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  You know that something needs to change and that, until now, whatever you've tried until now hasn't worked. Do you see a coach, a counselor, or therapist? How do you decide? As someone who does coaching and counseling / psychotherapy, here are some of my thoughts. The bottom line is, it depends on what sort of change you are looking   more you need to heal from something that has happened to you in order to change, the more likely therapy is a better fit. The more you are focused on achieving a specific goal (and if healing doesn't appear to be an obstacle to your success) the more coaching, or a coaching-oriented approach, is likely to keep you on target. Psychotherapy Counseling and psychotherapy are often used to describe the same process, unless referring to a specific form of counseling, such as career counseling. In this article, I'll use therapy and counseling to refer to the same process, focusing on the more significant distinction between coaching and th

  Mindfulness is the art of listening to our inner feelings, and to care for those painful emotions that lie at the core of depression and anxiety, fear and other forms of persistent emotional stress that undermines our happiness and that adversely affects our personal relationships. However, this quality of mindful listening, of knowing with mindfulness, is not the same as thinking about our suffering or trying to understand why we are unhappy. Analytical thinking can be a useful strategy and forms a part of the therapeutic healing process, but understanding is seldom enough by itself to resolve the inner pain of depression or anxiety. We have to move to a much more subtle level of experience, below the level of the thinking mind: the realm of feeling itself. family therapy An emotion like depression is formed when feeling energy becomes trapped within the mental structures of thoughts and beliefs. It is not the thoughts or beliefs that are the problem, but the emotional feeling ene

Individual psychotherapy can help people overcome fear of taking risks in life. To obtain important goals in life, individuals must take calculated risks. However, many people focus on failing to reach the goals they want, or they are afraid of the unknown consequences of failing. People are not sure of their own abilities, or afraid of not succeeding in the attempt. People often imagine irrational consequences of failing which frighten them. It is very important to take rational and calculated risks to obtain goals. Otherwise, people do not progress and enrich their lives. People may have the abilities and talents to do many things in life and achieve spectacular goals, but only the rare person does not have to struggle and risk to achieve his or her goals. online marriage counseling Often, people seek the help of an individual psychotherapist. These trained professionals have the skill to listen in an unbiased manner and give advice and support to people to allow them to take ris

  I work a lot with metaphors and many of my clients are gay men and lesbians. The approach I use in counselling and psychotherapy is based on the principal that we interpret and make meaning of life through the stories we tell ourselves and others. These stories about the events and the experiences of our lives employ metaphors. The journey metaphor (life as a journey) is very common in counselling work as are pedagogic metaphors (life as learning). But rather than come up with the metaphors myself, I am interested in the metaphors people bring to the counselling session. As a therapist I do not set about making interpretations but assist people to make their own interpretations. existential psychotherapy For example, say I am meeting with a client who talks about not being able to find any satisfaction in life. He has been searching for satisfaction for a long time. He knows it exists because he knows some other gay men who seem to have found it, but he was always told when he w

  I never really understood depression, I guess because I never experienced it - until I was fifty-seven. It happened this way: Two days after my "visit" to the emergency ward I met with a urologist. He told me several things besides bladder cancer can cause blood in the urine, including a bladder infection. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics and scheduled an appointment with me so he could look into my bladder-something I dreaded. family therapy I asked, "Can't we do the appointment sooner? I don't like having to wait almost a week." "I'm sorry, but I just can't." The next day I had a body scan with contrast. A few days later Dr. Sherman called. He said the results were encouraging, but he wanted me to take a PET scan. I asked, "If the results are so encouraging why should I take a PET scan?" "Just so we're sure about the spots on your lung." Dr. Sherman, it seemed, wasn't being honest with

  Jungian psychology has had a significant impact on the way that people think about themselves and others. Whether it is Jung's classification of extraverts and introverts or his study of the collective unconscious, core elements of his thinking have found their way into the popular culture. Of Jung's vast body of work, his use of the word "complex" is best known by the general public. After all, many people at one time or another have spoken about or heard of someone refer to an "inferiority complex" or an "authority complex." Others may have a vague idea that there are certain subjects which, when confronted with, drive them into a frenzied state. As Jung notes, in actuality, we don't have complexes; they have us. online marriage counseling A complex is a powerful unconscious emotional preoccupation. It is a painful subject area in the psyche which, when activated, acts autonomously, arbitrarily, and usually, contrary to the wishes of our

  Are you depressed or afraid? Do you feel you are losing your mind? Is your life a terrible mess? Stop wondering if you need therapy or not. Of course you do. As a matter of fact, only because you are a human being you need therapy. You have inherited so much craziness into the biggest part of your brain that if you could see this truth you'd wonder how someone like you could ever find balance. Psychotherapy All human beings are crazy from birth. You are not an exception. I discovered this bitter truth after continuing the dangerous research of the psychiatrist Carl Jung into the unknown region of the human psyche, where I could find craziness at any moment. Jung didn't know where all the craziness existent in the human brain was, but he knew that this content was inherited. I had to discover the anti-conscience that generates all mental illnesses within the human side of our conscience, so that humanity would finally get rid of all mental illnesses. Now we know wher