Specialty Areas

Clarity Counseling of Fargo’s staff consists of professional therapists who are trained to assist with nearly any issue you and your family are facing. Our staff focuses on personal wellness for the individual and their family, helping people lead happy, healthy lives. The following are specialty areas that we focus on.

Anger Management

Anger is an emotion that is natural and healthy. Unfortunately, a healthy expression of anger has not been modeled for us. Some express anger in a manner in which they are ashamed and now attempt to avoid any experiences of anger. Clarity Counseling believes that early recognition of feelings anger, healthy expression of anger and processing unresolved feelings increase one’s capacity to tolerate anger.

Anxiety

Clarity Counseling characterizes anxiety by a number of symptoms including; nervousness, excessive worry, racing thoughts and difficulty concentrating. It includes feelings of fear, panic and a general sense of being overwhelmed that can lead to a sense of paralysis, avoidance and/or procrastination. More specific and intense forms of anxiety include: Agoraphobia, Panic-Attacks and very specific phobias.

Body Image

Body image is the perception and beliefs that one holds about his/her body. Clarity Counseling will help you understand the impact of cultural pressures, parental messages and past experiences on your ability to accept, love and honor your body no matter the size or shape.

Career

A career is an occupation that allows one to continue to move forward and maximize his/her potential in skill and financially within a particular field. A career becomes a central focus in one’s developmental progress through life. Clarity Counseling can help you identify a particular career path based on unique personality, traits and passions that will bring you a sense of accomplishment, competence and joy.

Childhood Issues

The most common types of childhood issues include physical, emotional / verbal and sexual abuse. However, often over looked is the incredible pain associated with neglect, divorce and death of a parent or sibling. Clarity Counseling can help you understand how your experiences as a child have continued to impact you today and assist you in finding new ways to resolve destructive patterns of behavior.

Codependency

Characterized by a transient pattern of behavior wherein an individual has learned to satisfy his/her own needs by putting the needs of others first, designed to create balance within an otherwise dysfunctional relationship. Clarity Counseling can help you understand the origin of co-dependency in your life and clarify your role within your relationships.

Compulsive Behaviors

Repeated pattern of behavior despite an attempt by an individual to avoid or eliminate such behavior due to unpleasant consequences. OCD involves the ritualistic nature to a compulsive behavior such as washing one’s hands due to fear or belief of contamination. Clarity Counseling can help you identify the origin to these behaviors and alternative strategies to meeting your needs.

Creativity

Creativity is the ability to use our imagination and skills to produce a product or activity to express an idea or feeling. To be creative requires a trust in oneself and a freedom to express oneself. Clarity Counseling can help access this trust and freedom, which is often barricaded by low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. Many times a new-found creativity is the surprising result of counseling and healing old wounds.

Depression

Characterized by a number of symptoms to include but not limited to: Apathy, loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, lethargy, irritability, low self-worth, feelings of hopelessness, feelings of helplessness, despair and is sometimes accompanied by suicidal ideation. Sometimes depression can be specific to a situation while other times it can last for years.

Dream Work

Dreams can be powerful opportunities for healing and self-growth. While we all dream, not everyone remembers them, and if they do, few take time to understand what messages they may hold. Learning to understand the symbolic nature, the emotional processing that occurs, and potential spiritual element of dreams can bring spiritual richness and a greater sense of peace.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, experience and express your emotions in a clear manner. Clarity Counseling can help you achieve greater clarity in your life through the increased awareness and consideration of your emotions in your decision-making and more love in your interpersonal relationships.

Family Issues

Family issues include but are not limited to: Struggles with day-to-day challenges, parenting, finances and relationship conflict that may be occurring in your current nuclear family or from your family of origin. Clarity Counseling can help you identify, understand and change patterns of behavior that were once functional within your family of origin that have become dysfunctional in your current relationships.

Grief

AGrief is a natural emotional experience of sadness, loneliness, fear, anger and often times guilt that one suffers with the loss of a loved one through death or divorce. The grief process is a cleansing and healing process. There are a number of stages that accompany the grief process. Clarity Counseling will help you understand this process and help you in your progression through each of the stages of grief.

Inner Child Work

Inner Child work is a process that allows one to re-parent the inner-child in a manner that is loving, nurturing and supportive. Inner child work is a strategy to designed to allow the individual the opportunity to have an emotional experience and shift that goes beyond the rational shift that one can often achieve as they re-visit childhood experiences from the adult mind.

Interfaith Relationships

When the partners do not share a common faith this can bring up conflicts and issues, especially around marriage ceremonies, child raising, and family interactions. These conflicts can be difficult to resolve because our sources of support may be biased towards one or the other of the faiths the couple have. Clarity Counseling knows will work to help you reach positions of respect and understanding that strengthen your relationship instead of threatening it.

Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is how people without food issues eat- eat when moderately hungry and stop when moderately full. Although engaging in the occasional treat, food is chosen primarily for the energy it gives the body. It is a mindful process that listens to the body’s needs rather than emotional cravings. Clarity Counseling can help you learn to hear your body’s needs, find ways other than food to comfort yourself, to develop a healthy relationship with food.

Life Transitions

Sometimes the normal life transitions we encounter can be overwhelming — transitions involve change and change means stress-even when the changes are positive. Beginning a new job or leaving an old one, moving, getting married, getting divorced, having a baby, or losing a parent, we experience stress. Clarity Counseling can help you move through these times as gracefully as possible.

Personal Growth

Personal growth is the journey we are all on in life to become our ideal self. Clarity Counseling can help you create a balance between your thoughts and feelings that will lead to more congruence in your private and public self and a greater capacity for self-acceptance, self-confrontation and growth.

Relationships

A relationship is any inter/intra-personal interaction we have with another human being, deity, animal or object. Relationships are essential in creating a sense of belonging in us. Clarity Counseling can help you achieve greater understanding of your behavior within a relationship, compassion and/or empathy for a partner or a friend, establish healthy boundaries and learn healthy ways of interacting with those you care about.

Religious Abuse

Religious abuse is abuse that has come from the hands of religious leaders, communities or messages. This can include sexual abuse within a religious setting, being ostracized by a religious community, being told not to leave a physically abusive relationship because you are a woman, be submissive to a man, or divorce is a sin. Clarity Counseling will help you explore, heal these wounds and strengthen your relationship with your Higher Power.

Self Esteem

Self-esteem includes the recognition and experience of oneself as competent, worthy and empowered. Clarity Counseling can help you recognize and celebrate your own gifts, teach others how to treat you and how to create your better tomorrow.

Sexuality

Sexuality includes a number of issues including sexual abuse, gender identity, sexual orientation and sexual problems with a partner. We can help you heal from past sexual abuse, understand and accept yourself and help you and your partner experience greater intimacy in your relationship.

Spiritual Growth

Spiritual growth can happen in community but is specific to each person just as our physical, emotional, and intellectual growth is. Often spiritual growth happens as the result of working through personal issues and pain, but can be fostered through spiritual practices such as prayer, creativity, mediation, and journaling. Clarity Counseling recognizes the importance of spirituality to healing and work to incorporate it in ways appropriate for each individual.

Weight Issues

Many people want to address weight issues through diets. However, studies have shown that 95% of all diets fail within a year and 97% of them fail within five years, which means that dieters have not only gained back the weight they lost but also typically 5-10 extra pounds. Managing our weight often is the result of managing our emotions and developing a respect of our bodies. Clarity Counseling can help you develop a lifestyle that promotes health and self-esteem rather than temporarily reaching a number on a scale.