Pittsburgh · Altoona · Philadelphia · Statewide Telehealth
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
How to Talk to Someone You Love About Substance Use
You can;t make someone choose recovery, but how you approach the conversation matters. Jessika Izzo, LPC, on raising concerns about substance use without accusation and finding the right support.
Grief Doesn’t Follow the Stages
No — grief doesn’t move through five tidy stages. Kübler-Ross described what dying people experience, not what the bereaved go through, and grief is not linear, ordered, or on a schedule. It tends to arrive in waves, often shows up physically first, and looks different for everyone — including children. Shannon Wyzkoski, LPC, GC-C, the practice’s only grief-certified counselor, works with grief and loss in South Hills and by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
Trauma and Addiction Therapy in Pittsburgh
Trauma and addiction can be connected, though not everyone who struggles with substance use has experienced trauma. For some people, alcohol or drugs become a way to manage painful memories, anxiety, difficult emotions, or distress — something that began as relief gradually starts making choices for them. Ashley Spahn, LCSW works with trauma and substance use at CPA Counseling in Pittsburgh’s South Hills and by telehealth across Pennsylvania.
When Being the Capable One Becomes Exhausting
Some women become so good at holding everything together — work, family, everyone else’s needs — that they lose track of their own. Autumn Staszak helps women who are quietly running on empty make room for what they need, without abandoning the people who count on them.
Infertility and Mental Health: Grief, Relationships and Living With Uncertainty
Infertility can affect your identity, your relationships, your intimacy, and your plans for the future. Rachel Nash explores how therapy helps you carry the grief and uncertainty of fertility struggles — without pretending it’s easy and without false certainty.
Menopause and Mental Health
Menopause can change your mood, sleep, relationships, body and even your sense of who you are. This article explores why midlife doesn’t have to be about getting your old self back. It can become an opportunity to understand what’s changing and decide what you want this next chapter to be.
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.