Holistic Positive Therapy in Chicago
Therapy isn’t only about reducing symptoms or working through what’s difficult. It’s also about creating a life that feels meaningful, connected, and fulfilling. At Balanced Awakening, our approach to Holistic Positive Therapy integrates traditional psychotherapy with principles from positive psychology to support not just relief from emotional distress, but greater well-being, personal growth, and a deeper sense of purpose.
You might be navigating anxiety, depression, burnout, or a difficult life transition. Or perhaps everything looks fine on the outside, but something feels missing. You may be going through the motions, feeling disconnected from yourself, or wondering why the life you’ve worked so hard to build doesn’t feel as satisfying as you expected.
You don’t have to be in crisis to benefit from therapy—and you don’t have to wait until everything is going well to begin flourishing.
Meet Our Positive Psychology Therapists
-
![A woman with short curly hair, glasses, and earrings, smiling and wearing a dark green button-up shirt.]()
Nicole Pratl, MSW
-
![]()
Olivia Palumbo, LPC
-
![]()
Rachel Rood, LCSW
-
![]()
Zana Van Der Smissen, LCSW
-
![]()
Lucy Stock, MA
-
![Headshot of a young woman with long red hair wearing a blue top and a necklace, smiling at the camera against a white background.]()
Dr. Michelle Camacho
Schedule Your 1st Appointment
Therapy Is About More Than Feeling Better
What if feeling better isn’t quite the same as feeling fulfilled?
For many of us, mental health has traditionally been understood in terms of symptoms. We experience anxiety, depression, or emotional distress, seek support, and work toward feeling better. And while reducing suffering is an important part of therapy, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re experiencing a deep sense of well-being.
Research in positive psychology offers a more complete picture. Psychologist Corey Keyes developed the dual continuum model of mental health, which recognizes that mental illness and mental well-being exist on two related but distinct dimensions. In other words, someone can experience mental health challenges while still finding meaning, connection, and fulfillment. And someone who doesn’t meet the criteria for a mental health diagnosis can still feel stuck, disconnected, or unfulfilled.
At Balanced Awakening, our approach to Holistic Positive Therapy embraces both dimensions. We help clients work through emotional challenges while also exploring what makes life feel meaningful, engaging, and genuinely their own.
Because mental health isn’t just about the absence of suffering. It’s also about the presence of well-being.
What Is Holistic Positive Therapy?
Holistic Positive Therapy is an integrative approach to psychotherapy developed at Balanced Awakening that combines evidence-based therapeutic practices with principles from positive psychology. Rather than focusing exclusively on symptoms or challenges, this approach also explores your strengths, values, relationships, sense of purpose, and overall well-being.
Traditional psychotherapy can help you understand and navigate anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship difficulties, and other emotional challenges. Positive psychology adds another dimension by exploring what helps people flourish—not just survive. Together, these perspectives allow therapy to address both the difficulties you’re experiencing and the kind of life you want to create.
This approach recognizes that emotional, psychological, and social well-being are interconnected. Feeling fulfilled isn’t simply about experiencing more happiness or eliminating difficult emotions. It’s also about developing self-acceptance, building meaningful relationships, pursuing personal growth, and feeling connected to something that matters to you.
At Balanced Awakening, Holistic Positive Therapy isn’t about forcing optimism or finding a silver lining in every difficult experience. It’s about creating space for the full range of human emotions while helping you cultivate greater meaning, connection, and fulfillment.
Are You Doing Okay, but Not Really Thriving?
Have you ever looked at your life and thought, I should be happy. So why don’t I feel happier?
Maybe you’re meeting your responsibilities, maintaining relationships, and doing everything you’re supposed to do. From the outside, things seem fine. But internally, you feel disconnected, uninspired, or like you’re simply going through the motions.
In positive psychology, this experience is sometimes described as languishing—a state of diminished mental well-being that can involve feeling stagnant, unmotivated, or disconnected from the things that once felt meaningful.
Languishing isn’t necessarily depression, and it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It simply reflects an important truth: the absence of a mental health diagnosis doesn’t automatically mean you’re flourishing.
Flourishing, on the other hand, involves experiencing a greater sense of well-being across multiple areas of life. It’s not about being happy all the time or having everything figured out. It’s about feeling connected to yourself, your relationships, your values, and the things that give your life meaning.
And here’s the encouraging part: you can work toward greater well-being even while navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, or other challenges. Flourishing and mental health symptoms aren’t mutually exclusive.
