What I treat · Personality disorders · Appleton
Personality disorders therapy for Appleton, Wisconsin.
DBT-informed therapy for personality disorders for Appleton residents, with Wisconsin-licensed Amber Miller, MSed., LPC. Telehealth statewide, in-person at the Superior office. Most insurance accepted, including BadgerCare and Medicaid.
Appleton anchors the Fox Cities corridor (Neenah, Menasha, Kaukauna, Kimberly, Little Chute), about a quarter million people across a string of small cities with one therapist-per-thousand ratio well below the national recommendation. Telehealth across the Fox Cities works the same way it does in any other Wisconsin metro. Lawrence University students and FVTC students are both regulars on the caseload.
What Personality disorders therapy looks like
Clients I see with a personality-disorder diagnosis have often been treated badly by parts of the mental-health system. The label can become a reason to be dismissed, even by therapists. I do not do that. I treat the diagnosis as one piece of information among many about a real person sitting in front of me.
Borderline-spectrum work is the most common version of this in my practice. It is workable. The long arc is months and years, not weeks. The day-to-day work is dialectical behavioral skills paired with the slower person-centered work of figuring out what the patterns are protecting.
How we work on it
Dialectical behavioral skills come in heavily. Person-centered work holds the room while we build trust. Some weeks the work is symptom-focused; some weeks it is the older, slower work underneath.
With a clear personality-disorder diagnosis, the medication picture often runs alongside. I am not a prescriber, so if medication is part of your picture I will work alongside your psychiatrist.
A personality-disorder diagnosis is a description of patterns, not a sentence. The patterns formed for reasons. The reasons are workable.
How sessions work for Appleton clients
Appleton is too far from the Superior office for regular in-person sessions, so this is a telehealth-only relationship. That works as well for this kind of work as in-person. We pick a regular weekly slot and keep it.
If you are at a college in or near Appleton
Appleton and the surrounding area is home to Lawrence and FVTC. I see students from each, regardless of which campus you are on. Telehealth from a dorm or apartment works the same way it works from home. Sessions are confidential. The full angle on student work is on the college student page.
Insurance and cost in Appleton
Wisconsin BadgerCare, Medicaid, Medicare, and most major commercial insurance in Appleton are in-network. Out-of-pocket is $125 per 50 minutes session. Full detail on the insurance and fees page.
What to do next
If this read like something you recognize, the next step is to schedule the consultation or intake session. The free 15 minutes consult gives us both a sense of whether we would work well together before you book the first paid session. Text, call, or use the form, whichever is easiest.