Counseling doesn’t always work. Every counselor has heard the stories: clients lamenting previous counseling relationships that were frustrating, disappointing, and ineffectual. We hear the stories and we hope our clients won’t be telling...
It’s easy for counselors, and the people we counsel, to get stuck in our heads. Counseling as we know it originated as “the talking cure”. Over the generations, counselors have discovered how to use dialogue as a powerful medium for facilitating...
Relationships have a natural life cycle: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Along the way, they pass through a series of stages. Some relationships make it to the next stage; some don’t. If they last long enough, someone eventually leaves the...
Admit it; you’re biased! Maybe you’ve learned that as a counselor you’re not supposed to have biases, but that’s just not possible. If you’re alive, you’re biased. Since you’re going to be biased anyway,...
Long before a couple comes to a counselor seeking support, they come to one another seeking support. Without always realizing it, one of the reasons we enter into romantic partnerships in the first place, is to create relationships where we can heal...
There are at least two kinds of coaching. One could be called finite, the other infinite.
Coaching is a metaphor that comes from sports. Sports are finite games, according to James Carse, author of the book Finite and Infinite Games. As a result,...
Following rules does not make a person ethical. Becoming ethical requires thinking for yourself.
As a counselor, you need to be an ethical free thinker. That means you need have a grasp of three things:
the difference between defensive...When someone is hurting or struggling and they want your help, your impulse may be to go for the quick fix, to offer up some advice or to try to solve their problem. It’s natural to want to fix what’s wrong, to make it feel better, to...
Counseling is an unusual kind of relationship. Though it shouldn’t be, it’s rare for people to develop relationships that are dedicated to their healing, their growth, and their liberation. Such change-promoting relationships have their...
You are not the person you once were. Before long, you will no longer be the person you are now.
It all starts with being born. After that, it’s just one change after another, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s...
