If you are impulsive, inattentive, or hyperactive, have trouble focusing, or are prone to emotional outbursts, difficulty focusing, disorganization and forgetfulness, you may have an attention-related behavioral disorder. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, or ADHD, makes task management, organization, planning and focus difficult, and can affect your professional and social life negatively without treatment or therapy. ADHD often manifests in children and causes severe and even debilitating academic difficulties, and can present problems into adulthood. ADHD is treatable through behavior modification therapy and/or psychotropic medication, and is particularly manageable once you learn to balance your strengths and weaknesses.

Addiction is defined as a persistent need to commit an act or to consume a substance, which leads to a seemingly unshakeable habit that may be accompanied by obsessive thinking and fosters destructive behavior.

Dependence on certain substances can destroy relationships and threaten your life, as well as permanently damage your health. While addiction is a complex sector of mental health, there are several effective approaches to treatment.

Compulsive, sexually-related behavior can dominate your life, forcing you to make the sexual behavior a priority over your family, job, and personal life, leading to problems with work, damaged interpersonal relationships, and even criminal activity.

Even though you know compulsive gambling is a losing game, hurting both you and your loved ones, you may not be able to stop yourself, even if you actually desire to release yourself from the activity.

Compulsive shopping can be hard to identify or admit to, since shopping is such an integral part of today’s society. But if you’re using shopping as a way of feeling better, “dealing” with a feeling, or dismissing a problem, you’re cultivating an addictive habit that can destroy your time, finances, and relationships.

Internet addiction is an easily ignored and rapidly growing problem. If you can’t stop yourself from checking your device, gambling online, or playing games, or if you feel more relaxed or safe with your online contacts than with your real-life acquaintances, then you may be cultivating a dangerous habit that will drastically imbalance your life.

Anger is a normal emotion, naturally programmed to spur you to action, protect you from danger, and find opportunities to get your needs met. Anger is a normal part of a balanced, healthy life when it’s properly managed, but can lead to destroyed relationships, professional problems, regretted actions, and societal alienation when not kept in check. Sometimes anger is actually a reaction to a past experience, not a present situation, and sometimes it can become a habitual defense against negative emotions like fear or sadness.

Anxiety causes apprehension, dread, worry, self-doubt, and moderate to even impairing nervousness in reaction to a real-life stress or even out of the blue. If you experience overwhelming, recurring anxiety that isn’t directly linked to real-life stress, you may be suffering from a debilitating anxiety disorder, which can escalate and seriously impair your daily life.

As divorce becomes increasingly common, “blended” families, or families incorporating step-children or previously married parents, are also on the rise. This can create a lot of challenges as well as rewards, as children may have trouble coping with visitation arrangements, new parenting styles, new siblings, and difficult relationships between old and new parents. Visitation arrangements are particularly stressful and confusing, since children have to adjust out of circumstances they were given to believe were permanent and into entirely new ones. And new sibling relationships can become increasingly bitter, as confused or insecure children fight for dominance and attention in the new environment.

Excessive and prolonged stress can cause you to feel overwhelmed, helpless, lethargic, cynical, resentful, and incapable of meeting what seem like constant demands. You may feel disinterested in your chosen path or role, or lack motivation to continue to be productive. But simply identifying and addressing the source of stress can eliminate your emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion.

Though beginning or shifting a career is usually a positive event, the thought of the transition and potential economic difficulties can lead to severe stress. Therapy can help you work through these decisions to weigh the pros and cons with clarity and productive perspective.

Codependency is the tendency to feel passive, shame, worthlessness, and insecurity, and to make the needs of others a priority over your own needs. Today’s definition of codependency associates the problem with another person or an outside thing, rather than just in regard to substance abuse.

An important part of professional, societal, or intimate relationships, conflict resolution is a system of managing and preventing conflicts by redirecting them. Conflict resolution therapy helps you mitigate the struggle you may feel over the conflict between your wishes and desires and the way you feel you’re supposed to act, improving your overall communication and well-being.

Certain thoughts, behaviors, and emotions can be taught to help you adjust to changes occurring in your life. Negative changes, such as losing a loved one, a job, or a partner often trigger intense psychological stress, but changes we often think of as positive, such as moving, marriage, giving birth, or starting a new job, can often cause equal stress. It’s important to deal proactively and productively with these stresses to ensure you fully adapt or adjust to the changes in your life.

Couples or marriage counseling works to improve your understanding of one another, enhance your intimacy, and open up communication in order to salvage a relationship that may have been on the brink of disintegration, separation, or divorce.

