Individual Counseling is for:

•Personal enrichment and empowerment

•Life changes, challenges and stress

•Alleviating and eliminating depression and anxiety

•Coping with with grief, loss, and trauma

•Recovering from addictive behaviors

•Exploring and moving forward with life decisions

•Increasing peace and happiness

•Learning new ways to address difficult feelings, people and situations

How Counseling Usually Works:

•We have a compassionate and honest talk about your current situation, problem, or goals.

•We identify and enhance your current problem-solving skills to help you make some immediate improvement. We do this to alleviate the problem and get you some quick relief—I consider this to be therapeutic first-aid or triage. Hopefully, you’ll walk out of the first session feeling a little more hopeful, strong and prepared, than when you came in.

•We develop goal-oriented strategies and a treatment plan. You tell me what you want. We make a plan together to get you there.

•We examine your patterns of relating to others and yourself to empower you with self-knowledge. Basically, we figure out how you got where you are and what’s been keeping you there.

•We strengthen your ability to identify choices you are making, and enhance your ability to make choices more consciously.

•We discover and reveal your hidden personal resources and strengths. There’s usually a lot of great stuff you bring with you when you walk in the door. We grow those strengths.

•I’ll teach you additional new tools and techniques for building happiness. These can be really simple strategies. These tools can help you change old patterns of behavior that get in your way and make positive new decisions and choices.

•You move forward into the new life you've created and chosen. Your counseling ends.

(Note: If you need touch ups after you finish counseling, you can come in and do a refresher, whenever you need to. I’ll still be here, happy and interested to hear how things are going in your life.)

If you’re feeling a little nervous…

Try not to worry. Most of what happens in counseling makes you feel much better. It isn’t as weird as you might think. You’ll get comfortable pretty quickly. It’s in my business name, after all. I take making it comfortable very seriously.

Along the way in counseling there may be some temporary sadness and anxiety, as we look at your history and the beliefs that get in your way. You may also be a bit uncomfortable while making changes in old patterns that had you stuck. I think of that part as growing pains—much like when you start exercising and your muscles complain about being challenged and stretched. My approach is a gentle introduction of a new routine. It brings long-term results and avoids pushing too hard, too fast. You grow at your own natural pace, as you are ready for it. You'll find it surprising how ready you are!