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Condition Guides from our Therapists
Practical articles on relationships and how to improve your life using modern therapy practices.
CPA Counseling publishes condition guides and therapy articles written by our licensed therapists in Pittsburgh, Altoona, and Philadelphia. Every article is written from clinical experience — not generic wellness content. In-person and telehealth statewide.
Articles to Improve your Understanding
Animal-Assisted Therapy, Explained
Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) brings a trained animal — often a dog or a horse — into the therapeutic process as a calming, connecting presence that can lower anxiety and help people open up, especially children and those working through trauma. It’s delivered by clinicians specifically trained and teamed with a certified animal. Shelby O’Brien, LPC is drawn to the role animals can play in healing and hopes to one day bring a therapy dog into her practice at CPA Counseling.
Resentment and Mental Health: How to Let Go
Resentment is anger stemming from something that felt unfair; held in over time, it can harden into bitterness, which is linked to anxiety, depression, and strained relationships. Letting go — through forgiveness, self-compassion, empathy, and gratitude — protects your mental health. Amber Kottner, LPC helps clients across Pittsburgh’s South Hills, in person or by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
Chronic Fear & Mental Health
Fear is a healthy survival signal — but when it never switches off, chronic fight-or-flight wears on both mind and body, often hardening into anxiety, exhaustion, and a shrinking world. Claire Friedlander, Graduate Social Work Intern helps clients across Pittsburgh’s South Hills calm chronic fear and anxiety with practical tools, in person or by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
Self-Care for New Moms: Realistic Postpartum Support
Real self-care for new mothers often isn’t bubble baths or an ambitious routine — sometimes it’s lowering the bar: eating, showering, sleeping while someone else holds the baby, and asking for specific help. New motherhood is a major life transition, and loving your baby while struggling with motherhood can coexist. Baby blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum anxiety are not the same; persistent or severe symptoms deserve care. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, call 988 or 911.
Fidgeting & ADHD in Children: When Movement Helps Focus
Fidgeting isn’t automatically a problem — for some children, movement actually helps them regulate attention and focus. The useful question isn’t "how do I make my child sit still?" but "what helps this child learn?" Fidgeting doesn’t diagnose ADHD, which is about far more than hyperactivity. Caitie Beatty, LSW helps children and families find strategies that fit the individual child, in Altoona and by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
Anxiety & Stress Levels Today: Why It Matters
Stress and anxiety have risen sharply, and teens now report stress levels on par with adults — higher still during the school year. Chronic stress affects sleep, mood, and health. Mindfulness, letting go of what you can’t control, basic self-care, and asking for help all reduce it. Crystal Fiumara, LPC helps teens and adults across Pittsburgh’s South Hills manage anxiety, in person or by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
READY TO START?
Don’t let fear keep writing your story
Anxiety rarely stays where it is. Left alone it tends to ask for a little more room each year — one more thing declined, one more route avoided, one more part of life quietly made smaller until the smaller version starts to feel like who you are. It doesn’t take a crisis to justify starting. It only takes deciding that this year isn’t going to look like last year. You don’t have to have it figured out first; you only have to make one decision that isn’t fear’s.