Integrated Behavioral Health
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Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Integrated Behavioral Health, Psychologist, 1120 Delaware Street. Suite 110, Denver, CO.
At Integrated Behavioral Health we provide evidence-based, collaborative care so patients and families can move closer to living a life in line with their values. Integrated Behavioral Health provides psychological therapy services, specializing in helping children and families overcome and cope with chronic medical conditions in the Denver, CO area.
06/25/2026
It is one of the most common friction points in a relationship: one partner thinks the other is running a military barracks, while the other partner thinks their spouse is running a unstructured free-for-all.
The result? You fall directly into the Polarization Trap.
The more lenient one parent becomes to protect the child’s feelings, the stricter the other parent feels forced to become to prevent total chaos. You end up playing an exhausting game of Good Parent / Bad Parent, the kids learn exactly who to ask for a quick “yes,” and your relationship takes a massive hit.
In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), we recognize that this isn’t actually an argument about bedtime, chores, or screen-time rules.
Underneath the heated debates is almost always a deeper, unspoken attachment fear:
•Am I completely alone in carrying this family’s mental load?
•Do you respect my perspective, or do you think I’m failing?
•Are we still a team, or have we become opponents?
How to exit the loop tonight:
✨ Step 1: Stop debating the rule. Take the chore list off the table for five minutes.
✨ Step 2: Voice the primary vulnerability. Address the attachment need instead of the behavioral symptom.
✨ Step 3: Try this script: “When we don’t present a unified front, I feel incredibly isolated and overwhelmed by the responsibility. I don’t need us to agree on every minor detail, but I really need to know we are a team.”
When you speak to the vulnerability, your partner can drop their defenses and actually step in to support you. You don’t need a perfect, 100% unified front on every rule to maintain a secure attachment with your kids. Agree on the top 33%, and let the rest go. ⚓
💬 Are you the “Structure Parent” or the “Flex Parent” in your relationship? Let us know in the comments!
Want to align with your partner? Comment “WORKBOOK” to grab your Free Parenting Workbook! 🎁✨
You walk through the door or sit down after the kids finally fall asleep, and your spouse collapses onto the couch and says: “I am completely at my breaking point. The kids have been pushing every single boundary all afternoon, and I feel like a terrible parent.”
As logical adults, our biological default is to play the Consultant. We want to analyze the data, spot the operational flaw, and offer a practical strategy: “Well, tomorrow we need to strip away their privileges,” or “You need to be firmer when you say no.”
But offering premature solutions during a stress decompression is an act of emotional invalidation.
When your partner is venting about the weight of the family mental load, they do not need a business consultant. They need a safe harbor. When you immediately pivot to “fixing,” their nervous system registers it as a critique—as if you are saying, “You handled this poorly, and here is how to do it right.”
The Stress-Reducing Conversation. Commit to a 20-minute decompression huddle tonight using these strict parameters:
✨ 1. Align against the stressor: The kids’ behavior or the day’s chaos is the external enemy. You and your partner are entirely unified against it.
✨ 2. Lock up your advice: Unless your spouse explicitly asks, “What do you think I should do?”, do not offer a single piece of troubleshooting.
✨ 3. Focus on validation: Your goal is to make your partner feel entirely seen in their exhaustion. Try: “That sounds like an absolute nightmare of an afternoon. I am so sorry you had to carry that by yourself.”
When you offer a soft, non-judgmental landing space for your partner’s stress, you lower their overall cortisol levels. A regulated partner is a resilient parent.
💬 Comment “NEWS” to join our weekly newsletter community and get our concrete marital alignment toolkits delivered instantly for free! 🎁✨
Identifying, naming, and regulating emotions is a skill — and it has to be explicitly taught. 💙
Kids don’t just figure this out on their own. And if you have a boy, it’s worth asking yourself: am I teaching him this as actively as I would if he were a girl? Or is there a quiet pull to tell him to just rub some dirt on it and move on?
Because the boys who never learn to name what they’re feeling don’t stop having feelings. They just run out of road for them eventually.
Dr. Stephanie Bono, licensed psychologist and founder of Evergrow Therapy here in Denver, joins this week’s episode of Kids These Days to talk about what it really takes to raise emotionally healthy boys. Link in bio to listen. 🎧
My dad recently gave me his old Marine Corps yearbooks from when he was a drill instructor. Then my mom found letters — the ones she and my dad wrote to each other while he was stationed in Korea.
I’ve read some of hers. I still haven’t been able to read his.
Because here’s the story underneath it all: when my dad came home from deployment, I didn’t recognize him. He was a stranger to me.
Not long after, he retired. Twenty-two years of career, and he walked away from it to put me and my sister first.
I don’t remember any of that. What I remember is everything after — a dad who showed up for absolutely everything. I cannot think of a single thing he ever missed.
Doing this work now, I think about it differently.
Attachment isn’t built in the big moments. Not the homecoming, not even the decision to retire. It’s the thousands of small, unremarkable moments after — the showing up, again and again, until a kid knows without question that you’re not going anywhere.
Happy Father’s Day to every dad doing that quiet, consistent work. Especially mine. ♥️
↓ Tag a dad who never missed a thing.
06/19/2026
When an adult experiences a major loss, disruption, or traumatic event, they usually have the language to express it: “My world feels upside down right now, and I am deeply hurting.”
But children do not possess the neural architecture or the emotional vocabulary to decode that level of internal pain. Instead, they speak in behavioral code.
