Do I Really Need Counseling?
For some people seeing a trained Professional Counsellor may be embarrassing, like an admission of failure or personal deficit. This perspective can keep people stuck in painful and challenging circumstances much longer than they need to be. In fact, professional Counseling services are used by many people to aid their personal development and as part of their well balanced plan of health care. In fact, the term Emotional Fitness applies to the way that many of our clients approach the use of counseling services in their lives. In order to maintain Emotional Fitness, some people choose to have a counselor act as a coach to learn new strategies for daily use in life, relationships, and work. Many professionals seek help with their career path, couples seek help with their relationship skills, parents seek help with their parenting, and lonely individuals seek Counseling to help change their circumstances.
When Is Counseling Helpful?
Some people search out the services of a professional Counselor because they simply have an important decision to make and need an objective and confidential sounding board. Other people suffer from problems like high anxiety, phobias, depression, abuse, and trauma. These problems may result in severe mental turmoil, mood changes, loss of contact with reality, insomnia and loss of appetite, sexual dysfunction, isolation, irritability, rage, violence, and self-defeating behaviours.
Many people experience problems as they go through typical life transitions and changes in areas such as marriage, job and career, retirement, parenthood, accidents, serious illness, and bereavement. Whatever the problem is, a professional Counsellor is trained to provide helpful, clinically-based, licensed Counseling services based on their accredited education and training. When necessary they regularly refer clients to other health care professionals like physicians.
Who Can Help?
Registered Clinical Counselors and Canadian Certified Counselors in Vancouver and Burnaby, BC are fully qualified mental health professionals with a minimum of a Master’s Degree in Counseling, or related studies, and are Registered with professional bodies that govern their practice and bring the consumer third party accountability.
Most Counselors also have specialized training in areas like, Family Therapy, Play Therapy (for children), EMDR (for PTSD and Trauma). If you have a specific question about your counselor’s training and experience, you should also feel free to ask. Any professional Counselor will happily and fully answer your questions.