Counseling Services

Anger Management

We offer help and support to anyone who is struggling in the area of anger management.  Individual sessions will focus on stress management, assertive communication, improving judgment, impulse control, empathy, emotional awareness, self-talk, forgiveness, responding versus reacting, and anger control techniques.  Learning these skills and techniques are the foundation for managing your anger.

Children and Adolescents

Our agency is able to provide outpatient therapy for children and adolescents from age 2 through 18.  The child and adolescent program addresses attachment, behavioral, emotional, abuse, anxiety attention problems, social or relational developmental concerns, as well as working with youth perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse.  Modalities based on evidence and research based practices include:

1) Child-Parent Relationship Therapy
2) Child Centered Play Therapy and Family Play Therapy
3) Experiential Play Therapy
4) Activity Based Therapy
5) Skills Training
6) Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)

Oasis is the Medicaid approved dual diagnosis adolescent intensive outpatient program for Northeast Nebraska.

Couples Therapy and Marriage Therapy

Couples therapy and marriage therapy at Oasis Counseling incorporates the research-based interventions and exercises of the Gottman Method Couples Therapy™ Model.  This therapeutic approach helps couples develop and strengthen the qualities of positive, healthy relationships that Dr. Gottman discovered in his 30 years of research with over 3,600 couples. The therapy developed out of this research will help you and your spouse or partner:

1) Identify false assumptions
2) Build marital friendships through the skills of love mapping
3) Identify distortions that result in relationship resistance
4) Identify resistance related to relationship mismatches
5) Conflict resolution and problem solving skills
6) How to repair relationship ruptures

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)

Oasis has four providers trained in CISM which allows them to provide guidance and evaluations and direct services to individuals and families affected by crisis.  This could be victims of violence, loss and grief from natural disasters, like tornadoes and flooding, and other community crises.

Family Therapy

Many times unconscious values formed in us through our families decrease our ability to have healthy relationships with family, co-workers, and friends.  Oasis’ staff is trained in family systems therapy (which looks at the values that drive behaviors in families) and in family sculpting (where family members create a picture of their family by using spatial distance and height to show who is close to whom, where is the power in the family, and who is distant and not engaged).  Another evidence-based practice that Oasis therapists are trained in is The Gottman Institute’s marital therapy.

Individual Counseling Services

This program offers assessments and caring individual and family therapy services in English or Spanish.  For those who are interested, our therapists also provide counseling from a distinctively Christian perspective combined with research based and field accepted best practices.  We seek to support the recovery and well being of each person, equip them with tools with which to better cope with their circumstances, and find emotionally healthy ways to reach their goals in counseling.  Our therapists are caring and well trained professionals who wish to assist you in your counseling experience.

Brainspotting

Brainspotting is an advanced brain/body-based therapy approach.  It is a way to work on trauma in a safe and contained situation.  One of the purported benefits of Brainspotting is that a person does not need to “relive” the trauma in order to facilitate its release from the body.  Brainspotting reaches parts of the brain that are not generally accessed in traditional talk therapy.  It can be helpful for children, adolescents, adults and seniors by reducing the effects of events that caused distress to lodge in the brain/body.  Trauma overwhelms one’s nervous system.  Brainspotting works on easing this emotional and physical lock down by locating, accessing, processing and releasing neurophysiological sources of pain/trauma held deep in the subcortical brain.  Brainspotting activates the body’s natural self-healing ability.  Oasis Counseling International has five therapists trained in Brainspotting.  Typically, Brainspotting treatment lasts for about 4 to 6 sessions.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is an evidence-based, mental health therapy technique designed to alleviate psychological stress.  EMDR is recommended for people living with overwhelming traumatic memories and for the treatment of PTSD.  This therapy method doesn’t require talking in detail about the distressing issue; rather, it incorporates the use of eye movements and other forms of rhythmic left-right (bilateral) stimulation such as hand-tapping.  The client focuses on the traumatic memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation which reduces the vividness and emotion associated with the traumatic memory.  Oasis has EMDR trained clinicians on staff who treat adults, children and adolescents.  They can direct side-to-side eye movements in a specific way, as traumatic memories are processed in small segments, until they no longer cause distress.  EMDR treatment typically averages 8 to 10 sessions.

Spanish Speaking Counseling

We have a therapist on our staff who is fluent in both English and Spanish.  She offers individual and family therapy in Spanish for all ages.  We offer intakes which can be used as evaluations to assist families who are fighting deportation or dealing with court issues.  (At this time we do not offer drug and alcohol services in Spanish).

Spiritual Inventories

Spiritual evaluations are done for those interested in spiritual direction or a formal spiritual assessment as part of their mental health evaluation.  Spiritual assessments include:

• Defining clients macro journey/mini journey
• Defining client’s journey phase
• Defining journey level (redemptive or mission)
• Positive and negative journey themes and how to increase or decrease their effect on present and future journeys
• Shadow journeys if applicable
• Description of client’s possible hindrances to spiritual growth
• Spiritual direction is also available related to issues surrounding your present journey and how to be faithful to it.

Dr. Mark Stortvedt provides these services for Oasis Counseling International.  Mark received his Ph.D. from Evangelical Theological Seminary in Marshfield, MO and is a Licensed Clinical Pastoral Counselor by the National Christian Counselor’s Association as well as a Licensed Independent Mental Health Practitioner and Certified Professional Counselor with the State of Nebraska.

Mark also has completed 32 hours of Mediation Training through the State of Nebraska, Office of Dispute Resolution and has provided mediation services for churches in Nebraska and other countries.  He also does seminars on Spiritual Journeys, Organizational Journeying, and with his wife, Colleen, he provides Lay and Professional Christian Counseling.

Costs for these services are arranged with Dr. Stortvedt and are based on what you desire to have done.