Counseling & Coaching
There’s a big difference between tolerating your best friend’s bad advice and accepting the psychiatric services of a random guy in Chicago. Unfortunately, unlicensed mental health providers can slip through the cracks and wreak havoc on a person’s psyche. These three true-life stories showcase how important it is to check…
Valerie Proctor Greene, Licensed Psychotherapist and Life Coach at Thriveworks Chesapeake, leads an online workshop titled “Identifying Cultural Issues Including Bias in the Counseling Room.” Below, you’ll find information about Greene, followed by highlights from her presentation: About Valerie Proctor Greene, Licensed Psychotherapist and Life Coach: Greene is passionate about…
For the last 40 years, I have been a therapist devoted to serving and assisting many different types of people, from children to adults, individuals, families. Due to my many years of experience, people are constantly asking me for my outlook on different theories. As flattered as that makes me…
Humor can improve the client-therapist relationship and overall success in therapy. A study from The American Journal of Psychotherapy surveyed 110 clients and their therapists about the use of humor in therapy. It found that clients who reported more humor in their therapy sessions also reported greater pleasure in therapy….
Many of us make our problems out to be much bigger than they are; fortunately, a counseling technique called externalizing the problem can help. Externalizing the problem helps us gain a better perspective: rather than personalizing it, clients in therapy are able to separate themselves from the problem at hand….
It’s important the client feels engaged right away, in that the therapist feels welcomed and receives dedicated care from the get-go. Once the client and counselor have decided they’re a good match, the counselor can help them feel more comfortable by explaining everything they’ll need to know about the first…
Motivational interviewing is a method counselors use to help their clients work through their feelings and find the motivation to make desired or necessary changes. This technique is meant to take the pressure off and in turn make for a relaxed dynamic that makes the client feel more comfortable opening…
A working alliance in therapy, otherwise known as the therapeutic relationship, is simply the relationship that exists between the client and his or her therapist. In this alliance, both parties have the same goal: for the client to make improvements and benefit from great change throughout the therapeutic process. It’s…
A key to finding success in therapy is building a positive relationship with your therapist and feeling comfortable enough to open up to them. Counselors use different techniques to help their clients feel more comfortable in therapy, and in turn, make for a successful therapy journey. First, it helps to…
When exploring different options for therapy and therapists, it’s important that you acknowledge the importance of a healthy therapeutic relationship and therefore avoid several types of therapists. The first kind of counselor you should avoid is the Conflict of Interest Therapist: or in other words, a counselor that your close…
Therapists possess and utilize many skills, but a very important response for them to master in their practice is empathetic responding or active listening. Empathic responding is when the counselor clearly communicates the feeling their client has expressed as well as why they possess those feelings (again, according to the…
A range of techniques used in emotionally focused therapy help couples (and others) to better understand each other and address issues in their relationship. An emotionally focused therapist, Jennine Estes, identifies her favorite techniques: leaning in, repeating, joint roadmaps, and organization. To make her clients feel more comfortable in opening…