The Counselor: Joshua Pulis, M.S., LCSW
North Oak Cliff Counseling is staffed by licensed therapist, Joshua Pulis, M.S., LCSW. Pulis received his undergraduate degree from Baylor University in 2001 and received his Masters from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2003. Pulis has extensive training and experience working in the fields of child welfare and family violence prevention. After four years at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Pulis was hired as the Director of Programming for the Well Community, a faith-based non-profit serving adults living with severe and persistent mental illness. Pulis has played a key role in designing and implementing the cutting-edge programming for which the Well Community has earned much acclaim. In addition, Pulis is also an adjunct professor of sociology at Dallas Baptist University. At the
present time, he is instructing in the field of social pathology.
Pulis has treated those suffering from disorders such as major depression, generalized anxiety, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive, bi-polar, dissociative identity, and post-traumatic stress. In addition, Pulis has worked with those struggling with addiction, co-dependency, substance abuse and other compulsive behaviors. Pulis also has extensive experience working with victims of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse.
In early 2008, Pulis founded North Oak Cliff Counseling and today focuses on helping
children and adults reach their full potential. Pulis is committed to working with people of all ages to discover greater self-esteem and purpose through encouraging them to change the way they think and behave.
Believing that healthy relationships are critical to individual functioning, Pulis is dedicated to helping couples and families who are in crisis. Pulis works with couples and families to develop and practice generative interactions, effective conflict resolution techniques
and more constructive communication patterns. Personal dissatisfaction is rampant in our society today and Pulis believes this is due in large part to the deterioration in human relationships. According to an old Chinese proverb, "healthy relationships produce happy people."
The Therapeutic Relationship - Pulis believes in the power of what the helping professions call the therapeutic relationship. Building effective rapport between therapist and client is the foundation of any successful intervention. In fact, studies have shown that a majority of individuals report significant improvement after only the first counseling session. Simply knowing that a caring person is dedicated to one's recovery has in itself a healing effect.
In, On Becoming a Person (1961), Carl Rogers writes,"In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?” For this sort of relationship to occur, the therapist must prove genuinely empathic, skilled as an active listener and adept at assessing reality and prescribing truth. When clients trust their therapist and when a therapist's competence justifies such trust, the therapeutic relationship is a powerful force for change.