At Balanced Awakening, Holistic Positive Therapy creates space to explore both: what’s making life difficult and what might help life feel more meaningful.
What Does It Mean to Flourish?
Flourishing isn’t about achieving a perfect life or feeling happy all the time. It’s about experiencing a sense of well-being across different parts of your life—how you feel, how you relate to yourself, and how you connect with the world around you.
Research on mental well-being identifies three interconnected dimensions of flourishing: emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Each contributes to our overall sense of fulfillment, and each offers opportunities for growth.
-
Emotional Well-Being
Feeling Good Without Having to Feel Good All the Time
Emotional well-being involves experiencing moments of joy, gratitude, contentment, and satisfaction with your life. It doesn’t mean avoiding sadness, anger, or anxiety. Instead, it’s about developing a healthier relationship with your emotions while creating more opportunities for experiences that feel nourishing and enjoyable.
-
Psychological Well-Being
Living With Purpose, Growth, and Self-Acceptance
Psychological well-being is about how you experience yourself and your place in the world. It includes having a sense of purpose, feeling empowered to make choices that reflect your values, embracing personal growth, developing your strengths, and cultivating self-acceptance.
It’s not just about what you accomplish, but whether your life feels meaningful and authentic to you.
-
Social Well-Being
Finding Connection, Belonging, and Community
Social well-being reflects our relationships and sense of connection to something larger than ourselves. It includes feeling supported by others, experiencing a sense of belonging, contributing to your community, and believing that your presence and actions matter.
Flourishing isn’t something we have to achieve alone. Meaningful relationships and connection are essential parts of well-being.
Finding Meaning, Purpose, and Connection
What makes life feel meaningful? It’s a question that can become especially important during periods of transition, uncertainty, burnout, or personal growth.
Meaning doesn’t necessarily come from achieving something extraordinary, discovering one grand purpose, or having all the answers. Often, it emerges through everyday experiences, the relationships we nurture, the values we live by, and the ways we contribute to something beyond ourselves.
Research in positive psychology identifies three important components of meaning: coherence, purpose, and mattering. Together, they offer a framework for exploring what makes your life feel meaningful—and how you might cultivate more of it.
-
Coherence
Making Sense of Your Story
Coherence is the feeling that your life makes sense to you. It involves understanding how your experiences, choices, and relationships fit together—even when life has taken unexpected turns.
In therapy, this might mean reflecting on the chapter of life you’re currently navigating, exploring how past experiences have shaped you, or finding a way to tell your story that feels authentic and compassionate.
An invitation to reflect: If this chapter of your life had a title, what would it be?
-
Purpose
Moving Toward What Matters
Purpose is about having something meaningful to move toward. It doesn’t have to involve a major career achievement, a lifelong calling, or an elaborate five-year plan.
Sometimes, purpose begins with identifying what you value and taking one small step in that direction.
Therapy can help you clarify your values, explore what matters most to you, and make choices that feel more aligned with the person you want to be.
An invitation to reflect: What’s one value you’d like to honor more intentionally in your life right now?
-
Mattering
Knowing That You Make a Difference
Mattering is the sense that your life and actions have significance—that your presence, relationships, and contributions matter.
It might come from supporting a friend, nurturing a relationship, creating something meaningful, mentoring someone, or contributing to your community.
In therapy, we can explore where you already experience mattering and identify opportunities to strengthen that sense of connection and contribution.
An invitation to reflect: When was the last time you felt that your presence made a meaningful difference?
Discovering Meaning in Everyday Moments
Sometimes, identifying your values or finding a sense of purpose can feel overwhelming. You might know that something is missing without being able to name exactly what it is.
Holistic Positive Therapy can help make these questions more approachable through reflection and practical exercises.
For example, your therapist might invite you to think about a few moments from the past month that felt particularly meaningful. They don’t necessarily have to be happy moments. Sometimes, experiences involving vulnerability, connection, or even grief can reveal what matters most to us.
Together, you might explore:
What were you doing, and who were you with?
What made that moment feel significant?
Which of your values were reflected in the experience?
What patterns do you notice across these meaningful moments?
How might you create more opportunities for connection, purpose, or fulfillment?
If recalling specific moments feels difficult, you might even look through photos on your phone or reflect on important decisions you’ve made. Sometimes, our values become clearer when we look at the experiences and choices that have shaped our lives.
The goal isn’t to manufacture happiness or turn every experience into a lesson. It’s to better understand what matters to you and make more room for it in your life.
