The kinds of concerns that bring a person into counseling can affect all of us – in fact, most people suffer from some kind of emotional or mental health difficulty at some point in their lives.
You may be experiencing troubling or intrusive thoughts, unruly emotions (or lack of emotion), or behaviors that feel like they’re getting out of control. Your relationships may be suffering. You may have a sense that something is very wrong and you want someone to talk to.
But who?
It can be hard to reveal your hopes and fears, even to the people you love. Perhaps especially to the people you love. You may worry they won’t like what they hear, or can’t handle it, or won’t know how to help. You might be afraid they’ll leave you if they knew the truth. Or maybe you’ve tried to talk, but it didn’t work out, and you ended up feeling worse.
The good news is that you don’t have to be alone with this. Talking with a professional counselor can bring clarity, perspective, and hope. Often, the simple act of saying out loud what you normally keep inside can relieve stress and improve your mood. At other times, talking is just the beginning of a series of new moves, experiments and experiences that put you on the road to a more satisfying life.
I take a “process” approach to helping you overcome difficulties. This means that, as we converse, we’ll pay increasingly close attention to subtle changes in your moment-by-moment experiencing as your attention moves within and between topics.
In a careful and detailed way, we’ll explore your stories, your current and past situations; the people, places and things of your life; your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors. I’ll appreciate what you tell me without any judgement. Becoming progressively clearer about your experience — including new, emerging experience that arises during the telling — is highly therapeutic.
In addition, when appropriate, we’ll do active work: In-session experiments of awareness & behavior. These exercises are not “off the rack,” but are tailored directly to your individual needs. This experimentation can shift your perceptions, feelings, and behavior in novel, helpful directions.
At a session’s end, clients regularly tell me how significant and important it has been for them to simply be heard and understood. They’re surprised at how powerful and transformative the active work can be. Through acceptance, support and greatly heightened awareness, they are able to go further, understand their situation better, try new things, and get closer to their ideal life.
You can manage the challenges you face. Give me a call, so we can work together to get you back on track.