Northwest Arkansas Counseling

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When your life isn’t working, you need an objective voice to provide loving caring assistance to deal with the challenges you face. You may be so stressed that you may not be able to accurately perceive what is affecting you or what to do about it. A counseling professional helps you define the actions, beliefs or relational behaviors that are hindering your experience of the life you desire to live. When you are ready for change, Northwest Counseling Inc. (NCI) will provide a professional, licensed, counselor in Northest Arkansas.

Choosing to accept that something has to be different in your relationships is a crucial step in changing the situation you face. You may be in a relationship with a person, child, partner, or struggle with that can not or will not change until you do. Seeking marriage counseling, family counseling, child therapy or teen counseling is a crucial first step to choosing a new path for healthier living. Northwest Counseling Inc is in Rogers, Springdale and Bella Vista to help you. We guarantee compassionate caring focused counseling and confidentiality is always assured.

Daily relational choices are effected by stress, finances, beliefs, values, goals, and past experiences. A counselor can help you identify desired outcomes and to recognize thoughts and behaviors that will help you effectively make those changes. Counseling is a personalized support system that is individualized to your needs, your goals, and your desire to lead a healthier, happier life. All help offered at NCI is professional and based on sound principles of counseling psychology. Additional support for Christian counseling values is offered when expressly requested by clients.

NCI has moved it's counseling center to a new location in Bentonville.
We are now in the Oack Trace Office Park near the intersection of SE J and 28th Streets behind the Celtic Grill and World Gym. It is easily accessed from Rogher, Bentonville, Centerton, Bella Vista and the surrounding Northwest Arkansas area. We are about a 1.5 miles from 540 at Exit 85 (Walton blvd / Walnut Street).
DIRECTIONS: Follow 28th Street to SE G Street (2 blocks west of J Street). Turn North on SE G Street to the last right. Turn right and look for the NCI sign on the first building on your right.
The official address is 2705 SE G Street. Our comfortably furnished offices will provide a safe place for you to share your needs and find help for what is hurting. We hope you do not need our counseling services and you remain happy and healthy. If you are in one of those situations of life that you need some professoinal help, please call for an appointment. We look forward to seeing you soon in Bentonville.

I don't think Northwest Arkansas is unusually plagued with angry people. In fact, it may be more laid back than average. Still, anger is one of the most destructive forces in relationships. Most angry people agree that it hurts their lives. Some research shows that anger is a major contributor to heart disease in males.
Still, anger appears and retreats almost without permission. As anger gets hold of a person there seems to be insufficient restraints to stop it. Once on a roll, there is no stopping an angry person. Better to get out of the way. If two people get going with uncontrolled anger, it isn't going to be pretty.
Here is a tip on anger.
Anger is not a primary emotion, it is a secondary emotion. In their book, "Mad About Us," Gary and Carrie Oliver share that anger is built from more fundamental reactions and emotions, usually a combination of some form of fear, hurt, or frustration, that fuels the anger. When a person is angry they are usually not aware of these underlying emotions and where they come from. At the moment of anger they believe that someone or something else has "made" them angry. In fact they are angry because they have been hurt, frustrated or scared.The key to understanding anger and becoming a less angry person STARTS with understanding and owning the underlying emotions that give rise to the FIGHT respone expressed in many forms of anger.

