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 two therapists 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.

Sex Addiction Counseling

The core issues related to the treatment of sexual addiction rests in the identification of thought distortions, repressed feelings, negative core beliefs and maladaptive coping mechanisms related to a repetitive pattern of resulting sexual obsessions.

Those who struggle with sexual addiction may develop behaviors that become increasingly more dangerous as they act out. These behaviors can often put the individual at risk, with little regard for the consequences.  As these behaviors continue, the individual may become isolated and alienated from their families, spouses, friends and colleagues.  During these intense moments of shame there is a greater propensity toward re-offending and acting-out to fill the internal void.  This repetitive cycle is often referred to as the “Shame Cycle.”  Our therapeutic model empowers clients to interrupt the cycle and encourages personal responsibility.

Methods of treatment are designed around Cognitive/Behavioral theory and the philosophy of Personal Responsibility.  Taking responsibility for one’s own decision and consequences is absolutely essential to progressing through treatment.  Also included is cognitive restructuring, relapse prevention, theories of addiction, and techniques of Reality Therapy.  Individualized treatment plans are designed to treat both the compulsive behaviors and the associated dissociative elements.

Sex Offender Outpatient Treatment

The Outpatient Sex Offender Program (OSOP) at Oasis Counseling International seeks to follow guidelines that have been established and recommended as best practices in the treatment of sex offenders.  To this end, great effort has been made to conform to the practice standards and guidelines for the evaluation, treatment and management of adult male sex offenders, as described in the 2005 publication by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

Entrance into the OSOP begins with the initial assessment of prospective clients to ensure that Oasis is capable of offering the client the help which they require.  The initial assessment incorporates a complete biopsychosocial and sexual history, a psychological assessment, and sex offender risk assessment identifying the presence of static and dynamic risk factors for re-offense.  This process also helps to identify or rule out other psychological/psychiatric disorders and proper placement for treatment.

Treatment focuses on the attainment of specific treatment goals identified in the individualized treatment plan, as well as any ongoing identification of developing treatment needs.  Treatment will also examine present risks for re-offense, equip the client to implement coping skills, increase victim empathy, and enlist his long term support for aftercare needs and maintenance of treatment gains.

The current treatment team includes Dr. Mark Stortvedt, PhD/LIMHP/CPC, Dr. David Mitchell, Phd, and Brandy Boschult, LIMHP.

Spanish Speaking Counseling

We have a therapist on our staff that 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.  We are also equipped to do home studies and family assessments in Spanish.  (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.