Unexpected challenges can derail your life.
“I sure didn’t see this coming…”
“Why is my life always such a struggle?”
“It feels like every time I start to get my life on track, something slams into me and knocks me off the rails.”
Each challenge is unique – but still a challenge.
I hear many expressions from clients about problems and challenges that they want to address.
What is your version?
Life has a way, sooner or later, of bloodying all of us, even those whose lives may have seemed privileged or charmed in the beginning.
Counseling is about facing those challenges.
If you seek a counselor, you’re likely confronting some harsh realities at this point in your journey. You might be seeking answers to specific questions, “Why am I struggling? And how do I move forward?”
Forrest Gump’s famous line, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get,” applies to counselors, too.
Some counselors will ask you to focus on unconscious drives, others on past relational damage, still others on repressed traumas.
Some will focus on providing better skills for living, coping mechanisms, etc. Others will invite you to reframe how you think and feel about the inevitable realities of life.
What are you seeking from counseling?
Perhaps you’ve tried to wrestle as well as you can with all those issues (and more) but find yourself at a juncture where you want some assistance finding your way forward to a life of freedom, peace, meaning, and love.
What are you looking for in a counselor – Answers, Understanding, Wisdom, Healing, Guidance? I’m sure that it is all these things and more.
But what kind of approach best facilitates these things happening in a counseling context?
Establishing a personal relationship is key to counseling.
I believe that the primary agent of healing in therapy is less about the counselor’s training or approach and more about the cultivation of a safe, open, caring, and personal relationship.
When the counselor and client establish a relationship, it becomes the context for imparting wisdom, truth, and caring that leads toward resolving personal issues.
The appropriate dynamic in therapy is not so much that of a teacher and student or a doctor and patient as it is a collaborative effort. Sound therapy is a mutual process of discovery and growth.
One client, out of gratitude for our work together, and desiring to capture the essence of her journey, commissioned the songwriter David Wilcox to write a song about her experience in therapy. You can listen to it here if you like –
Let’s begin our relationship.
Don’t let challenges in your life keep you off track and dealing with struggles alone.
If you are ready to take the courageous personal therapy journey with a skilled, seasoned counselor, contact me today to set up an appointment.