What is a mother to do when her baby bird gains its feathers? A friend recently lamented that she would take her 2 year old son for his first hair cut the next day. A sheer tragedy that his blonde baby curls would find the barber’s floor. There was tension in her face and a tear in her eye. The bitter truth was evident. Her baby was taking another step toward adulthood. It was not the last step, thank God, but it seemed only another week and he would be packing his car to go to college. A sense of loss and dread came for she knows as all mothers know that a day far too soon there he will be no baby and she will be stretched into an ever changing era of motherhood.
As school starts, mothers find themselves in a similar dread. Bustling for “back to school” and shopping for the fall wardrobe, she confronts the conflicting feelings of pride and sadness as first days are at hand. Her toddler is scheduled for her first day of Kindergarten, her elementary child now a pubescent Junior High student, and an astonishingly adult-like young woman begins her High School career, and proud confusion upon confusion when her graduate sets up his University dorm room.
A mother’s identity can sometimes get stuck on what “should” have been. Many mothers experience guilt and remorse in the difficulties of the previous stage. She may even fear she has caused her child harm, haunted by the memories of disappointments or failures or broken promises. It seems that there is never enough mother to cover a day’s needs. Such fears hinder her from entering into the celebration of the “first day” that is now upon her. Regrets can dampen the excitement and joy of the new adventure that her child is entering.
Another fear may come. She asks herself if she is up to the task of the next stage. It is one thing to change a diaper or bandage a booboo, but quite another to relearn algebra, empathize with a broken puppy love heart, settle her own heart when her baby is steering 2 tons of steel and rubber at 70 miles per hour with those crazy drivers on the highway out of reach of her protective wings. Letting go is hard in any realm, but no more so when a mother must transition from being everything to an infant to a mere advisor to her nearly independent university student. God is merciful to grow them up as slowly as He does for it is overwhelming at the pace it actually comes.
But wait. Don’t lose sight of the main job description. The task of parenting is to teach the chicks to fly. Set aside regrets and fears. Transitions are truly marks of success for parents. Mothers nurture her chick to the edge of his healthy new life. He must flap his wings and imitate the full flight long mastered by his parents. Her son must leap (or be pushed), to test if his wings can carry him from branch to branch.
Yes mothers, celebrate your motherhood! Be joyful and proud and lead your child in excitement and anticipation as she meets her teacher, gets her locker, chooses her friends, develops her own personality, chooses her own path and learns from her own mistakes. You too are on an adventure of trust and fear. You must take another step back from the hands-on management of her life -- a challenging transition of your own. A step back as they step forward. A little less in control, a little less telling them and less doing for them. A little more respecting their independence and allowing them to learn from their own mistakes. A little less able to protect and a little more trusting them and God for their safety and security.
So as the tears come when you watch your child enter his “first day” of riding the bus, driving himself to school, or buying her first semester’s books, remember that mothers are always mothers. The involvement levels and responsibilities will be reduced. The steps back are painful and filled with anxiety. The regrets will heal. Find freedom in your heart to celebrate the successful passage of a child into their new step of maturity. Champion their achievement and join them in the adventure of growing up. With every expression of independence of your son or daughter allow the quiet, confident grin to cross your face, that you have been part of the making of a good man or woman and watch them fly.
Originally Published at The Metro Woman, August 2010 http://www.themetrowoman.com/

Intimacy is not simply exchanging skin deep glances of sensuality but unashamedly opening yourself to long gazes into your soul. Intimate relationships, are perhaps the most gratifying and terrifying of human experiences.We crave deep connection with other humans. We dream of being ourselves without pretense.Yet, we are intensely apprehensive when vulnerabilities are exposed. We try to openly share and our internal defenses warn us that we are about to enter the rejection zone.To be intimate, we must let our hair down, allow others to see us as we really are, and risk being criticized or rejected.
When there is threat of rejection, we employ defensive reactions that attempt to put curtains over the windows of our souls.These curtains come in many styles and fashions like withdrawal, controlling behaviors, angry retaliation, argumentativeness, overly self critical responses, avoidance responses, passive aggression and others. Defensiveness keeps the threat away but also prevents intimacy from being experienced.

It is a common misconception that counseling is for DUMMIES - or CRAZIES - or WEAKLINGS. In fact, it is not for the faint of heart at all. It takes a great deal of courage to face one's issues and even more to share them with another person.Seeking help is hard to do.
I recently was with a group of men yes, yes, I know especially "men" don't ask for directions, and none of them had bothered to map out the route we were taking to our golf outing. After driving several miles in what was supposed to be "the direction of" the golf course, the driver asked, "are you sure the course is on this road?" There were at least 2 iPhones in the car and it took another few minutes to try to access Google Maps. When that failed someone finally just phoned the golf course for directions. This takes not asking for directions to a whole new level.
I have the greatest respect for my clients who seek counseling help. They have taken the bold step of sharing their need with others. It is often better for them when they seek counseling help -- as it was far better for us to actually play golf rather than driving around "thinking" but not kinowing where we were going.