Why Use Counseling?
How Can Counseling Help?
Asking these questions helps determine a rational starting point:
- Have I tried changes on my own or with other therapists and they failed?
- Have I acted in problematic ways that I never intended?
- Have I lived in ways that cause my problems to persist?
- Have I been experiencing intense shame and regret that interferes with life?
- Have I been experiencing deep sadness and depression that interferes with life?
- Have I been experiencing anxiety and worry that interferes with life?
- Have I been confused, pushing people away?
- Has someone I love encouraged me to seek counseling?
Motivations for Counseling
- Anxiety and Depression
- Grief, Loss and Bereavement
- Managing Stress and Change
- Family, Parenting and Divorce
- Anger Education and Management
- Relationship Aggression and Abuse
- Behavioral and Substance Addictions
- Phases of Life and Developmental Change
- Academics, Education, Employment, Career, Finances
Premises and Purposes of Counseling
- Affirms as self-evident that people are generally healthy, seeking wisdom, positive change and maturity
- Brings ways of learning, helping to improve emotional, mental, relational and spiritual growth and wellbeing
- Helps develop greater understanding of the nature of the mind, and integrating learned experience in life
- Respects people as possessing natural, divine drives towards growth, learning and flourishing as human beings
- Teaches greater understanding of relationships between cognition, perception, behavior and emotion
Cultivating a Healthy Mind
- The Human Condition: To one degree or another, deep in our souls, we desire essentially the same from life: love, respect, happiness, a sense of fairness and justice, a sense of well-being, a sense of purpose and value, and the feeling of being connected to something substantial, lasting, secure and sacred. Likewise, as certain as this is, we may misperceive that our experiences in life fall short of the expectations we hold for a rightful share at all times. Just as certain, we balk at accepting this reality. Effective Counseling begins in with the appreciation of our Human Condition.
- Language matters: The words ‘Counseling’ ‘Psychotherapy’ and ‘Therapy’ are often conflated, used interchangeably. These are important distinctions to consider:
- Counseling is a practice of helping people make concrete decisions and plan practical actions to improve their well-being, resolve crises, prevent and alleviate distress and difficulty with adjustments, and support capacities and abilities to function in life.
- Psychotherapy, or psychological Therapy, is the application of treatments to reduce symptoms of mental or emotional disorders, or of related bodily ills by psychological means. Both Counseling and Psychotherapy serve purposes of assisting people in modifying their perceptions, behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and other personal characteristics. There can be an expectation therapists will ‘do something’ while the specific details and exact workings of the ‘something’ may seem opaque, nebulous, esoteric, vague.
- Assuming people exist in a state of being generally unwell, the words “Therapy” and “Psychotherapy” refer to healing by treatment aiming to cure injury or illness. This is the medical model. This model of presumptive disease lends to over-pathologizing common human life experiences of ordinary pain and suffering. Perceiving life this way can inhibit growth and development towards natural flourishing in life. Compassionate counseling naturally regards all people as miraculous, essentially whole, healthy and capable, despite common ordinary human experiences of pain and suffering.
