is to recognize there is a problem and be willing to accept help.

Some of the issues we treat include:

  • Acute Stress Disorder
  • Adjustment Disorder
  • Anger Issues
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD/ADD)
  • Bereavement/Grief/Loss
  • Bipolar Disorder
  • Coping Skills
  • Depression
  • Divorce/Separation
  • Domestic Violence
  • Emotional Disturbance
  • Family Conflict
  • Life Transitions
  • Marital Conflict
  • Parenting
  • Peer Relationships
  • Postpartum Depression
  • Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Relationship Issues
  • School Issues
  • Seasonal Affective Disorder
  • Self-Esteem
  • Social Anxiety Phobia
  • Stress Management & Wellness (individual & corporate)
  • Trauma

HOW WE DO IT!

At Cope Well Counseling Associates we know that not all treatment approaches work for everyone. So, we are very careful to identify the approach or combination of approaches that would work best to help you reach your treatment goals as soon as practically possible.

 

No matter the approach, therapy, or method, all are designed to be culturally sensitive to the individual. We understand that people from different backgrounds have different values, practices, and beliefs, and we’re sensitive to those differences when working with individuals and families in therapy. We are trained in the following therapies, methods, and approaches.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT)

Cognitive-behavioral therapy stresses the role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. It is based on the belief that thoughts, rather than people or events, cause our negative feelings. The therapist assists the client in identifying, testing the reality of, and correcting dysfunctional beliefs underlying his or her thinking. The therapist then helps the client modify those thoughts and the behaviors that flow from them. CBT is a structured collaboration between therapist and client and often calls for homework assignments. CBT has been clinically proven to help clients in a relatively short amount of time with a wide range of disorders, including depression and anxiety.

COGNITIVE PROCESSING THERAPY

Based on cognitive behavioral therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) involves a structured, sequenced approach to address the unique needs of each patient suffering from PTSD and/or depression. Specifically, CPT is a short-term treatment that may work in as few as 12 treatment sessions. Of course, treatment may be provided for longer periods depending on each individual’s needs.

FAMILY SYSTEMS

Family Systems therapists view problems within the family as the result not of particular members’ behaviors, but of the family’s group dynamic. The family is seen as a complex system having its own language, roles, rules, beliefs, needs and patterns. The therapist helps each individual member understand how their childhood family operated, their role in that system, and how that experience has shaped their role in the current family.

GOTTMAN METHOD

The Gottman Theory For Making Relationships Work shows that to make a relationship last, couples must become better friends, learn to manage conflict, and create ways to support each other’s hopes for the future. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have shown how couples can accomplish this by paying attention to what they call the Sound Relationship House, or the seven components of healthy relationships.

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING

Motivational Interviewing (MI) focuses on the present, and entails working with a client to access motivation to change a particular behavior that is not consistent with a client’s personal value or goal. Warmth, genuine empathy, and acceptance are all necessary to foster therapeutic gain with motivational interviewing. Another central concept is that ambivalence about decisions is resolved by conscious or unconscious weighing of pros and cons of change vs. not changing.

NARRATIVE THERAPY

Narrative Therapy uses the client’s storytelling to indicate the way they construct meaning in their lives, rather than focusing on how they communicate their problem behaviors. Narrative Therapy embraces the idea that stories actually shape our behaviors and our lives and that we become the stories we tell about ourselves. There are helpful narratives we can choose to embrace as well as unhelpful ones. Although it may sound obvious, the power of storytelling is to elevate the client–who is the authority of their narrative–rather than the therapist, as expert.

PERSON-CENTERED

Person-centered therapy uses a non-authoritative approach that allows clients to take more of a lead in discussions so that, in the process, they will discover their own solutions. The therapist acts as a compassionate facilitator, listening without judgment and acknowledging the client’s experience without moving the conversation in another direction. The therapist is there to encourage and support the client and to guide the therapeutic process without interrupting or interfering with the client’s process of self-discovery.

PLAY THERAPY

Generally, for children ages 3 to 11, play therapy is a form of counseling that relies on play to help therapists communicate with children and understand their mental health. Because children develop cognitive skills before language skills, play is an effective way to understand a child. The therapist may observe a child playing with toys–such as playhouses and dolls–to understand the child’s behavior and identify issues.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Unlike traditional psychology that focuses more on the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses and emotional disturbances, positive psychology emphasizes traits, thinking patterns, behaviors, and experiences that are forward-thinking and can help improve the quality of a person’s day-to-day life. These may include optimism, spirituality, hopefulness, happiness, creativity, perseverance, justice, and the practice of free will. It is an exploration of one’s strengths, rather than one’s weaknesses. The goal of positive psychology is not to replace those traditional forms of therapy that center on negative experiences, but instead to expand and give more balance to the therapeutic process.

SOLUTION-FOCUSED BRIEF THERAPY

Solution-focused therapy, sometimes called “brief therapy,” focuses on what clients would like to achieve through therapy rather than on their troubles or mental health issues. The therapist will help the client envision a desirable future, and then map out the small and large changes necessary for the client to undergo to realize their vision. The therapist will seize on any successes the client experiences, to encourage them to build on their strengths rather than dwell on their problems or limitations.

STRENGTH-BASED

Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive. A positive attitude, in turn, can help your expectations of yourself and others become more reasonable.

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