Crisis Hotlines & Helplines 

Lifeline Crisis Chat

  • 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
  • Chat with 988 support by visiting www.988lifeline.org
  • If you need 988 support in Spanish, select option 2 when calling or text “AYUDA” to 988. 988 also has a chat online which is located at 988lineadevida.org in Spanish.

Guilford County Behavioral Health Urgent Care (BHUC)

  • Located at 913 Third St. Greensboro, NC. This is a walk-in crisis care facility (24/7). Call: 1-336-890-2700 for crisis services.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Therapeutic Alternatives 

  • Therapeutic Alternatives is located in Asheboro. Their contact number is 1-877-626-1772
  • Mobile Crisis Unit available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline

Domestic Violence Hotline

  • The domestic violence offers a 24/7 crisis line. The contact number is 336-273-7273. Click here to learn more

Crisis Text Line

SAMHSA’s National Helpline

RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline

US Department of Health & Human Services

U.S Government – Youth Mental Health

  • https://988lifeline.org/chat/

Books To Improve Your Relationship

Rebuilding Us: A 30 Day Guide for Healing Your Relationship After an Affair

Infidelity is one of the leading causes of divorce and can be a devastating experience. This book is interactive in nature as it holds you and your partner responsible for completing each page. Together you will take on the journey of healing and recovering. Page by page, you will uncover the stages of infidelity and give birth to a loving and compassionate relationship.

Here’s what the book can offer you:

  • Learn how to understand the phases of infidelity.
  • Understand the root cause of the affair.
  • Rebuild your relationship.
  • Restore trust.
  • Work through conflicting emotions.
  • Experience vulnerability.
learn how to heal and recover after an affair by reading the affair recovery book.

The 5 Love Languages

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman is a must-have a self-help relationship book. This book is beyond words in its effectiveness to help struggling couples, individuals seeking healthy relationships, and therapists or counselors that work with couples. As a couple’s counselor, I use this book because it helps couples I work with understand how they accept and give love. Understanding the five love languages provides individuals with the proper guidance to achieving a healthy loving relationship.

Even now, this book continues to be ranked extremely high. I personally think it’s due to the books simple and direct approach in creating clarity and understanding around love. The book evaluates the five languages of love. These include acts of service, quality time, physical touch, gifts and words of affirmation.

I strongly recommend this book if you are experiencing issues in your relationship.

The Seven Principle For Making Marriage Work

This book is clear and practical for couples. You are able to dive in, pull information, and apply it to your relationship. The author plays with creative techniques to support your relationship to move forward.

Mating In Captivity

This book takes a very different approach to support couples, which has been rated very well by readers. One key area is the authors’ ability to focus on teaching readers how to find creative ways to discuss sex, intimacy, and desire. A great read for couples that desire to strengthen their relationship and search for ways to build connection and spark.

Couple's Workbook: Making Your Relationship Work

Learn to think like a couple’s therapist. Relationships take work. This book will show you how to resolve conflict, improve communication, connect and grow love in a healthy way. This workbook is intended for struggling couples who want to enhance their relationship. The covers common marriage areas that include: communication, intimacy and sex, honesty, and more.

Books To Grow As A Parent

The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

This is a great book for parents that need simple and effective strategies aimed to support in addressing challenges.  The author teaches readers how to parent their child in ways that address anxiety, anger, and other challenges in life.

How To Talk So Kids Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

A great book for parents struggling to connect with their kids or to communicate lessons that create connection and understanding between a parent and child. I continue to recommend this book over and over due to what parents tell me.

How To Talk So Kids Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, helps parents find the missing pieces. Much of what is discussed in the book, is taken from counseling sessions.

For instance, if you are struggling with understanding and coping with setting limits and boundaries the book helps you stick to it through application, education and strategy. The book highlights the following core areas of parenting: setting limits and boundaries, effective communication, positive talk, supportive talk, praise, cooperation with your child, and establishing parent-child relationship. Fun fact, these are some of the core areas that bring people to seek family counseling or parenting support.

Great self-help parenting book.

Books For Developing Happiness & Success

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F!CK

I found this book speaking directly to moments in my life that were stressful because of the people in my life and the complexities in the relationships. In the field of mental health, relationships tend to be one of the topics that can create emotional difficulties. For instance, conflict with family or disruptions at work due to feeling judged or affected by the opinions of others.

This book helps people address and overcome hurtful thoughts and feelings of guilt, judgment and/or shame. Lastly, the book opens readers to a can-do attitude. I like to look at this as a motivational attitude that guides us forward in a healthy positive direction. I also personally love that the author lives in the Dominican Republic, which is my native home.

Feeling Good by David D. Burns

One of my favorite Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) books to recommend is Feeling Good by David D. Burns. CBT in basic definition is a type of therapy that involves focusing on how you think and behave. This is a book that I continue to pull content from when supporting individuals struggling with depression and anxiety.

I strongly recommend this self-help book for anyone experiencing difficulties with mood disorders, desiring behavioral changes, self-improvement and/or habit change. The book can be used to support with problem solving, changing behavioral patterns and processing patterns.

Feeling Good, is also a great choice for therapist and psychologist that want a supportive self-help resource for their clients.

Hope that you enjoy the book as much as I have!

Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up about a month ago, so it’s still very fresh in my mind. My wife recommended it as we are working towards minimalizing certain aspects of our life. One including having more clothes then I would ever need. Personally, I love that after reading the book, I question if the item that I have or that I am about to purchase provides me value or meaning. This strategy helps to reduce stress or anxiety brought on by over spending or when feeling overwhelmed.

As a professional counselor, I found that this book speaks to individuals struggling with unhealthy or destructive habits. The book is written to help people de-clutter your home and mind. This message is pretty straight forward in respect to de-cluttering.

Therapeutically this book can really change unhealthy habits and behaviors as it provides readers with the platform to removing unnecessary habits/thoughts/behaviors from your life.

A must read in my book shelf.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This is one of those books that I only read because it was recommended by a fellow counselor-friend. And I am thankful to have done that!

The book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is a very high-ranking book for personal and professional development which in my opinion directly impacts emotional wellbeing.

The habits discussed in the book allow readers to build skills in the areas of productivity, processing, time management, proactive, and positive thinking. As a professional counselor, I found that the areas discussed in the self-help book support individuals struggling with depression, anxiety, and destructive habits and behaviors. For instance, the book can help persons experiencing lethargy and inactivity (symptoms of depression) through the practice of productivity and time management.

Enjoy the read friends!

How To Win Friends and Influence People

How To Win Friends and Influence People is at the top of my list as one of my favorite self-help habit changing books. This book is literally holding ready to use teachings in areas that include relationship building, personal awareness, self-help, self-improvement, public speaking and communication, and so much more.

People that are struggling with building relationships can benefit from chapters that focus on relationship building. One of my favorite lessons from the book helped me build relationships by encouraging me to present myself in a positive energetic open manner. Before the reading the book, I would for instance, enter public settings like grocery stores with focus on entering the store to get what I needed and leaving. After the book, I transitioned by physical behavior and mind to smiling more, increasing small talk, and eye contact. A simple and straight forward book that helps you build relationships and connect with people.

Can you tell I enjoyed the book… (smiley face!!!)

Live The Best Life Of Your Life

What I love about this book is that the author presents the process of change as one that can be achieved. Self Help books like this one, can really go a long way in the right hands. As a counselor, I find that in my line of work, this book has provided ample support in helping people gain skills and the ability to make healthy changes.

As a former athlete, I found myself relating to the authors writing style and manner of captivity. The book helps people struggling with doubt and insecurity through a coaching style aimed to enhance your spirit, desire and motivation.

The Power of Habit

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business is a book that pulls in research and guides you in the healthy changing direction. If you are a fan of facts and habit changing strategies, I recommend this self-help improvement book. The author, Charles Duhigg, combines educational strategies and research to support readers in becoming a better version of him/herself.

As a person that struggles with hyperactivity and impulsive, I found this book helpful in that it provided me with insight to understanding how to change my current habits with healthier ones. This is a great book and resource for individuals wanting to create emotional change, self-improvement and/or personal development.

I also love the fact that this book is straight forward and not one that you have to read over and over just to understand the message.

Do I Need Individual Therapy Or Couples Therapy?

Individual or Couples Therapy: Which One Is Right? Individual counseling can be a wonderful start for those seeking couples counseling. I can understand how this can be a little difficult to understand as most people think about couples counseling when they are in need of addressing relationship challenges. As a couples counselor with over a [...]

70 Journal Prompts For Mental Health

Journal Prompts To Help You Work On Your Mental Health What would your 10-year-old self say to you today? Do you feel that you are beyond anger? What items in your life do you need to work on accepting What does a great conversation include? When was the last time you had a sense of [...]

Discover Your Authentic Self Through Counseling

 

How You With Anxiety Can Start Dating

Dating Someone with Anxiety: A Comprehensive Guide You are reading this because you experience anxiety and are considering being in a relationship. Let’s start with the most important item. Anxiety is natural and something that just about every person experiences to some degree. Some people have anxiety right before a big test or presentation. Others [...]

How Counseling Can Help With Loneliness

Dealing with Loneliness and Building Social Connections According to the CDC, loneliness is linked to serious health conditions ranging from increasing the risk of heart disease to an association with higher rates of depression and anxiety. Health conditions that can impact children and adults. A report from the NASEM found high rates of loneliness in [...]

Coping With The Five Stages Of Grief

Navigating Grief and Loss: Understanding and Coping with the Five Stages Did you know that grief is a natural response to loss? Grief is a natural response to various significant changes in life, such as the death of a loved one, job termination, transitioning to a new life stage, or the end of a meaningful [...]

50 Child Mental Health Questions

50 Questions and Topics for Parents to Discuss with Their Children Parents did you know that research shows that early conversations about mental health can significantly impact your child’s well-being. According to a 2021 study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and a 2016 publication on the impact of stress on adolescents’ [...]

The Feel Good Hormones And What You Can

Are you familiar with the 4 Feel Good Hormones? Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins, and Oxytocin. In the space of mental health, they are a big deal. Check out a helpful read that talks about how these hormones impact the mind, mood, and body here. It’s written by Harvard Health. As you take on the week find [...]

49 Prompts For Mental Health Beginners

49 Prompts For Mental Health Beginners Emotional wellness plays a vital role in your overall well-being. Acknowledging and expressing your emotions in a healthy way can lead to greater self-awareness, improved relationships, and reduced stress. One way to practice emotional wellness is by taking up journal writing. A study conducted in 2007 highlighted the benefits [...]

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