About Creating Balance

Welcome! Founded by Shelliah Williams, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) specializing in work with individual adults. Creating Balance looks to provide mental health counseling that emphasizes the importance of balanced perspectives and authenticity to help improve emotional, mental, and physical health.

Seeking therapy can be scary; especially for those that hold marginalized identities and must work hard to feel safe, supported, and empowered. Through creating a warm and judgement-free environment, Creating Balance aims to help clients move past stigma, shame, and misconceptions about therapy. Creating Balance is not affiliated with organized religion and takes more of a holistic, spiritual approach to help clients overcome internal battles.

Services

Creating Balance is committed to helping clients cultivate greater self-awareness, gain effective coping skills, and build deeper connections with themselves and others. By utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Creating Balance provides individual therapy to support adults (18+) of all genders experiencing anxiety, ADHD, stress, body insecurities, and issues or curiosities regarding sex/kink/alternative relationship dynamics.

Rates & Insurance

In network with the following insurances:

• Aetna

• Aetna Better Health

• Ambetter

• Anthem

• BCBS

• BCBSIL Community Health Plans

• Cigna

• County Care

• Lyra EAP

• Magellan

• Medicaid IL

• Meridian Health

• Meritain Health

• OSCAR

• United

Please be mindful that there are some third party plans through an insurance listed above that Creating Balance may not be in network with. Creating Balance will do a courtesy insurance check prior to working together but it's strongly encouraged that potential clients also call their insurance to check their benefits and obtain information such as copay, deductible, pre authorization needed, and any redetermination/inactive date.

Self pay or out of network

• Initial evaluation session (60 minutes) $170

• Individual psychotherapy (50 minutes) $150

Late cancel/no show: same fee as above

• Late cancel: implemented if the practice is notified less than 24 hours of upcoming appointment

• No show: implemented if the client is not present in session within 15 minutes of the appointment start time .

Accept all major credit/debit cards and HSA/FSA cards.

A superbill can be provided for out-of-network & sell pay clients to submit to their insurance for possible reimbursement.

*We offer a free 10-15 minute phone consultation

FAQ's

I'm hesitant to start- how do I overcome that?

Whether you're new to therapy or starting again, it's completely natural to feel nervous. Therapy is a space for you to develop a relationship with a professional and share details that you may have never shared before so it's important that you take your time when selecting a therapist. Creating Balance is big on client advocacy and will check in with the client multiple times within the first few sessions to ensure that the client feels a compatible fit with the therapist. We strongly encourage clients to make a list of 5-10 questions to ask the therapist during the consultation such as a what is the therapists approach in sessions, are they part of/support (blank) community, and any other appropriate information that feels important for the client to inquire about early on before deciding to work with a therapist.

Do you work with other diagnosis/issues not listed on your website?

Creating Balance believes in therapist working with the population and specialities that they have a strong interest in and feel a higher level of expertise in. We also understand the importance of therapists challenging themselves by working with a different population/topic that's of a newer interest while being sure to not put a client in harms way by taking on a complex situation that requires expertise outside of the therapist's capabilities. Co-occurring diagnosis such as having anxiety and depression is very common so although something may not be listed on the website, please do not hesitate to reach out and we can discuss further to assess if we are an appropriate fit.

Do you offer in person sessions?

At this time, we only operate virtually but we will be sure to inform our clients and update our website if that should change.

Do you offer couples or family sessions?

At this time, we are only offering individual sessions to adults. We will be sure to inform our clients and update our website if that should change.

Ok, I'm ready- how can I contact you?

Please reach out utilizing one of the methods listed at the bottom of the website. We look forward to possibly working with you!

I'm experiencing an emergency- what do I do?

Therapists are not available 24/7, please save the following information and utilize them during a time of crisis until you are able to get in touch with your therapist:

call 911 or go to your local emergency room.

call 988 for suicidal, mental health and/or substance use- related crisis.

Text HOME to 741741 to be connected to a Crisis Counselor via SMS for free offering 24/7 confidential support.

How do I know if I'm healed and no longer need therapy?

Everyone has different definitions and ways to measure being healed. Creating Balance believes that people are constantly growing and healing from something no matter how small or big the impact is. We do believe that there is usually a point for many clients when they feel that they can operate through daily life without needing the ongoing support of a therapist. It's important to remember that different therapists and modalities provide different levels of help and perspectives with certain topics and you may have to work with multiple therapist concurrently or at different times throughout your therapeutic journey to get to a point of feeling as close to healed as possible. The best thing that a client can do is to communicate with their therapist any worries or feelings of getting closer to the end of their current therapeutic journey.