Our services
Practical skills for managing intense emotions and building lasting stability.
Prefer to talk? Call (417) 409-3008 · Mon–Fri, 8:30 am – 7 pm
A note from our practice
For some people, emotions feel like gentle waves. For others, they feel like tsunamis.
If you find yourself constantly overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of your feelings, you already know how exhausting it is to live life feeling like a raw nerve. You might experience emotions so powerfully that they dictate your entire day, leading to sudden outbursts, intense mood swings, or a desperate need to escape the pain at any cost.
Perhaps minor disagreements with loved ones quickly escalate into massive conflicts, leaving you terrified of abandonment or rejection. Maybe you have resorted to impulsive behaviors—like substance use, self-harm, reckless spending, or binge eating—simply because you did not have any other way to tolerate the intense distress you were in. And when the dust finally settles, you are often left carrying an immense, heavy burden of shame and guilt.
If this sounds familiar, we want to offer you a profound sense of validation: You are not broken, and your pain is real. You simply have a highly sensitive emotional baseline, and no one has ever taught you the specific manual for how to operate your nervous system.
At Counseling Group of the Ozarks, we can provide that manual. Located in Springfield, MO, and accessible statewide via Missouri telehealth, we offer Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT is a highly structured, evidence-based approach designed specifically to help you regulate your emotions, tolerate distress without making things worse, and ultimately build a life that feels truly worth living.
— The Counseling Group of the Ozarks team
What we help with
When you struggle with intense emotional dysregulation, standard advice like “just take a deep breath” or “try to look on the bright side” can feel incredibly invalidating and completely useless. Your nervous system is operating on overdrive, and traditional talk therapy often falls short because it doesn’t give you the concrete, actionable skills needed to stop a crisis in its tracks.
Our DBT therapists understand the unique challenges of living with heightened emotional sensitivity. We help clients across the Ozarks break free from the exhausting cycles of:
You might wake up feeling perfectly fine, only to have a minor inconvenience send you spiraling into deep depression or explosive anger. This rapid cycling makes it difficult to maintain a steady job, focus on school, or simply enjoy your day. DBT counseling in Springfield helps you identify the physical warning signs of these emotional spikes and provides the exact tools needed to bring your baseline back to center.
Intense emotions often wreak havoc on relationships. You might find yourself pushing people away to protect yourself, or clinging to them desperately out of a terrifying fear of being abandoned. This push-and-pull dynamic can severely strain marriages, friendships, and family bonds. We help you navigate relationship friction effectively, teaching you how to communicate your needs without triggering a fight.
When emotional pain becomes intolerable, human beings naturally look for a way out. If you do not have healthy distress tolerance skills, you may turn to self-harm, disordered eating, alcohol, or impulsive behaviors just to numb the pain. We do not judge these behaviors; we recognize them as desperate attempts to survive. Our goal is to replace these destructive mechanisms with healthy, highly effective alternatives.
Many individuals who struggle with emotional regulation also experience a lingering sense of emptiness, as if they do not truly know who they are outside of their emotional reactions. We provide a grounded, compassionate space to help you explore your core values and anchor your identity in something stable and enduring.
Tell us a little about what’s going on and we’ll match you with the therapist who fits you best.
How we help
Dialectical Behavior Therapy was built on a very specific philosophy: the balance of acceptance and change. We completely accept and validate you exactly as you are right now, while simultaneously acknowledging that you need to make changes to reach your goals.
Because we have a diverse team of eight highly trained providers, we can carefully guide you through the active, skill-building process of DBT. The therapy is broken down into four core modules, each designed to give you practical, real-world tools:
The foundation of DBT. You cannot change an emotion if you are not aware of it. We teach you how to stay fully present in the current moment, observing your thoughts and feelings without judgment or the urge to immediately react to them.
How to survive a crisis without making it worse. You will learn specific, fast-acting techniques (like temperature changes and paced breathing) to physically calm your nervous system when the emotional pain feels entirely unbearable.
How to understand and manage your feelings. We will teach you how to identify your emotions accurately, reduce your vulnerability to negative moods, and increase your daily positive experiences so you are less susceptible to emotional crashing.
How to ask for what you need and say no to what you don’t. You will learn specialized communication frameworks that allow you to maintain your self-respect and set firm boundaries without destroying your relationships.
Who we serve
Emotional dysregulation is frequently exacerbated by feeling misunderstood, marginalized, or unsafe in your daily environment. We believe that true healing can only occur in a space where you are fiercely protected, deeply respected, and wholly accepted.
Counseling Group of the Ozarks is dedicated to providing an inclusive, welcoming environment for the broader community.
We know that minority stress, societal invalidation, and discrimination can deeply impact your emotional baseline. We proudly provide a safe, validating, and affirming space for the LGBTQIA+ community to engage in DBT skills training.
We provide culturally competent counseling that honors the unique backgrounds, systemic challenges, and intersecting identities of BIPOC individuals, ensuring your DBT experience is contextualized to your lived reality.
While DBT was originally designed for adults, its skills are incredibly effective for younger populations. Our team includes clinicians who work with children as young as 5 and with teens, adapting DBT skills to help young minds learn emotional regulation early in life.
Our team
During intake, we’ll help match you with the clinician who fits your needs, schedule, and insurance.
Insurance & fees
We’re in-network with a wide range of regional and national plans, and our office will verify your benefits as a courtesy before your first visit.
Don’t see your plan? Call us — we’ll check your coverage together.
FAQs
Have a question? Call our front desk at (417) 409-3008, Monday – Friday, 8:30 am – 7:00 pm.
Absolutely not. While DBT was originally developed to treat BPD, decades of clinical research have proven it to be highly effective for a wide range of challenges. We regularly use DBT to help clients struggling with severe depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, PTSD, and general emotional dysregulation.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses primarily on changing your thoughts to change your feelings. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) includes some of these cognitive changes, but it places a much heavier emphasis on acceptance, managing extreme emotional reactions in the body, and navigating relationships.
Comprehensive DBT often involves a mix of individual therapy and group skills training. However, at Counseling Group of the Ozarks, we primarily focus on integrating DBT skills directly into your highly personalized, one-on-one individual therapy sessions, ensuring the pacing matches your specific needs.
Yes. Whether you prefer the physical comfort of our Springfield, MO office or the convenience of logging in from home anywhere in Missouri, DBT skills training translates incredibly well to our secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform.
Because DBT is a skills-based therapy, many clients begin to feel relief quickly as they learn and apply the initial Distress Tolerance skills. However, mastering all four modules and fundamentally changing how you react to emotional triggers is a long-term investment in your well-being, typically taking several months of dedicated practice.
Your first session
You do not have to be at the mercy of your emotions forever. By learning the right skills, you can regain control of your reactions, repair your relationships, and find a profound sense of inner peace. Let the experienced, compassionate team at Counseling Group of the Ozarks provide the specialized guidance you need.
Take the first step toward emotional freedom today.
