Therapist

Benefits Video

Vídeo de beneficios

Kris O. Stoddard
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Utah (LCSW)

For appointments, please call:
801-360-5100

1533 North Main Street, Spanish Fork, UT

Therapist at Mountain Country Foods Clinic

Available Monday-Friday, 9-6, by appointment

Most common problems people come to me with:

Anxiety 

Depression

Bi-Polar Disorder

Substance Abuse (drugs, alcohol)

Grief

ADHD for self or children

Obsessive behaviors/thoughts

Eating Disorders

Self-harm

Suicidal thoughts

Problems with spouse or partner

Problems with raising children

Dealing with challenges at work

Preparing children for college and scholarships
                                           Financial problems                                                     

As a Clinical Social Worker, my job is to completely understand, to the best of my ability, any person who comes to see me. Often it will take me several sessions to understand a person enough to explore avenues of therapy to help a person help themselves to feel better.

The most common challenges I see when persons come to meet with me are related to fear and worry.  Often, in our lives, we have past experiences that are scary or traumatic, such as being confronted by a bully in grade school, having a difficult parent or parents, a financial down-turn, or dealing with someone close to us dying.  We often take these challenging events in our lives and begin to believe that they will haunt us forever, making us feel worried and fearful, or in time, depressed.  Sometimes, persons have been through child abuse (physical, sexual, emotional) or neglect, or are living in an abusive relationship with a spouse or partner.  It is unusually rare that a person can deal with significant trauma, such as these, and not have them significantly impact their lives to the point that they find it difficult or impossible to function normally.  Not only can the anxiety or depression be so difficult and emotionally destabilizing, but it can bring on physical symptoms that can negatively impact a person’s health.

How can therapy help with this?  Therapy can help us restore or create, a more positive outlook and help us create a network of friends and family that is more supportive than in the past.  In therapy, persons learn skills to cope with anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings and learn skills to interact with others in a way that help the person to feel more equal with those they live and deal with.

While I personally don’t feel it’s necessary to label persons in therapy with a diagnosis, our society has become aware of the names commonly used in psychology (even though they use them incorrectly most of the time) but these are the names (listed above) that people come in and tell me what they have: (Hey wait a minute, I thought I was the therapist? Haha!)