Depression can occur chronically in mild to moderate forms, which are common with persistent depressive disorder, but can also occur in severe, life-altering forms, as is the case with major depression. Depression can go beyond a feeling of being “down” or “blue” to being overwhelmed with emptiness, hopelessness, helplessness, despair, and numbness; can manifest itself physically through lethargy, sleeplessness, and chronic pain; and can lead to suicidal ideation. Help, support, psycho- and psychiatric therapy are all effective treatments.

Whether you’re the partner who’s choosing to leave or the partner getting left behind, divorce calls up painful and difficult to manage emotions like guilt, anger, confusion, grief, anxiety, fear, and shame, particularly when children are involved. You may seek counseling to help decide whether the marriage is worth trying to salvage, or you may seek therapy to get help in successfully making this huge life transition, either of which can be dealt with in individual or couple’s therapy.

Entitlement can be a devastating approach to life, in which you expect unrealistic treatment and rewards. This attitude fosters terrible interpersonal and work relationships, and can result in huge disappointments.

Even healthy families have challenges, frustrations, painful or angry interactions, guilt, grudges, disappointments, irritations, and buried resentments. Families are often the cause of your most powerful negative emotions, since a large part of parenting is the impossible task of responsibly and productively raising another human being with a separate personality. Parents have the responsibility of carefully and lovingly teaching their children life skills, healthy interpersonal dynamics, social skills, and moral codes, all while tailoring their approach to each child’s specific personality.

Grief can be a reaction to many different types of loss, although it’s most common in reaction to the death of a loved one. Grief can present a range of overwhelming feelings, from anger to engulfing sadness, and the process of dealing with grief and adapting or adjusting to these losses is a very unique, personalized undertaking.

Today’s society still presents unhealthy stigmas, pressures, and demands to individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, or any other type of non-conforming general or sexual identity. Therapy can help you overcome the anxiety or stress these stigmas may cause, and offer you management or coping strategies for the future.

Everyone goes through multiple changes and transitions as they age, such as leaving school, working, getting married, having children, divorcing, losing loved ones, moving, or losing a career. Whether or not these changes are positive or negative, the process of transition can be stressful due to its deeply unfamiliar, and therefore threatening, nature. Therapy can offer strategies for identifying stresses and developing managing strategies or coping skills.

Nearly 10% of adult Americans are affected by mood disorders, which continually affect your everyday emotional state and increase your risk for physical diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Psychotherapy and/or medication can help you manage a mood disorder and lead a productive, satisfying life.

Personality disorders are certain mental illnesses, caused by a variety of genetic and environmental factors, that trap individuals in harmful, unyielding behaviors and thought patterns, causing severe problems in personal relationships and in the workplace. Personality disorders can cause you to find handling problems and everyday stresses overly difficult, and can cloud or ruin your relationships with other people. Though those affected by personality disorders usually have difficulty realizing or acknowledging their problem, talk therapy and/or medication can be very effective treatments for disorders in a range of severity.

Every individual has a different personality type and different strengths, weaknesses, goals, and priorities, so every individual needs to undertake a completely unique journey to self-actualization and success, a journey that probably won’t look like anyone else’s. Personal growth includes improving your self-awareness and understanding of your identity, enhancing your employability, refining your quality of life, heightening your talents, pursuing your potential, and working to achieve your goals and aspirations.

A physical and psychological reaction to past events that were seriously stressful or physically threatening, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, causes flashbacks, depression, anxiety, paranoia, hypervigilance, suicidal ideation, and other mentally unhealthy states, and can continue indefinitely and without provocation.

Relationships are not easy; they require mutual respect and consideration and long-term, sometime painstaking work. Even small everyday pressures or demands or problems can accumulate over time and present a surprising amount of stress in your intimate life. But if both of you are willing to acknowledge the problem and play a role in establishing a solution, counseling can save many relationships.

Traumatic events like abuse, neglect, the sudden loss of a loved one, car accidents, exposure to war or violent criminal acts, or a natural disaster can have lasting events on their victims and survivors, bringing up fear, emotional pain, confusion, or PTSD long after the actual event and in relatively safe environments. Support, guidance, and mental health therapy can help you overcome the physical, emotional, and psychological threat you feel to finally heal from the trauma.

Americans are particularly notorious for leading busy, stressful lives, a tendency that comes at a high cost. Stress isn’t just a feeling of being overwhelmed or worried. Stress is the body’s way of responding to external demands or pressures, and is often experienced as a physical process as well as an internal process. Stress can manifest itself in various physical ways as well as through negative thoughts and feelings, and foster lifelong problems if not addressed.

It’s important to adequately balance the many different roles, responsibilities, and aspects of your very different work, home, and social lives. Achieving a work-life balance means meeting the demands of the workplace without sacrificing your personal growth, self-care, hobbies and activities, spirituality, and quality time with friends, family, and community.