What is Counseling?
Counseling (aka Therapy, Psychotherapy, or Talk Therapy) is the process of talking with a trained professional to deal with thoughts, behaviors, symptoms, stresses, goals, past experiences, and other areas that can be making it hard for you to live your best life. Talking about personal issues can be tough, but it can help to overcome problems in your life. It can also offer an emotional release and a sense of really being heard, understood, and supported.
What can counseling help with?
Counseling can help you to feel stronger in the face of challenges, change behaviors that hold you back, look at ways of thinking that affect how you feel, heal pains from the past, build relationship skills, figure out your goals, strengthen your self-confidence, cope with symptoms, handle strong emotions like fear, grief or anger, and enhance your problem-solving skills
What is counseling like?
The first session is all about getting to know you. It includes some paperwork, discussing key concepts like confidentiality, and beginning the assessment process. This includes the reason for coming to counseling, what you hope to accomplish, your history (personal, family, counseling, etc), and what daily life looks like. In the next session, we will work to refine your goals into a specific plan for our work together, including short- and long-term goals. Future sessions focus on those working toward these goals, and, over time, they can be updated, changed, expanded or added to as our work progresses.
How often do I go?
The frequency of sessions is determined based on the goals for counseling and the individual needs of the client. We recommend new clients meet bi-weekly or weekly to help build a strong, collaborative relationship and then adjusted as counseling progresses.
How long is a session?
A standard individual counseling session is 45-50 minutes long. An initial intake/assessment session lasts 75-80 minutes. Couples/Relationship counseling sessions are 75-90 minutes each
