Individual Counseling
Relationship/Family/Work-life Balance/Stress/Depression/Anxiety
To quote Mariella Frostrup (a British journalist who writes a column in the London Guardian): “Advice from a stranger comes with an absence of judgement that’s hard to access from a close friend.”
This describes accurately the reason why people consult a counselor. Clients usually come to me after they have tried, but have been unable, to resolve an issue. We live in a world where are many pressures, in both the personal and the professional domains. Stress and anxiety are widespread and depression (according to the World Health Organization) is now a leading cause of disability around the world.
And these are precisely the issues that I encounter in my practice. Some amount of stress is a good thing but people seek help when they find that it is becoming harder to manage and they cannot handle the stress levels. Their daily lives are being affected and they want to know how to cope. The same applies to anxiety. We all feel anxious from time to time. It is a normal response to a number of situations. However, when anxiety becomes over-powering and a person feels paralysed by it and unable to function, that is the time to seek professional help.
One of the many things I do is to help my clients identify effective coping strategies. When people are able to do this, they begin to feel competent and that alone is enormously empowering. And I do all of this with that “absence of judgement” (which I have spent years learning how to perfect), something my clients appreciate.
Individual Counseling FAQs
What is individual counseling and what are the benefits?
Individual counseling is when a person chooses to speak to a counselor to get help to sort out ongoing issues in his/her life. The benefits of individual counseling are many: enabling clients to speak freely about issues that are troubling them, being listened to by a trained professional who will not judge them, an opportunity to think through difficult/painful issues; finding a way forward when feeling stuck. A counselor will not give advice or tell a person what they should do. Instead, a counselor will listen in a non-judgemental manner and enable the client to identify their strengths and coping mechanism and a way forward.