Welcome!

Are you looking for the opportunity to discuss and explore what's going on in your life with a caring and experienced counselor?

Present and past experiences can hold people back from experiencing abundance in life.

Debra Gionet, LCSW, counsels adults, teens, preteens, and children who are experiencing depression, eating disorders, anxiety, stress, and trauma effects.

Common conditions related to these include poor self-esteem, loneliness, discontentment, difficulty dealing with major life changes, work and personal problems.

Debra provides counseling in a friendly, professional and non-judgmental manner. Anticipated changes and ways to increase the likelihood of attaining your goals and considerations for seeking counseling are typically discussed during initial sessions.

Do you seek to heal broken relationships or make good relationships better?

Debra offers counseling to assist adults, teens, preteens, and children heal, deal with and reconcile important relationships.

These relationships may include, but are not limited to, situations including past childhood issues, dating and singleness, anger, communication, relationship satisfaction, and divorce issues. In a safe, comfortable environment, she works with clients to assist them in reaching their counseling goals. Debra offers premarital counseling as well as communication & relationship enhancement programs in a proactive effort to build and maintain successful marital relationships.

Adults

Do you feel stuck in old emotional patterns? Do your emotions get the best of you during interactions with people? Do your parents and family still affect you more than you'd like them to? 
There may be help in sight! Join the many other adults Debra has assisted to decrease unhelpful emotional reactions and to increase use of coping skills to adjust to relating to others and coping with life changes.

Teens

The teen years and the years leading up to these can be challenging for not only the teens and preteens, but also for parents. Relief is coming! Debra Gionet, LCSW has worked extensively with this age group and their parents in assisting them to negotiate this exciting and worrisome time.

Children

Is your child having problems at home, in school or with friends?
Is your child feeling depressed or anxious?
Is your child dealing with the effects of divorce or trauma?

Counseling for Couples

Couples counseling is offered in the following two ways:

Relationship Enhancement (RE):

This couples counseling is different from others as there are several activities inside and outside to practice these skills. This program is centered on increasing effective communication strategies to enhance a more loving and caring way to talk to each other where each person is given the tools to maintain respect during conflict and treat one another kindly. Debra Gionet LCSW is available to provide RE programs for couples' counseling, group therapy, or as a workshop. Debra can facilitate this workshop at local churches, community centers, schools, universities, libraries, and for clubs or groups.

Premarital Counseling:

Frequently couples spend more time and money preparing for their wedding day than they do for their marital relationship! Improve your chances of a happy marriage with the PREPARE Program which is designed to help couples identify strengths and improvements in areas of communication, conflict resolution, personal, family and couples' goals, financial attitudes, spirituality, and personality. The program consists of taking a computerized questionnaire and then 3-6 sessions to provide feedback and discussion with Debra.

EMDR

Debra is trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) . Since it is important to be informed about treatment you receive, the following information is a brief summary about EMDR.

What is EMDR?

EMDR is a form of accelerated information processing therapy. It can be thought of as a physiologically based therapy that helps a person see disturbing material in a new and less distressing way. EMDR is a set of protocols that incorporate elements from different treatment approaches including psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential and body centered therapies (adapted from internet-EMDR Institute, Inc., 2003).

Eating Disorders

About Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating

Debra Gionet, LCSW works with adults and teens experiencing problems with eating including Bulimia, Anorexia Nervosa and Binge Eating. Common warning signs of disordered eating include extremely limiting food intake, eating a lot of food in a small amount of time or eating when not hungry and/or to deal with emotions and stress, purging eaten food, more and more time spent planning and thinking where, what, and when to eat next, and being overly concerned about weight and body shape. Besides the pain these conditions cause, eating issues are serious and can be life threatening. Debra takes a team approach in working with clients with eating disorders as appropriate and is currently obtaining an eating disorders treatment certificate through JFK University in Pleasant Hill , CA.