Have you heard of this acronym before? EAP stands for Employee Assistance Program, and it is something that your employer may offer as a benefit to all employees. Your employer may have contracted with another company to offer FREE THERAPY SESSIONS (!!!!) to employees. This benefit would be in addition to your regular health insurance. Most EAPs authorize several (typically 3-6) free therapy sessions at no cost to the employee. Your employer is NOT informed of if you use this benefit or not, so it will in no way affect your employment.  “Authorize” might sound sort of scary, but what it means is that the EAP office collects your name, contact info, and a brief description of what you’d like to address in therapy.  Again, your employer DOES NOT KNOW this information!  The EAP office could suggest local providers to you that they partner with, or you can request to see a certain therapist to use those EAP benefits with. After you decide who you want to use the EAP benefits with, the EAP office will send that practice the information they gathered from you, to confirm how many sessions they will cover at no charge to you. 

In our house, we are big fans of the movie “The Greatest Showman”.  The actors, the story line, and oh, the songs!  I have listened to the soundtrack on repeat more times than I am possibly count.  Every time I hear the songs, I can’t help but think about how much I love it!  I love the words, the message of the songs, and the story line too!  As I was watching it one of these most recent times, it occurred to me that there are some amazing life lessons in this movie.