“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ~ James Baldwin

In addition to anxiety and performance coaching, traumatic stress therapy, and smoking cessation, I also help clients overcome issues, including depression, anxiety, worry and post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

What to Expect from Counseling

Counseling is a therapeutic process employed by trained mental health clinicians to aid clients in addressing problems. During counseling you will learn about your mood, feelings and behavior. By using the insights and knowledge gained in counseling, you will learn healthy coping skills and how to effectively manage stress. Counseling, also referred to as psychotherapy, is designed to help with many issues, including:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Post-traumatic stress

In the first few sessions, you and I will work on identifying:

• What is bothering you?
• What are your goals of therapy?
• What are your current life issues and background?
• What efforts you have already made to resolve the problem?

During these initial sessions, the exact nature of your problem may become clearer, and you may realize that issues other than the initial concerns should really be the focus of treatment. For example, you may come for help with a sleep problem and might soon realize that the sleep problem is the result of anxiety about work.

Treatment is a collaborative effort. Once you and I have established a mutual agreement on what the problem is and your desired goals of treatment, we will discuss a treatment plan. The plan may involve some general or specific goals, a description of the recommended treatment approach and usually a ballpark estimate of how long treatment might take. If there are several possible treatment options, I try to provide an overview of each so that you can decide which one to pursue. The goal is to get you on a clear correct path to feeling better and doing better.

How Counseling Works

After the initial sessions are completed, you are in charge of what is to be discussed and worked on in each session. Although I will usually wait for the client to start each session, I am not a passive therapist. You can expect me to ask questions, seek specific details, try and help find words for feelings, and make helpful connections between things you’ve said at different points in the therapy. At times, I will gently challenge how you see things, or your hesitancy to trying something new. I will provide plenty of feedback about what you’re saying.

Clients who take an active part in their psychotherapy and are curious about the change process will make more progress than those who wait for pearls of wisdom to be shared by the therapist. While some clients come to therapy expecting a “magic pill” to make their problems go away, these clients soon find that they must actively think about their problems and attempt to develop new behaviors or modify old behaviors. There may be times that you will be asked to complete therapeutic homework assignments in order to achieve your goals. Generally, clients who participate actively and complete the homework make better progress.*

*Article amended/adapted from original by Peter Barach, PhD who owns the copyright and is not to be reproduced in any form without permission of Jeff Schumacher, LCSW, ACSW, and Peter Barach, PhD