You Don’t Have to Be Positive All the Time
Let’s clear up a common misconception: positive psychology isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions, forcing yourself to think positively, or finding a silver lining in every painful experience.
Life includes grief, disappointment, uncertainty, anger, and loss. These experiences are part of being human, and they deserve space, compassion, and understanding—not pressure to turn them into opportunities for growth.
At Balanced Awakening, Holistic Positive Therapy recognizes that well-being and suffering can coexist. You can be grieving and still experience meaningful connection. You can struggle with anxiety while building a life that reflects your values. You can be working through trauma while gradually rediscovering a sense of agency, purpose, or belonging.
This doesn’t mean every painful experience needs to teach you something. And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re responsible for thinking your way out of difficult circumstances.
Instead, we believe therapy can hold space for both realities: acknowledging what’s painful while also nurturing what’s meaningful.
Flourishing isn’t a demand to feel better. It’s an invitation to explore what well-being might look like for you, wherever you are in your life.
How Can Holistic Positive Therapy Help?
You don’t have to know exactly what’s missing from your life to begin exploring what might make it feel more fulfilling. Maybe you’re navigating a difficult transition, feeling disconnected from yourself, or questioning whether the goals you’ve been pursuing still reflect what you truly want.
Holistic Positive Therapy can help you address emotional challenges while also exploring your strengths, values, relationships, and opportunities for personal growth. Your therapist will work collaboratively with you to identify what matters most and develop an approach that reflects your individual needs and goals.
Through Holistic Positive Therapy, You Can Work Toward:
Greater self-understanding and acceptance. Develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself and explore the beliefs, expectations, and patterns that shape your experiences.
A stronger sense of purpose. Clarify your values, reconnect with what matters to you, and identify meaningful directions for your life.
More fulfilling relationships. Strengthen your connections, explore your relational needs, and cultivate a greater sense of belonging.
Emotional resilience and flexibility. Build skills for navigating difficult emotions and experiences without feeling pressured to remain positive.
Greater autonomy and confidence. Make choices that reflect your needs and values rather than relying solely on external expectations.
More opportunities for joy and engagement. Rediscover activities, interests, and experiences that bring satisfaction, creativity, and a sense of vitality.
A more meaningful relationship with your accomplishments. Explore the difference between meeting expectations and pursuing goals that genuinely feel important to you.
A greater sense of contribution and mattering. Recognize the ways you make a difference and explore opportunities to connect with something beyond yourself.
There’s no single definition of a flourishing life. What feels meaningful and fulfilling to one person may look entirely different for someone else. Holistic Positive Therapy creates space to explore what well-being means to you—and how you can move toward it in ways that feel authentic, sustainable, and aligned with your values.
Holistic Positive Therapy Videos
Dr. Yang speaks on the power of a daily gratitude practice + how to overcome our inherent negativity bias.
Dr. Yang speaks to movement’s impact on mental health.
Holistic Positive Therapy FAQs
-
Holistic Positive Therapy is an integrative approach to psychotherapy developed at Balanced Awakening. It combines established therapeutic approaches with principles from positive psychology to support both emotional healing and overall well-being.
Rather than focusing only on reducing symptoms, this approach also explores your strengths, values, relationships, sense of purpose, and opportunities for personal growth. The goal is to help you navigate life’s challenges while cultivating a life that feels meaningful, connected, and fulfilling.
-
Holistic Positive Therapy can help you better understand yourself, strengthen your relationships, clarify your values, and develop a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment.
It may be especially helpful if you’re navigating a life transition, experiencing burnout, feeling disconnected from yourself, or wondering why life doesn’t feel as satisfying as you expected.
Your therapist can also help you work through emotional challenges while exploring ways to build greater resilience, self-acceptance, and meaningful connection.
-
Holistic Positive Therapy is psychotherapy, not a separate form of coaching or an alternative to mental health treatment.
What makes our approach distinctive is the intentional integration of positive psychology principles alongside established therapeutic methods.
While some sessions may focus on understanding difficult emotions, changing unhelpful patterns, or processing challenging experiences, others may explore your strengths, values, relationships, and what helps you experience greater well-being.
Both aspects can be part of the same therapeutic process.
-
In positive psychology, flourishing describes a state of greater emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It involves feeling connected to your values, experiencing meaningful relationships, and having a sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Languishing describes a state of lower mental well-being. You might feel stuck, unmotivated, disconnected, or like you’re simply going through the motions—even if you don’t have a mental health diagnosis.
