What is Counseling?

Counseling, also called therapy or psychotherapy, is a safe place for you to explore your thoughts and emotions and to make the changes that are meaningful for you. Counseling is a unique process for each person, in that together we are able to customize it to fit your goals and needs. Common goals in counseling can look like:

  • Learn about your experience with anxiety and stress and how to best manage it

  • Improve self-esteem to positively impact your relationship with yourself and others

  • Gain confidence to establish healthy boundaries with others

  • Create healthy life balance including self-care routines

  • Build self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-acceptance

  • Learn to acknowledge, accept, and manage both positive and negative emotions to better cope with life’s challenges

woman-in-therapy.jpg

“When we talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.”

Fred Rogers

What You Can Expect

Counseling can help you through a difficult time, provide new perspective, and help you grow.

No matter what you are going through, therapy can offer:

  • A safe, confidential environment

  • Connection and understanding

  • Therapeutic bond with a caring and empathetic professional

  • Ways of finding peace and balance in your life

  • Healthy alternatives to ineffective or harmful ways of coping

  • Relief from unkind self-talk (aka your “self-critic”)

  • A greater understanding of yourself and how you move through the world

Maybe you have had a difficult experience with therapy in the past, and you are hesitant to try again. Maybe you had a great experience, and you are worried about opening up to someone new. Or this may be your first time reaching out for counseling and you are not sure what to expect.

This is what a counseling session with me might look like. Through each session, we will:

  • Process and explore thoughts and emotions to help gain understanding of you and what you are experiencing

  • Use various techniques such as:

    • Talk therapy

    • Walk and Talk

    • Mindfulness

    • Cognitive reframing and challenging

    • Self-compassion

    • Holistic - focus on the whole person

  • Create a plan including coping strategies, new techniques, and behavior changes for you to practice between therapy sessions to help encourage lasting change

Find out more of what it’s like to work with me and in this blog post: ‘What’s It Like to Work With Me?: My Therapy Style.’