What to Expect

At Grand Oaks Counseling we strive for a paperless office! This means traditional paperwork, like New Client Forms, are completed digitally over your cell phone, laptop or home computer. This enables you to take your time filling out forms and do so at your convenience. This also makes for a seamless first visit, and means all you'll need to do that day ...is arrive and sign in! Some people like to bring a notebook to session with important topics they want to discuss or to record in-session moments they want to remember. However, the first 1 or 2 sessions are typically filled with questions and assessments to help me learn more about what has been bothering you and how you'd like to be different after therapy. 

Our address is 432 Moulton St. East Decatur, AL 35601. Grand Oaks Counseling is located in the Albany Historic District in Downtown Decatur. We are on Moulton Street, just down from The Brick and Mellow Mushroom, across from The Young Life Center. Conveniently located in the heart of downtown Decatur and only 5 miles from Interstate 65/565 makes Grand Oaks Counseling highly accessible to many in the North Alabama area. We are less than 12 miles from Hartselle, 15 miles from Athens, and 17 miles from Madison. 

Downtown parking is free and there are typically plenty of street parking spaces open directly in front of our office. If these spaces are occupied when you arrive, all of Moulton Street has available street parking on both sides. Any spot open is a spot you may park in and there is an accessible sidewalk leading right to our front door! Additionally, there is room to park in the rear of the building and a handicap accessible ramp. Rear parking is accessed by the alley way that runs between 6th and 4th Avenues, indicated by the yellow arrows on the map above. If you do not require a wheelchair ramp, please use the front door to enter even when parking in the back.

On average, our clients come once every week for 6-12 sessions. This is typically a good amount of time to sort through the issue that has brought them in, implement appropriate interventions, work though and evaluate the push-backs that inevitably arise and review what next steps are most appropriate. However, this is simply an average. We see clients for single sessions, and have others who only schedule when problems pop up or an outside perspective is needed! But many clients face issues that are long standing, and not so simply deconstructed and reconstructed more healthily. These are our clients for whom therapy is a regular part of their life and an integral tool for coping and finding joy inside situations they can not change. There is no perfect answer for how many times you should come. But this is something we will discuss together, and something we can reevaluate as things change and life happens.