Expectations for Counseling
What Actually Happens in Counseling?
What Does Counseling Look Like?
Counseling usually begins by meeting each week to get started, then after a number of initial sessions to either continue weekly, biweekly, intermittently or finish and move on, depending on your purposes and needs for counseling, and relative degree of difficulty establishing changes sought through counseling. Your own efforts in learning and growing through applying changes in your habits of thought, perception, interpretation and behavior are necessary for counseling to work for you. Different people, and different problems, take different measures of time for satisfactory change.
Counseling sessions are meetings of engaged one-on-one focused conversation, assessment, evaluation, investigation, coaching and learning through psychoeducation. mere’s the jargon: my approach integrates conventional models of psychological counseling principles based upon traditional psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, control-mastery and nature-based ecopsychology theoretical orientations.
What does this mean, exactly? It means we will be talking and learning about a lot of different things about your mind and personality and how they both work. We will go through the basic structure of the mind and personality from the perspective of classical, foundational psychology, learning about the personality, Id, Ego and Superego, the powerful primary and secondary psychological defensive mechanisms, learning to recognize and adaptively alter cognitive distortions, habits of thought and perception, and learning to understand how your central nervous system functions in surprisingly natural restorative ways. This means we will be investigating and identifying the nature of your mind, memories, beliefs and behaviors.
Counseling Indoors / Counseling Outdoors
Combining counseling with nature and movement outdoors can help people feel more open, find new perspectives and understanding, while connected with the outside world, and generate a sense of belonging to something true and great. Outdoor counseling falls under the umbrella of ecotherapy, a broad term that includes activities as varied as equine therapy and outings like wilderness and adventure therapy. During the pandemic, while many therapists moved online, others held sessions outside, seeking a safer way to meet in person.
We will meet in person for counseling sessions at my comfortable office in Half Moon Bay, and when deemed appropriate, for ‘in-nature’ counseling sessions outdoors near Half Moon Bay, such as Cowell-Purisima Coastal Trail, Half Moon Bay Coastal Trail and Fitzgerald Marine Reserve County Park.
You may have other counseling goals relative to your situation, these are important to me as well. We discuss your goals in our initial phone call and throughout sessions, working them into ongoing treatment.
Contact me if you have specific questions as it relates to treatment and what you can expect from the process.
Philosophy of Counseling
As each and every person is individual and unique. My approach as a mental health professional is conventional, conversational, warm and realistic, politically nonpartisan with clinical neutrality. My approach is intended to cultivate a positive, therapeutic working relationship with you. This approach is therapeutically and realistically collaborative. It begins with the mindset that you already hold expertise on knowing yourself, you are stronger than you may think, and you do understand what is best for yourself.
My role is to serve the enhancement of your self-knowledge, with useful psychological perspectives and interpretations, to teach relevant self-care and self-management practices, to facilitate positive habit change, and to provide you with psychological education from my professional experience and knowledge base.
Each and every one of us is a miracle, an amazing human being. Each person has the life force within, the innate propensity towards wholeness, growth and healing. Counseling can aid these inner forces through better understanding and integrating life’s obstacles, and choosing which actions you will apply to digest, pass through or to clear away obstacles from your path.
Ethical Counseling
Effective, ethical professional counseling practices:
Ethical, clinically sound counseling services promote insight, intelligence, resilience, and long-term personal growth, within the principles of an established theoretical framework, scope of service and experience, professional boundaries and ethical standards.
Life can be difficult, painful, and unfair:
Not all distress indicates pathology, and not all discomfort requires immediate resolution or affirmation of a single aspect of identity. This clinical approach seeks to understand the full context of the client’s life, rather than maintaining a narrow focus on one facet of experience or self-concept.
Counseling from a whole-person perspective recognizes that emotional, psychological, developmental, relational, spiritual and environmental factors all contribute to an individual’s experiences and challenges, engaging with the belief that meaningful growth occurs through:
● Honest self-reflection
● Increased personal insight
● Skill development
● Strengthened relationships
● Addressing underlying and root causes of distress
Professional Counseling Does Not Involve Collusion with Clients:
Counselors are ethically bound to avoid colluding with clients—unconsciously agreeing with, enabling, or validating a client’s dysfunctional behaviors, distorted self-view, or avoidance of difficult issues. While therapists aim to be supportive, overidentification can lead to collusion, which stalls progress and disrupts the therapeutic alliance.
What Collusion Looks Like:
Collusion occurs when a therapist unknowingly acts as an accomplice to a client’s unconscious defenses or destructive patterns, rather than helping them change, including:
- Validating Distorted Self-View: Agreeing with a client’s harsh self-criticism (e.g., confirming “I am a bad person”).
- Overidentification: Taking a client’s side against others without fostering perspective, such as agreeing with a client’s distorted view of a partner.
- Rescuing: Protecting the client from experiencing painful emotions or taking responsibility for their actions.
- Avoiding Difficult Topics: Reluctance to discuss trauma or challenging, uncomfortable topics to keep the therapy “safe”.
Why Collusion Occurs:
Collusion often stems from the therapist’s own countertransference—unresolved emotions or vulnerabilities that are triggered by the client. It can also occur in early stages to build rapport, but it hinders long-term growth and can cause premature termination of therapy.
How Therapists Avoid Collusion:
Instead of colluding, ethical therapy involves:
- Challenging Constructively: Holding up a mirror to the client to help them see their patterns, not acting as an echo chamber.
- Supervision: Utilizing clinical supervisors to identify and work through countertransference.
- Maintaining Boundaries: Keeping a professional, non-judgmental stance that promotes accountability and self-awareness.
If you feel your therapist is “too nice” and only agrees with you, it might be worth exploring whether they are offering support or participating in collusion.
Getting Started: Next Steps
- Contact Kelly and schedule a free 15-minute phone call to discuss treatment and goals
- Schedule the first session