Individual Counseling

Individual Counseling For:

Life Crises/Transitions
Feeling shut down, Confused
Anxiety, Depression
Troubled Relationships
Isolation/Loneliness
Inability to set good boundaries
Grief and mourning

  Maybe you’re in a crisis, or suffering from anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear of change, an addiction to drugs or alcohol, or a more subtle addiction, like anxiety, or conflict. Maybe you’re in a troubled relationship, or feel confused about how to improve or create an intimate relationship. Maybe you’re feeling confused or even hopeless about your life— that peace, satisfaction, meaning, and occasional joy are beyond your reach.
    If any of that sounds like you, and you have the desire to change yourself—and to ask another person for help—then you are probably ready to try counseling.

  Here’s what I do with people who choose to work with me:        

First, and mostly, we have a conversation. That's how healing and trust begin. You tell me about yourself, what's going on, and I ask you questions, to make sure I understand.
    In the context of a uniquely safe relationship (see “How is a Therapy Relationship Unique” under FAQ’s) we work to help you figure out:

•  what’s happening right now in your body and your life?

•  what needs to be changed?

    and then we work in supporting you as you implement new ways of responding. 

    A body-based (somatic) psychotherapist understands that primarily support must come from within. Your own body is your greatest resource for increasing resilience to what the world throws at you, and to your own habitual ways of reacting.  Body and mind are part of the same living being, they work as one.

 "Objects gross, and the unseen Soul, are one!"

—Walt Whitman    

    It’s important to remember that the ‘change’ that can be implemented is not about other people changing! The change that people can control is always

—and only!—

inside themselves; that is, your own thoughts, feelings, beliefs. Of course, we talk about your reactions to what other people are doing, and help you deepen your understanding of what’s going on, and what you can do. But what you are capable of changing is your own response to others—not the other people themselves.
    This is understandably a very frustrating, but unchangeable reality!
    Susannah MacMahon, in her wonderful book “The Portable Therapist”, reminds people they can at best control only two things in life; their own behavior, and how they feel about themselves.
    How you feel about yourself is often the place where you need the most help.

    That’s work we can do together:  discovering and practicing a new outlook, creating ways to remind you of your own unique strengths and qualities, the aspects of yourself that are gifts to share, to create a more meaningful and mindful life.
     
    Often, we begin a session by giving you time to just look around and feel safe in the room, remembering when and how you feel safest in your life, and how to recreate that feeling in the present moment, how to focus in on your body's messages of "safe" or "unsafe".
    Then, during the session, as we talk about solving your problems or reducing your symptom, I might ask you about what sensations are going on in your body. Often sensations change as you notice them and as you allow yourself to breathe, and move, and give attention. You become an expert in ‘sensing’ your body responses instead of ignoring them.

    This increases your capacity to uncouple familiar, simple body sensations from old meanings like fear and rage that might still be attached to them. We might also make a tone together, or practice letting your body speak or sing in its fullest resonance. How you resist making a tone, or swinging your arms or even just how you sit on the sofa often reveals much about fears and unconscious self-protections that might be constricting your life, and your capacity for peace.

Therapy is a conversation — about you and your symptoms, whether they are manifested through your relationships,  through your dreams,  through your behaviors, or through your bodily sensations. Sometimes we try exercises, using your body or your voice in new ways; or assuming the role of another person, a character from somewhere in your imagination; or practicing what to say in a difficult encounter.

     Always, our conversation is meant to help you create and sustain safe boundaries—never to shame you or pass judgment or push you beyond where you wish to go.

My fee for individual counseling is $200 for a 50-minute session, pro-rated after that.

Email me at:

Inquire1 (at) GaryGlickman.com