Why is counseling important?

Counseling provides individuals with opportunities to work through, alleviate and many times solve past and present issues. Counseling allows individuals the space, time, and liberty to express themselves as they are without regard for justice, negative criticism, and or extreme vulnerability, although the latter may be debated. In this “safe space,” individuals can either superficially work on present issues of varying degrees of process deeply to more greatly understand the inner workings of a pattern of behavior or thought. