Facing Life Challenges
- Anxiety, worry, stress, or depression
- Struggling with loss, grief, or bereavement
- Challenges in taking care of an ill family member
- Coping with ending relationships
- Adjusting to personal role or relationship changes
- Stuck in a rut and looking for new purpose
- Moving into retirement
- Dealing with an empty nest
- Looking for next steps after graduation
- Dealing with immigration and acculturation issues
- Coping with parenting challenges
Life Cycle Transitions
Life is continuously unfolding and throwing you curves. Sometimes it meanders, and other times it twists and turns unexpectedly. Occasionally it stagnates or gets stuck. While we have little control over external events, we retain choice on whether we grow up or down, bitter or better, in response to them.
For counseling to get help with parenting issues, see Parenting Teens and Adult Children.
For counseling to get help with immigration adjustments or acculturation issues, see Immigration and Acculturation.
Traumatic Experiences
Trauma is any experience in which one is exposed to a powerful amount of physical or emotional injury. Whether it is a capital “T” or a lower-case “t” trauma is highly dependent on the state the individual is in and how he or she perceives the experience at the time. The person may feel helpless and powerless to do anything about the situation. As a result, one may be unable to process the traumatic experience, release the negative energy, or talk about it to someone. This energy becomes lodged in one’s nervous system as the energy of trauma. Over one’s life time, traumatic experiences may accumulate in the brain’s “trauma reservoir” resulting in symptoms of:
- Emotional self-regulation problems,
- Hyper-vigilance,
- Anxiety, or
- Physical illnesses
Brainspotting therapy integrated with brain and body awareness can help people process their traumas, heal the brain and move forward.
Counseling for Life Transitions
Individual growth is possible throughout the lifecycle and in a range of situations. Growth can include new spiritual insights, greater appreciation of life and relationships, the development of new skills and knowledge, reordered priorities, recognition of inner strength and deeper awareness, and reformed behaviors or lifestyle. If you are struggling with life transitions, counseling can rebuild your resilience and help guide you onto a better course. Therapy can rebuild your resilience and help guide you onto a better course.
Counseling for Caregivers and Surviving Spouses
I offer individual counseling for people who are providing care to family members and for surviving spouses. Periodically, depending on the demand, I may offer the following support groups:
Surviving Spouses Support Group
Elaine’s Blog Posts on Life Transitions
Here is the link to interesting articles for my Life Transitions clients – https://askcounseling.com/category/life-transitions/