Center for Balanced Living

09/16/2026

You do not have to wait until things are unbearable to ask for help.

Support can begin when something feels harder than it should, when you are tired of carrying it alone, or when you simply know you need a place to sort through what is happening.

Permission granted.

Dr. Serravalle
Center for Balanced Living

09/13/2026

Tell us what you think of Dr. Z’s discussion with Dr. Serravalle about her upcoming book.

09/13/2026

Two clinicians can evaluate the same person. One says ADHD. The other says no.

Sometimes that disagreement is legitimate. But a twenty-minute appointment with a checklist and a comprehensive evaluation are not two equivalent opinions. They are two different quantities of information.

Before scheduling an ADHD evaluation, there are four questions worth asking. The last answer may tell you the most about what you are paying for.

Read the new Make It Make Sense article:
https://balancedlivingde.com/blogs/balanced-living-blog-make-it-make-sense/adhd-diagnosis-second-opinion

Center for Balanced Living provides holistic, trauma-focused therapy and psychological evaluations for adults, teens, and families in Delaware. Located in Townsend and serving the MOT area. Learn more now: www.balancedlivingde.com

09/11/2026

Most parents do not arrive at an evaluation because a form came home from school. They arrive because of a hundred small moments that do not add up, and the pickup line is where a lot of those get replayed.

An ADHD and executive functioning evaluation is a structured attempt to answer four questions.

What is the actual profile of attention, working memory, processing speed and executive control.

What else could produce this same picture, and has each of those been ruled out rather than assumed.

Where is the gap between what is being asked of this child and what is currently in place around them.

What specifically changes at school and at home on the basis of the findings.

A rating scale flags a concern. The evaluation is what separates ADHD from anxiety, from a language-based learning difference, from sleep, and from a child bright enough to have compensated until the demands rose.

Details are on the site under ADHD and Executive Functioning Evaluations. Link in the comments.

09/10/2026

Getting the match right is the first clinical decision.

Before the treatment plan and before the modality, there is a question that decides most of what follows: who are you actually sitting with. It is also the reason a lot of people never make the call. Not doubt about therapy. Not knowing who is on the other side of the door.

So every week we are introducing one of them, in their own words.

Starting here, and then getting out of the way.

Dr. Serravalle is not currently accepting new individual therapy clients. If you are looking for a fit, reach out and ask about the clinical team's availability. That is a low stakes conversation, and you are allowed to ask questions before committing to anything.

09/08/2026

Nobody has to explain it well on the phone.

The first call at Center for Balanced Living runs about fifteen minutes, and most of it is us listening. You do not need a diagnosis, a theory, or the right words. A good share of people open with some version of I am not even sure this is a therapy thing.

Three things are happening in those fifteen minutes. We are working out what you are actually dealing with, in plain terms. We are working out whether it sits inside what this practice does well. And we are working out which of our clinicians is the right match for it, because match is a clinical variable and not a customer service one.

Sometimes the answer is that someone else is the better fit, and we will say so and tell you where to look. Getting that answer in fifteen minutes is worth a great deal more than getting it in four months.

If you have been drafting this call in your head for a while, you can stop drafting it.

What would you want to know before you picked up the phone? Ask it here and I will answer it.

Townsend, Delaware.

09/07/2026

We took the team out for an end of summer dinner, and the idea behind it was community.

That word gets used loosely in this field. Usually it means the people who live around you, or the people who come through your door. There is a third meaning we take seriously. Community is also the team you build, and the people you choose to stand next to while you do difficult work.

This is not a sentimental point. Continuity is one of the strongest predictors of whether a person finishes a course of treatment, and continuity depends on clinicians who are still here in a year. A practice where people are worn thin and cycling out is not a neutral setting for care. It is a variable in the outcome.

Today is a decent occasion to say plainly that this work is labor. It asks something of the people who do it, every week, and a practice that will not look at that cost is not protecting its clients, it is postponing a problem.

So we work on it all year rather than once in August. We check in on each other. We say out loud what the work costs. We make room for the people doing it to be people.

Grateful for this team.

Center for Balanced Living, Townsend, Delaware.

09/06/2026

Nobody's first session starts with therapy.

It starts with a form, a chair, and someone asking what brought you here. That is it. You will not be asked to explain your whole life in fifty minutes, and nothing gets decided that day.

The first session is really one question, and it is not about you. It is whether this is the right room, and the right person, for the thing you came in with. Sometimes the answer is no, and that is a useful answer to get in an hour rather than in four months.

You are allowed to come and find out.

Center for Balanced Living, Townsend, Delaware.

09/05/2026

Most people call about testing. Almost nobody is really calling about tests.

They call because something is not adding up and they want to know what it is. Answers. A guidance. A map.

The first hour is a conversation, not a test. Nothing is forced. We talk about what is going on, what an evaluation can and cannot tell you, and what the days would actually look like. The question we set out to answer is yours, not ours. You get to decide what it is.

And assessment is not only a search for what is wrong. Sometimes the finding is what you are unusually good at, and how hard that strength has been working to cover something else. That is worth knowing too.

None of it starts with a test. It starts with a question and answer session, and registration goes through the office. Send a message or call and we will get you on the list and tell you when the next one is.

Evaluations for children, teens, and adults. Center for Balanced Living, Townsend, Delaware.

09/04/2026

The first ten minutes of a first session are not what most people brace for.

Nobody is going to ask you to start at the beginning. Most people cannot, and it is not a useful place to start anyway. A life told in order is not the same as a life understood, and the beginning is usually the part that has been told the most times and examined the least.

The question is smaller and stranger than that. What made this the week you called?

Not what happened to you. What made it this week, rather than a week in March, or next spring. Something changed, or something ran out. Someone said something. A pattern you had been managing stopped being manageable. Whatever the answer is, it is almost always closer to the actual work than the history is.

People are often surprised by how ordinary it feels. There is no couch, no verdict, and nobody writing quietly while you talk to the ceiling. It is a conversation with someone whose job is to notice what you are not saying yet.

What would you want to know before a first session? Ask it here and we will answer it, plainly and without a pitch.