Holistic Positive Therapy can help you explore what might be contributing to those feelings and identify ways to cultivate greater well-being.
-
Yes. Holistic Positive Therapy can incorporate established therapeutic approaches for anxiety, depression, trauma, and other mental health concerns while also exploring the factors that contribute to overall well-being.
Research on the dual continuum model of mental health suggests that mental illness and mental well-being are related but distinct. This means you can experience emotional challenges while also developing greater meaning, connection, and fulfillment.
Your therapist will tailor treatment to your clinical needs, goals, and readiness. Building well-being doesn’t replace appropriate treatment for mental health symptoms—it can complement that work.
-
No. Positive psychology isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions, pretending everything is fine, or forcing yourself to find a silver lining in painful experiences.
At Balanced Awakening, we recognize that grief, uncertainty, anger, and emotional distress are natural parts of being human.
Holistic Positive Therapy creates space for the full range of your experiences while helping you explore opportunities for meaning, connection, growth, and well-being.
You don’t have to feel positive all the time to flourish.
-
Not at all!
You don’t need to be experiencing a mental health crisis—or even identify a specific problem—to benefit from therapy.
Some people seek Holistic Positive Therapy because they’re navigating anxiety, depression, burnout, or difficult life transitions. Others are functioning well but want to experience more meaning, connection, fulfillment, or personal growth.
Therapy can be a place to explore not only what’s difficult in your life, but also what you want to cultivate.
-
Sessions are collaborative and tailored to your individual needs, experiences, and goals.
Your therapist may help you explore emotional challenges, identify personal strengths, clarify your values, or reflect on the relationships and experiences that give your life meaning.
Depending on your therapist’s approach, sessions might incorporate mindfulness, self-compassion, values clarification, strengths-based exercises, or techniques from approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
You don’t need to arrive with a clearly defined purpose or a specific goal. Part of the therapeutic process can be discovering what matters most to you.
-
Holistic Positive Therapy is provided by mental health professionals who integrate positive psychology principles into psychotherapy.
Unlike coaching, psychotherapy can include clinical assessment, diagnosis when appropriate, and treatment of mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and trauma-related difficulties.
While both coaching and therapy may explore personal growth, values, and goals, Holistic Positive Therapy brings these conversations into a clinical therapeutic relationship that can also address emotional distress and mental health concerns.
-
Our therapy rate for the first two sessions is $250. After that, 55 minute sessions are $225.
Our holistic positive therapists are in network with United Healthcare/Optum, BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.
-
We offer both in-person therapy at our Chicago offices and virtual therapy for clients located in Illinois.
Availability varies by therapist, so you can explore individual clinician profiles to find someone whose approach, location, and scheduling options work for you.
-
Yes. Your privacy is an essential part of the therapeutic relationship.
Holistic Positive Therapy sessions are confidential and follow the same professional and legal standards as other psychotherapy services at Balanced Awakening.
Your therapist will explain confidentiality, privacy practices, and any legally required exceptions during the intake process.
What Our Clients Are Saying
-
During our first session Hannah was proactive in creating a plan of action to properly diagnose me and address my concerns. Detailed. Office is beautiful. Love the decor, relaxing ambiance and free tea.
———
-
She was very kind and thorough during intake and the entire office looks like something out of a lifestyle magazine.
———
-
The office is lovely and welcoming, the in-take paperwork helped me prepare for what I wanted to talk about and gave me a starting point.
———
-
Dr. Yang is warm and empathic, and made me feel comfortable from the very beginning.
———
-
Emma has been very supportive through major life changes for me. Her sweet and gentle nature made it easy for me to feel safe to open up to her. I am very grateful for her support and kindness.
———
-
It was my first visit and she made me feel so safe. I opened up right away!
———
Ready to Flourish in Your Own Way?
You don’t have to wait until you’re struggling to begin creating a life that feels more meaningful, connected, and fulfilling. And if you’re navigating anxiety, depression, burnout, or a difficult life transition, you don’t have to put your personal growth on hold until everything feels better.
At Balanced Awakening, our Holistic Positive Therapy approach makes room for both healing and flourishing. Whether you’re looking to reconnect with your values, strengthen your relationships, rediscover a sense of purpose, or simply feel more like yourself, we’re here to help you explore what well-being looks like for you.
You deserve more than simply getting through the day. You deserve the opportunity to build a life that feels genuinely your own.
Not sure which therapist is the right fit? Complete our matchmaking form, and our team will help connect you with someone whose experience, approach, and availability align with what you’re looking for.