I'm Jason Dax Hays. Call me Dax. I was born and raised in this area, having lived in Van Buren, Arkansas all of my life. I have worked in mental health here in Arkansas since 2004 - first as a paraprofessional and then as a Licensed Professional Counselor for Perspectives Behavioral Health Management, LLC . I began my private practice in November 2017. I see people at Stonehaven Behavioral Health and Wellness located in Greenwood, Arkansas. I specialize in counseling adults with anxiety, depression symptoms, and other more chronic disorders and have been doing so via community mental health as a Licensed Professional Counselor since 2011. Please click here for more information about me and how I came to become a therapist.
I aim to help clients find their own inner resources and discover their own power. Depression, anxiety, a personal history of trauma, and other such symptoms can leave one unbalanced and unable to hold down jobs or commit to meaningful relationships. We will target these problems and help you to move forward.
Human beings are known for their ability to bounce back from great hardships and dismay. I can help you reset your course if life has thrown you a curve ball.
Psychotherapy is an exploration of what it means to be you and how we can help you achieve your goals for a better you. Exploring what it means to be you is to me one of the most exciting parts of this journey! How often do any of us really turn our attention toward this? In my opinion, thinking too much in terms of problems and things that may be wrong with us – while beneficial to the extent of defining what we feel needs to change – can often become “more of the same” kind of negative thought process and keep us down on ourselves. Looking forward in terms of solutions rather than problems, I think, is more helpful. Counseling helps you to find the "real you" underneath the anxiety, depression symptoms, or other problems you might be having. Your symptoms are not who you are!
As a part of my collection of therapeutic techniques, I am trained in EMDR (Level II). EMDR is an abbreviation for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Developed initially by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. (pictured above with her famous book Getting Past Your Past) in the late 1980s, it is an evidence-based therapy designed specifically for helping people overcome traumatic events in their lives, but can be used to target other symptoms as well. Targeting anxiety and depression symptoms via this method of counseling helps to get at the underlying causes. I have created a separate page explaining EMDR in more detail here. Please feel free to download a full-color printable brochure by clicking on the button below for more details!
Psychotherapy works by making a space between the therapist and the client receiving therapy toward some predetermined goal for change. What lies within this space? Freedom from judgment, freedom of expression, clarification of ideas, amplification of feelings – these make up the foundation of meaningful change. Many of us have been judged in our lives either by others or by our own selves. Therapy tries to avoid that. There is such a thing as constructive criticism, but therapy is not about that – it is more about you discovering yourself.
Therapy is not me as the therapist giving advice and telling you exactly what to do in life situations. Why is it not this? Because the idea here is to build your own abilities and sense of agency (i.e. willpower). “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
I charge $200 for the initial diagnostic evaluation and $175 per individual counseling session. I offer a 25% discount for self-pay. Currently, I am able to accept the following insurances: AR Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Ambetter, Qualchoice, and AR Medicaid. I also take Arkansas Total Care and Empower (Medicaid PASSEs). Most of the clients I have seen thus far have had their charges completely covered by their respective insurances or otherwise have sometimes paid a small copay.
Click on this picture of a Luna Moth (which was taken in my mom's back yard, actually) to view the first entry of my Rise! psychology blog.