The Counselors at Hillside Counseling use best practices and have advanced training and individualized therapeutic approaches to assist you on your journey. Some of the therapeutic approaches and paradigms include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an information processing therapy that helps clients cope with trauma, addictions, and phobias. During this treatment, the patient focuses on a specific thought, image, emotion, or sensation while simultaneously watching the therapist's finger or baton move in front of his or her eyes. The client is told to recognize what comes up for him/her when thinking of an image; then the client is told to let it go while doing bilateral stimulation. It's like being on a train; an emotion or a thought may come up and the client lets it pass as though they were looking out the window of the moving train.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has shown to be an effective treatment for Emotional Dysregulation. Therapists practice DBT in both individual and group sessions. The therapy combines elements of CBT to help with regulating emotion through distress tolerance and mindfulness, along with interpersonal relationship skill building. The goal of Dialectical Behavior Therapy is to alleviate the intense emotional pain and to increase tolerance while improving interpersonal relational capabilities..
DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy)
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.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
MBCT, is a two-part therapy that aims to reduce stress, manage pain, and embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. MCBT blends two disciplines--cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Mindfulness helps by reflecting on moments and thoughts without passing judgment. MBCT clients pay close attention to their feelings to reach an objective mindset, thus viewing and combating life's unpleasant occurrences.
MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy)
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an approach to psychotherapy that identifies and addresses different parts of self within a person’s cognitive and/or emotional structure. These consist of wounded parts and painful emotions such as anger and shame, and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts. The parts of self are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core Self, a concept that describes the confident, compassionate, whole person that is at the core of every individual. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts and restoring mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the the different parts of ourselves that we all have.
IFS (Internal Family Systems)
Compassionate Inquiry® is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté that reveals what lies beneath the appearance we present to the world. Using Compassionate Inquiry, both the individual and therapist unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal. Through Compassionate Inquiry, the client can recognize the unconscious dynamics that run their lives and how to liberate themselves from them – creating freedom and choice.
Compassionate Inquiry
Existential Therapy is a style of therapy that places emphasis on the human condition as a whole. Existential psychotherapy assists in helping overcome anxieties and obstacles by creating one's own meaning, and exercising one's freedom to choose. The existential therapist encourages clients to face life's anxieties head on and to start making their own decisions. The therapist will emphasize that, along with having the freedom to carve out meaning, comes the need to take full responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions. Therapy sessions focus on the client's present and future rather than their past.
Existential Therapy
The Gottman Method for Couples 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.
Gottman Couples
Psychodynamic therapy, also known as insight-oriented therapy. Psychodynamic psychology is the branch of study in psychology regarding the underlying factors affecting behavior in a person, especially the subconscious mind. Everyone has experiences in their lives and childhoods that affect their day to day lives, choices, and behaviors. This form of psychology focuses on those factors, how they intertwine in the development and mindset of individuals – promoting insight and resolving inner conflict. But psychodynamic therapy is briefer and less intensive than psychoanalysis and also focuses on the relationship between the therapist and the client, as a way to learn about how the client relates to everyone in their life.
