Frequently Asked Questions

Dear Prospective Client:

Since you are taking the time to read this, I will assume that you are thinking about seeking counseling help for yourself or someone you care about. For most of us, by the time we have come to this point, we are least beginning to feel overwhelmed or very frustrated. We may even be “in shock” – or something may have gone on so long that we are feeling “burned out” – even hopeless.

It may be something going on inside us, or it may be some event or circumstance in our outside world. Whatever it is, we may have tried every solution we could think of – but nothing is working. Perhaps, we feel lost within ourselves; or lost in our attempts to communicate in a relationship. Sometimes, we may feel lost in a situation over which we seem to have no control. In a world that is constantly changing, life may not make sense – or perhaps life has lost its meaning.

A lot of situations may evoke feeling like those described. Such situations come virtually all of us at some intervals in our lives. We don’t have to be “diagnosable as mentally ill” to be able to benefit from counseling in such instances. Many events can throw our lives off balance. A once- cherished relationship may now seem unworkable, and we wonder how we ever came to this sad state of affairs. We may be facing the death of a loved one. A traumatic event (past or present) overwhelms us. Perhaps we received or a loved one received a medical diagnosis of a serious medical condition. Drinking or other drug abuse may be a problem in our life, or the life of a loved one. The pains of our past may threatened to destroy our present life. In a world where work is always changing, our job situation may have become unbearably stressful or meaningless. Or something is going on in us or in our world that we do not understand – that even scares us. Maybe, we just concerned for our family situation. These are just a few of the circumstances under which we might seek the confidential of professional counseling to help us through hard times.

Counseling offers us an opportunity to find a way to work through our circumstances and make our lives better – To get unstuck and to move forward in our lives. Counseling can give us insight and empower us to confront our problems and find our own solutions. It can empower us to finally reach out to others and really communicate. Counseling can assist us in forgiving others and stay out of the victim trap. Finally counseling can help us to be become assertive and set boundaries with ourselves and others. In short, we can discover how to make life workable and meaningful.

Almost all of us experiences difficult times in our lives. They are times for which neither our schooling nor our family were able to prepare us. They are life situations which are often uncontrollable and sometimes inevitable. They demand necessary change in us in order to grow and to move to a higher level of living.

The Center for the Integration of Life Experiences offers self empowering methods to assist in making those changes.

You may decide to add professional counseling to your resources as you work through difficult times. If you choose to come to The Center for the Integration of Life Experiences, you find that the counseling approaches can include individual, couple, group, and family. Techniques used are cognitive behavioral and client centered. Sometimes it is suggested that more intensive techniques recommended when problems are deeply rooted. These techniques are Conscious Integrated Breath Work, RADICAL Forgiveness, and Hypo-therapy. When these techniques are utilized, a full explanation, along with handouts, is given. Also, clients are given a choice whether they want to use these techniques. 

Myths About Counseling

What to Expect in Counseling

The counselor/client relationship is unique. In counseling, the focus is always on the needs of the client; the counselor is concerned with facilitating the client’s growth and developing the client’s growth and development.

With this in mind, we can understand why our friends, spouses, or relatives cannot act as a counselor for us. In these relationships, the caring, understanding and patience are reciprocal. In counseling, the counselor receives only money in exchange for his/her time, expertise and total attention.

Counseling works towards the client’s goals, but not always by the route we expect. In order to overcome depression, for example, clients often must first deal with their difficulty expressing their anger; angry people may have to learn to admit feelings of insecurity or fear before their anger and hostility decrease.

Therapeutic change is not always obvious. While crisis resolution may be quite dramatic, Accompanied by tears, anger or immediate feelings of relief, the majority of therapeutic change is accomplished in steps so small that they often go unnoticed at the time.

Just as we don’t notice our children growing until their clothes are suddenly too small for them, so we may overlook the subtle changes in ourselves that lead up to major life changes. Often counseling clients do not realize how much they’ve changed until their friends comment that they’re calmer or warmer.

Since counseling works to heal the causes of problems, not just to remove symptoms, the path of counseling may lead back into the past, especially childhood, where unresolved pain or anger lays waiting for expression. The child we once were lives on in all of us even though much of our personality matures. Our beliefs about life and what we can expect from it are formed by what we learned growing up in the microcosm of our family.

As adults we will treat ourselves in much the same way our parents treated us as children. For example, if our parents told us not to not to whine, so we will tend not to express our emotional distress as adults.

Therapeutic changes affect our careers as well as our personal lives. Many counselors comment that their client’s incomes rise as emotional conflicts are resolved in counseling and the psychic energy that once went into coping with emotional turmoil becomes available for career achievement. Counseling also builds self confidence and helps develop the interpersonal skills that are essential for success in any field.