- Engage with you heartfully and mindfully
- Honor who you are, who you have been, and who you are becoming
- Work with you collaboratively to understand you and your situation
- Help you achieve the inner and outer goals that you have set for yourself
- Help you to develop emotional awareness, self-understanding and skillful action
You bring your willingness and commitment to:
- explore your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes.
- make the changes you want in your life
You are 100% responsible for your own process. But together we will create a more functional personal identity/narrative that is conscious, meaningful, integrated and in useful alignment with what you want in life.
What to expect in our sessions?
Our first session will be primarily spent getting to know each other.
Our meeting will begin the process of understanding each other as we develop initial goals and our working contract.
In each session my intention is to help you be truly present, here and now, grounded and aware of your inner self.
In general sessions involve
- checking in
- warming up to a specific focus for the session
- working with this focus
- a closure process
- and possible giving of homework
How long will counseling take?
The duration of your counseling depends on your specific needs and goals.
Sometimes a few sessions may be sufficient to help you gain a skill or help you through a difficult time in your life.
However, if you are looking for a deeper quality of change or growth in your life you will need a longer term commitment to yourself and this process.
What is the difference between short and long term counseling?
In the short term, our work is to help you meet your immediate goals for therapy.
For example, to get through an immediate difficult situation, to explore options about a decision you are contemplating, to help you with current pain or stuckness and reducing your psychological distress.
We all have our strengths, shortcomings, wounds and ways of coping. Together we will sort through what works and doesn’t work for you.
I will both support and challenge you to make the changes you want and choose to make.
In the longer term, our work together is to help you be more fully present and alive; to create a well balanced and successful life based on your values.
Only by being at home in your body, with all your feelings and thoughts, can you be truly present.
Only by claiming what is soulful for you can you feel fully alive.
By loving and accepting all the parts of yourself, with all your feelings and beliefs, past wounds can be healed.
As you experience increased acceptance of yourself and healing of these wounds, past choices can be released along with the shame and the pain.
This allows current choices to be made in alignment with your real self. I believe this is the process and the pathway forward into the life you claim for yourself.
The goals of long term counseling include
- learning self acceptance, self love, and self care
- knowing what you want in relationship and developing relational skills
- developing skills, power and mastery for your life in the world
- increasing self understanding and developing a more effective personal narrative about your place in the world.
If you are looking for an experienced counselor who can skillfully and collaboratively work with you, support you, and challenge you in this way, please contact me at 206.782.1471.