Psychodynamic
Somatic experiencing therapy is a type of alternative therapy geared towards helping people find healing from trauma. Created by Peter Levine, PhD this therapy works on the principle that trauma gets trapped in the body, leading to some of the symptoms people with PTSD or people who have experienced trauma might experience. Through this method, practitioners work on releasing this stress from the body. This type of psychotherapy bridges the mind-body dichotomy recognizing that emotion, behavior, sensation, impulse, energy, action, gesture, meaning and language all originate in physical experiences. Thinking is not an abstract function but motivates, or is motivated by, physical expression and action. A somatic approach to trauma treatment can be effective by examining how past traumatic experiences cause physical symptoms (e.g. bodily anesthesia or motor inhibitions) which in turn affect emotion regulation, cognition and daily functioning. Additionally, many people who have experienced trauma, especially those who have experienced physical trauma such as domestic violence or sexual assault, can dissociate or disconnect from their bodies. Somatic experiencing helps them have an increased sense of awareness of their internal experience (interoceptive, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic sensations
Somatic Experiencing
Hypnotherapy focuses on hypnosis, the Greek term for sleep. The practice uses exercises that relax people, bringing them to an altered state of consciousness. This process focuses on mastering self-awareness. Through trance-like analysis, hypnosis decreases blood pressure and heart rate, putting one's physical body at ease. Working with memories, hypnotherapy helps a person to reframe, relax, absorb, dissociate, respond, and reflect. The process reconstructs healthier associations with a person's past events. Dealing with a wide range of conditions, such as anxiety and depression, people become responsive to new solutions that can lead to personal development through hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy
Imago Relationship Therapy is a form of marriage therapy that takes a relationship approach rather than an individual approach to problem solving in a marriage. Imago therapy is a wonderfully effective and safe approach to helping relationship partners grow into understanding each other more fully and relating more honestly as they evolve into greater wholeness as individuals within the relational context they share. Imago focuses on healing through better understanding attachment in the couple and healing wounds that occur in the present day marriage often due to past attachment wounds. Imago is also relevant for single individuals as we are all in many relational contexts.
Imago 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.
Narrative
Sand tray therapy is an expressive therapy. Sand tray therapy allows a person to construct their own microcosm using miniature replicas of our environment and colored sand. The scene created acts as a reflection of the person’s own life and allows them the opportunity to resolve conflicts, remove obstacles, and gain acceptance of self – often through a different, insightful avenue of understanding.
Sand Tray
Polyvagal Theory Polyvagal theory identifies a third type of nervous system response that Dr. Stephen Porges calls the social engagement system, a playful mixture of activation and calming that operates out of unique nerve influence. The social engagement system helps us navigate relationships. Helping our clients shift into use of their social engagement system allows them to become more flexible in their coping styles.
Polyvagal Theory
To name a few…
The desire and ability to build rapport and therapeutic relationships with people. We are a people to people business. this is a must.
A true life-long learner, Always seeking out professional & personal growth, knowing there is always something to be learned.
Unwavering Willingness to sit with another’s pain. Non judgmental and complete acceptance of the person sitting across from Us.
No matter where you are, we are there to support you. While acknowledging Healing is a horizon that is defined by the client not us.
Our model is built on every client being cared for and supported by administrative staff as well as therapist. Our administrative staff is the very first contact. They provide the first part of the net that holds each client. They listen to what’s going on, and place you with the best therapeutic fit. And if the fit isn’t quite right? Don’t worry, they will take more time to change things up – at no extra cost.
I am Penne Schulz, I own Hillside Counseling LLC. I am an entrepreneur, adventurer, psychotherapy enthusiast, and committed to the art and science of healing. Hillside began as a culmination of my experience in business and marketing and my passion for psychology and psychotherapy. I started Hillside Counseling as a private solo practice in 2005 in Anchorage, Alaska in an area of town located on the lower Chugach Mountain Range called “The Hillside.” Ergo the name. I loved my private practice. I loved helping people and working with relationships, but after 20 years of living in Alaska, I was cold, and ready to come back to Texas. So in 2011 I moved back to North Texas.
After getting settled, I re-started Hillside Counseling LLC in Burleson Texas in 2012. It was a steady growth and my caseload grew to over capacity within 6 months. A few colleagues I was exposed to (I was in a consultation group) were not really experiencing the same thing. I didn’t understand what made the difference, I would better understand it four years later. For now, I was doing what I love and it was spreading. I was helping people, and they were telling their doctors, friends and family. Dr’s offices were referring back to me, and word of mouth was spreading me too thin. I wanted to help more, do more. I wanted to say “yes” to everyone who was calling in. So, I decided to build a multi-therapist practice. I expanded into a building right next door that was remodeled to my specs. I hired three therapists over the course of 2015 – renting half of the building. In 2016 we pushed through the dividing wall and I hired three more therapists. And, in January 2017, the entire building was Hillside Counseling – full with 6 therapists plus myself and my Agency / Admin Manager.
NOW, just 5 years later, we are 22 therapists strong with several locations from Burleson to Mansfield! It’s been one heck of a journey! And, we are so thankful to be here to help!