What are the areas a family counselor can help with? Name it, a professional, trained, objective perspective can make a world of difference.
Relationships: Learning to communicate properly, treat each other with respect, learn to value your partner and have them value you, understand each other’s conscious and even subconscious needs wants and behaviors, improve intimacy, find tolerance and create unified parenting (this is a big one).
Kids: Help them get focused, stay on track for school and life, avoid drug use or if they are already using drugs, help them mature to grow past drugs, help them mature to move through life, have someone they trust to speak openly with, work on resolving personal issues too big for them to deal with or even be aware they exist. With kids, a counselor should facilitate maturity… if they “grow-up” they will make the right choices for themselves and then those choices will stick.
Parenting: Communicate with kids, understand their personalities, their generation and teenage subculture, learn what to address and what to back off of, get trained in how to discipline while still being loving and accepting, stop enabling or being too lenient, co-parent with your partner better, build a unified parent plan (before years go by, which is what I usually see).
Career: Overcome weaknesses, become more motivated, overcome obstacles and fears, train in personality types to be more successful in personal and professional relationships, overcome mental blocks.
Personal: This area’s big! Learn your true nature and how to regulate it so you can reach your potential, explore philosophical or spiritual side, find your soul mate, overcome personal fears, phobias, feelings, past issues, learn about all the above categories to succeed in them all!
Your helping professional should be well trained, but even more important is experience. Experience is not gauged by time in an office, it’s the life we live and the cases we’ve worked. They should be able to consult with you and explain how they would help you; it should feel inspiring and hopeful from the start and continue to feel powerful every session. They should be able to help you build workable strategies and dynamic modalities to reach your goals. They should be a teacher, a guide, a mentor, a trusted friend that is objective and has only your best interest at heart.
Scott Spackey is a State Certified Addiction Counselor, Life-Coach, Hypnotherapist, and Interventionist. For more information, please call 661-299-1966, email: Scott@Life-Mind.com and visit www.LIFE-MIND.com.