Ready to improve your relationship with video games?
Powered Up® can help.
Significant decrease in recreational screen time
Increased awareness of emotions and utilization of coping mechanisms
Improved interpersonal communication and relationships
Development of a balanced lifestyle that incorporates gaming in a healthy manner along with other diversified activities
What is Powered Up?
The Powered Up Program offers individual & family counseling sessions with a licensed clinician, access to our online course, individualized assessments, and handouts. Counseling focuses on addressing addictive and compulsive gaming behavior to help clients achieve a healthy, balanced relationship with gaming.
Therapeutic Techniques
The Powered Up Program utilizes evidence–based therapeutic techniques tailored to treating problematic gaming behavior. Our counseling aims to promote healthy gaming behaviors while also seeking to reduce negative behaviors, address co–occurring mental health concerns such as depression and anxiety, and teach healthy coping mechanisms to address anger outbursts and frustration caused by gaming.
The Powered Up Program incorporates therapeutic techniques from
- Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy
- Solutions Focused Therapy
- Family Systems Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy
- among others
Clinical Counseling Services
Individual Counseling
The Powered Up Program offers eight individual counseling sessions with a licensed clinician, access to our online course, individualized assessments, and handouts.
Counseling focuses on addressing addictive and compulsive gaming behavior to help clients achieve a healthy, balanced relationship with gaming.
Core Clinical Focus
Psychology of Video Games
Understand the “why” behind problematic gaming
Pillars of a Balanced Life
The relationship between gaming and sleep, nutrition, and overall physical health.
Diversified Activities
How do you find other activities to engage in
Managing Stress & Emotions
Recognizing and managing emotional triggers for problematic gaming
Social and Relationship Skills
Fostering meaningful connections both online and offline.
Creating Healthy Boundaries
Practical strategies for setting and enforcing limits.
Family Counseling
The Powered Up Program for families offers support for families impacted by compulsive gaming. The program includes eight family counseling sessions with a licensed clinician, access to our Powered Up Parent & Powered Up Player courses for family members, and specialized assessments and resources.
Counseling focuses on improving communication, setting healthy boundaries, and fostering a balanced family relationship with gaming.
Benefits
Collaboration
Working with a clinician fosters collaborative goal–setting between family members, ensuring that boundaries and solutions are established together and respected by everyone.
Accountability
The structured sessions and shared goals provide essential external accountability necessary for maintaining new healthy habits and consistency.
Individual Online Courses
The Powered Up Program offers two self–paced online courses for both parents and gamers.
The courses include personalized assignment feedback, 8 module course, & health/at–risk behavior education with an emphasis on mental health, wellness, and healthy gaming.
Powered Up Player
The Powered Up Player course is designed for kids to find balance with their gaming. This program helps kids and teens find ways for video games to be a healthy part of their lives rather than causing problems.
Powered Up Parent
The Powered Up Parent course is designed for parents of gamers to help learn practical steps to improve their child’s gaming behaviors, better understand their child’s video games, and help reduce blow-ups around video games.
Educational Presentations
School Presentation
Our one–time school presentations focus on problematic gaming behaviors, such as excessive screen time or gaming disorder, and educate students on developing a healthy, balanced relationship with video games.
These presentations aim to foster critical thinking about digital habits. and promote positive screen–life management and overall mental wellness.
Benefits
Education on Problematic Gaming Behaviors
Helping students to recognize when gaming is and is not a problem and how gaming can impact their mental health.
Improving Awareness of Gaming Habits
Placing a focus on having each participant reflect on their own gaming behaviors and how to apply healthy coping techniques to their own lives.
Practical Steps for Improving Gaming Behavior
An emphasis on promoting techniques that aid in reducing negative behavior, anxiety, and depression (amongst other mental health concerns).
Parent Presentation
Our one–time parent presentations are designed to educate parents on the warning signs of problematic gaming and how to set healthy limits with their children.
These presentations offer parents helpful strategies to learn practical steps to improve their child’s gaming behaviors, manage gaming–related outbursts, and build confidence in having constructive conversations with their children about video games.
Benefits
Enhance Video Game Knowledge & Awareness
Emphasis is placed on educating parents on specific risk factors that can lead to disordered gaming and the various motivations behind problematic gaming behaviors.
Healthier Conversations
Provide parents with helpful techniques on how to have constructive conversations with their children about video games. Prioritizing collaboration over rigid rule setting.
Develop Involvement Strategies
Fostering discussions about the positive impact of involvement and how parents can play a positive role in their children’s gaming lives.
Professional Training
The one–time professional training offered by the Powered Up Program takes a “train–the- trainer” approach to provide clinicians with the clinical toolbox necessary to work with individuals and families struggling with problematic gaming concerns.
These presentations focus on providing professionals with the knowledge about the psychology of gaming and gaming behavior, how to identify and screen for problematic gaming, and various therapeutic techniques used to treat problematic gaming-related behaviors.
Benefits
Education on Screening & Assessment Tools
Providing information on the latest screening and assessment tools that are currently being used to identify problematic gaming & gaming disorder.
Learn New Clinical Techniques
Explore evidence–based therapeutic techniques from Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Motivation Interviewing, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (and more), all aimed at treating problematic gaming behaviors.
Support from Licensed Clinicians
Powered Up is offered by Matt Missar as a program of The Better Institute.
Matt Missar LCSW, IGDC
Matt Missar values working with individuals of all ages and specializes in working with younger individuals regarding stress, anxiety, and problematic gaming. As a former athlete and basketball coach, Matt understands the impact that mental health can have on athletic performance and vice versa. Through Back in the Game, Matt has worked with athletes and teams to help them reach their sports performance goals. Matt utilizes the six core mental skills of Back in the Game to help athletes develop mental strength and improve their athletic performance.
How to Get Started
Contact
matt@betterinstitute.com
