Your Version Counseling and Wellness Founder and Therapist Gab Adovasio, and her furry and feathered co-counselors, proudly provide a tailored and client-centered approach to mental health services. Having recently celebrated its one-year anniversary Your Version emphasizes an individualized approach which meets clients on their terms through several non-traditional approaches, including art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, walk and talk therapy, and garden therapy to best meet their specific needs and destigmatize mental health services. (Photo by Morgan Ahart)

BELOIT — Your Version Counseling and Wellness offers patients individualized and non-traditional therapy options.

“Doing this setup, we can do a little bit of everything and make therapy not really feel like therapy which is a big goal; especially for some of my younger clients,” said Your Version Founder and Therapist Gab Adovasio.

Adovasio earned her bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethany College in 2016 and her master’s degree from Youngstown State University in 2018, and while studying at Bethany gained firsthand experience serving with community mental health agencies. Through those experiences she saw a need for a more individualized approach to mental health services which inspired her to open her own practice in February 2024.

“In community mental health I felt there was more of an emphasis on numbers. You need to fill your caseload. It needs to be as much as you can handle to bring in as much revenue as possible, and I didn’t feel like the care was as good as it could be. So, opening my own practice and keeping the case load low lets me really know each client,” said Adovasio.

Adovasio said that she wanted a place where client-care was the number one priority and combat the sense of disillusionment community mental health could cause for mental health professionals.

“I wanted to simplify [the process] as much as I could for social workers and therapists to start feeling like this was good work and not just some paperwork heavy chore which it seems like a lot of agencies have turned it into,” said Adovasio.

Adovasio’s emphasis on an individualized plan of care extends beyond maintaining a lighter and more flexible case load to meeting clients where and how they feel comfortable with a range of nontraditional care options including: art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, walk and talk therapy, and garden therapy. She said that these methods help sessions to shake the feeling of conventional therapy and the stigmas and biases that some can feel towards them and allow clients to grow in multiple avenues simultaneously.

“I don’t want therapy to feel like a chore. I don’t want it to be just another appointment. When I was in community mental health it felt like kids coming in were just being dragged there most of the time. Now instead of being in an office doing a worksheet, we’re in the backyard trying to get all the chickens in the coop while he’s communicating to me what he wants me to do,” said Adovasio. “Through doing this we’re working on his communication, working on his leadership, and on working as a team. We could have done that on a piece of paper and made it more formal, but I feel like real learning and change benefit from the hands-on approach and since that’s not an option everywhere it’s definitely a priority.”

Adovasio is certified in eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR), a type of trauma specific training, and described herself as a generalist.

“I tried a couple of times to niche-down but I think of the clients I wouldn’t have on my caseload and how much I love those clients, so I really try to be very generalist in my approach and know a little bit about everything,” said Adovasio.

Adovasio said she enjoys working with younger adults, and that she’s also recently had an increased number of clients ages 65 and over, and in male clients. She also said that while there was a fairly even split more of her clients have never tried therapy prior to scheduling with Your Version, estimating a roughly 60:40 ratio.

“I feel like for so long therapy was so stigmatized. It was ‘you don’t do that, you don’t talk about that,’ but lately it seems there’s been more of a push to at least acknowledge that there’s a problem and to reach out for help,” said Adovasio.

While she said wasn’t certain what had caused the change, that in recent years that stigma had decreased, and counseling was beginning to be viewed as a preventative and developmental tool rather than a reparative one.

“It’s being more accepted, and it’s not seen as much as ‘something is wrong with you, so you have to go to counseling’ it’s more ‘I just want to get better at this’ it doesn’t need to be this big terrible thing happened to me, or I have this big terrible diagnosis. I think that shift of wanting to be better for ourselves and the people around us has made it not be such a negative thing anymore,” said Adovasio.

Adovasio said that she also offers seminars and workshops for schools, clubs, and community organizations tailored to a variety of mental health topics such as suicide prevention; team building; domestic violence, abuse and drug education and prevention; empowerment; and destigmatization of feelings and mental health. She said that these are typically one and a half to two hours long sessions which meet clients on their terms.

Your Version accepts patients aged 4 and up and accepts most common insurance providers as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Your Version also offers telehealth services, family counseling, couples counseling and preventative counseling. Anybody interested in setting up an appointment or for further information call or text 330-443-0355, for further information visit Your Version’s website at www.yourversioncounseling.com.

Adovasio said that she would urge anyone to try counseling and experience the benefits it can offer, even if it isn’t with her. “Even if it’s not here, give therapy a chance. Even if you don’t think anything in your life needs to be discussed go anyway,” said Adovasio.