alex@TLCSeattle.com | (206)755-3285
Alex Szablya, MA, LMHC

Therapist

Alex Szablya, MA, LMHC

Therapist

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

Deciding to see a therapist

Overwhelmed at work or in your relationship?

Perhaps you have a life-changing decision to make or you feel “blue,” listless, weary or dissatisfied.  Many people choose therapy because they want to “fix” their difficulties, and believe that may be accomplished in a few consultative sessions.  Such quick fixes do happen for some.  Yet most people find therapy offers a safe environment for exploring deeply felt and long-held issues that manifest themselves in the emotions that drew them to seek therapy.  Over time they grow to understand that emotions inform us.  What we do with that information can propel change.

Ready to make a change?

Choosing a therapist

An intuitive response that informs your needs.

Choosing a therapist is not simply an intellectual decision.  You truly must “click” with your therapist for the relationship to work.  That’s why I offer a free consultation for potential clients. 

As a therapist, my goal is to support and assist my clients as they become the persons they are meant to be.  I use a collaborative approach to help them learn to understand their emotions.  Together we work to resolve the issues that interfere with their lives.  I want to help you through this process too.  Contact me for a free consultation.

Therapeutic Specialty Areas

Some reasons why my clients chose to work with me:
  • Work stress
  • Career strategies
  • Excessive worry
  • Cultural issues
  • Aging parents
  • Sexual issues
  • Chronic illness
  • Sudden crisis such as divorce/death
  • Grief and loss

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. 

Pablo Picasso

Couples Sessions

I tailor my counseling to your wants and needs.

If you are a couple seeking therapy, you may:

  • Be at an impasse in your relationship,
  • Want to see if your relationship is “worth saving,” and/or
  • Want to develop new skills to deepen your existing relationship.

I believe that it is in relationship with others that we come to know ourselves.

George Kunz
I WILL HELP YOU FIND WAYS TO HEAL YOUR RELATIONSHIP.

I will help you identify problems and provide opportunities for deepening your relationship.  Our work will focus on what you think is right between the two of you… and what’s not.  I teach couples to hear and understand each other.  I will help you recognize that very often it’s communication that’s the problem.  Together we will identify negative communication patterns and change them into new, healing, healthy, connections.  Once couples reconnect, partners feel safe enough to be vulnerable to the other again.  That is truly when relationship growth happens.

MY APPROACH DEPENDS UPON YOUR UNIQUE GOALS.

Couples often come to me for short-term counseling – somewhere between 8 to 20 sessions.  Afterward, couples who desire deeper, more rewarding partnerships continue their work with me.  Others choose regular “tune-up” sessions.  How long our work lasts is entirely up to each couple. There is one other option, Marathon Couples Therapy, that is described below.

Marathon Couples Therapy

MY PROCESS
I’ve been trained in the Gottman Method (Levels 1 and 2). John Gottman has spent over forty years studying marriages, including predictors of relationship success. In addition, I have completed three out of the four training levels in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). EFT is founded on a close and careful analysis of the meanings and contributions of emotions to human experience. Its goals are strengthening the self, regulating affect, and creating new meaning. EFT emphasizes:
  1. the importance of awareness, acceptance, and understanding of your(?) emotions;
  2. the visceral experience of emotions in therapy; and
  3. the importance of changing emotions in promoting psychotherapeutic change.

In couples counseling, The Gottman Method and EFT dovetail beautifully. I guide couples to this intersection in order to teach them new skills that help deepen their relationships.

“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt
its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”

—Arnold Bennett

RECOMMENDED FOR COUPLES WHO
  • You are ready to dive in and make lasting, positive changes in your relationship.
  • You are in distress or crisis and unsure of the path forward, but know it can’t stay how it is now. 
  • You feel stuck in a negative cycle and want the fighting to stop. 
  • You’ve become distant–like roommates–and don’t know how to be close again. 
  • Weekly counseling isn’t working with your schedules or the childcare shuffle. 
  • You already see a therapist, and weekly sessions aren’t working out. 
  • If you want to get away from it all AND rebuild your relationship. 
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE WHO
  • There is a current ongoing affair.
  • One or both partners has an active addiction that they are not ready to address.
  • One partner is committed to ending the relationship (discernment counseling might be a better option).
  • There is chronic intimate partner violence or abuse (couples counseling is not recommended, but individual therapy for each of you definitely IS).

I saw you were perfect,
and so I loved you.
Then I saw that you were
not perfect
and I loved you even more.

Angelits Lim
I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE.

Love has the power to heal individuals and relationships.  I have seen this healing first-hand in my practice.  As Eleanor Roosevelt said so well, “The giving of love is an education in itself.”  I help each partner learn to give love again, and learn how to be loved too.  Each is enlightened by this giving and receiving.  Maya Angelou recognized the liberation individuals experience through such enlightenment, when she said, “In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave.  And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be.  Yet it is only love which sets us free.”  That is why even serial bride Eva Gabor understood that each individual in a loving relationship triumphs when she said, “Love is a game that two can play and both win.”

Client Rates

I offer a 30-minute complimentary consult for new clients.
Individuals
$250
Per Fifty Minute Session
Couples
$300
Per Sixty Minute Session

I am an out-of-network provider and will provide you with a bill that you can submit to your insurance company.

About Alex Szablya

I am an advocate of making sure my clients have what they need.

I was married, widowed in my forties, and in my fifties found love again with my new husband.  In between I was a mother of two kids who now are adults. When my first husband died I retooled, returning to school and then working while raising my children. These experiences taught me that life goes on whether one is prepared or not.

I have learned that it is best to be prepared in all aspects of our lives. I believe that the here and now is the most important thing in the world. Sometimes, though, our past gets in the way of our here and now. Therapy has the power to intervene to relegate the past to the past and firmly establish you in the present, so that you are able to enjoy your life now.

I am an advocate of making sure my clients have the medications they need – and once stable on those meds – further growth is attainable through productive conversation. My experience as a pharmaceutical sales rep gave me an understanding of many of today’s issues related to “better living through chemistry” and their implications in our world. That same career provided me with years of experience in the corporate world. As a result I have insights into the sometimes intense challenges you might encounter at work as you build your career.

I also have a special interest in sexual issues in committed relationships and work with couples to help them get them where they want to be. I work to establish effective communication, help couples remember (or discover) why they chose each other in the first place, and help them create a resilience in the relationship that will last.

Accreditations

  • Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC)
  • Master in Psychology, Seattle University
  • BA in Psychology from the University of Washington
  • Certified in Theme Centered Interaction: a holistic group paradigm based upon structure, process, & trust
  • Trained as a hospice volunteer
  • Humanistic therapist, educated within existential-phenomenological psychology
I offer a 30 minute complimentary consult to see if we are good fit to work together.

Make An Appointment