As a specialist in childhood trauma and grief, Dr. Tali Burger works with families to help them understand that when a child’s heart is breaking, their distress almost always leaks out sideways through their actions and their physical bodies.
If your family has been through a major shift, loss, or stressful season, here are the 4 Stealth Symptoms of childhood distress to look out for:
😡 1. Sudden Irritability: Unexplained aggression, intense defiance, or a razor-thin fuse over tiny inconveniences.
🔄 2. Behavioral Regression: Sudden bedtime dependency, baby-talk, potty accidents, or intense separation anxiety that wasn’t there before.
🤕 3. Physical Somatization: Chronic stomachaches, headaches, or extreme lethargy with no medical explanation.
🛡️ 4. Hyper-Vigilance: Becoming obsessively perfectionistic or overly compliant as a desperate attempt to control an unpredictable environment.
When these symptoms appear, our parental default is often to step in with stricter behavioral consequences. But a traumatized or grieving nervous system doesn’t need a punishment—it needs reassurance.
The Shift: Move from “Why are you acting out?” to “I see how heavy this is, and I’ve got you.” Lower the daily demands, maximize predictability, and hold space for the messy behavior without joining the chaos.
You don’t have to navigate these heavy chapters alone.
💬 Comment “NEWS” to join our community and get access to our free Connection Toolkit. 🎁🤍
This one is for the dads doing the work. 💙
Bryce Giron Mathern is a therapist and dad coach in Denver who works exclusively with fathers — and he’s honest about something a lot of people won’t say out loud: it IS harder for dads. Not because dads don’t care, but because so many were never taught how to tune into their own emotional world.
The work isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about paying more attention to yourself — so you have more to give your kids.
Full episode is live now — link in bio. 🎧
06/18/2026
We’ve all been there. The juice spills, or your child yells “You’re mean!” and suddenly, your chest tightens, your temper flares, and you feel an overwhelming urge to fight back or completely flee the room.
Logically, you know it’s just a standard childhood phase. But physiologically? You feel like you are under attack.
As a trauma-informed practice, we look at these moments through the lens of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR shows us that our nervous systems store old, unprocessed receipts.
When your child screams or rejects a boundary, it doesn’t just register as a parenting inconvenience. It actively pokes a historical memory from your own childhood—a time when you felt helpless, criticized, unseen, or emotionally unsafe.
When you find yourself screaming at your kids to stop screaming, you aren’t reacting to the present moment. Your internal alarm system has confused a current inconvenience with an old emotional emergency. You’ve left your adult self behind and entered the storm.
The EMDR-Based Strategy: Dual Awareness
1. Plant your feet: The second you feel your body red-line, physically press your feet into the floor to ground yourself in the current room.
2. Hold two timelines: Force your brain to acknowledge two opposing realities simultaneously.
3. Run the script: Tell yourself: “I am a safe adult in the present day. My child is just having a hard time, they are not trying to destroy me. I am safe.”
Healing your own triggers isn’t about being perfect; it’s about tapping the brakes on your trauma response so you can act as the anchor your child needs, rather than joining their storm.
Want to break the cycle of generational reactivity?
Comment “NEWS” to join our community and get our real-world co-regulation tools delivered straight to your inbox!
High expectations AND deep connection. You actually need both. 🎙️
Bryce Giron Mathern, dad coach and therapist here in Denver, breaks down the framework that changes everything about how we show up as parents.
Drop the limits → passive parenting.
Drop the connection → authoritarian parenting. Hold both → that’s where the magic is.
This Father’s Day episode is one you won’t want to miss — link in bio to listen. 🎧
When you become parents, the focus of your relationship naturally shifts from romance to operations. You become co-managers of an enterprise. You talk about grocery lists, daycare bills, behavioral strategies, and sports schedules.
But underneath the heavy operational machinery of parenting, your emotional security requires a completely different type of maintenance.
In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), developed by Dr. Sue Johnson in Hold Me Tight, we know that adult love is an attachment bond. Underneath every single fight about who left the dishes in the sink or who forgot to pack the school lunch, our nervous systems are asking our partners three core questions: the A.R.E. Questionnaire.
Let’s break down what your attachment system is tracking tonight:
✨ A - Accessibility: Can I get through to you? When I am drowning in the chaos of this family, will you put down your phone, look at me, and show me that I can still get your full attention?
✨ R - Responsiveness: Can I trust you to tune in to my emotions? When I say I am completely at my breaking point, do you dismiss my stress, or do you step in to soothe my nervous system and share the load?
✨ E - Engagement: Do you value me? Even when parenting has left us completely exhausted, do I still feel safe knowing that you choose me, that you admire me, and that we are locked in this village together?
The Exercise to try tonight:
Once the final bedroom door is closed and the house is quiet, step out of “manager mode.” Skip the conversation about tomorrow’s schedule for fifteen minutes.
Look at your partner and practice radical attachment vulnerability. Try saying: “We have been working so hard for the kids lately, and I miss you. Do you feel like I’ve been emotionally responsive and present for you this week?”
Protect the bedrock of your family. A secure marital attachment is the ultimate safety net your kids need to thrive. ⚓🤍
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1120 Delaware Street. Suite 110
Denver, CO
80204
Opening Hours
| Monday | 8am - 7pm |
| Tuesday | 8am - 7pm |
| Wednesday | 8am - 7pm |
| Thursday | 8am - 7pm |
| Friday | 8am - 7pm |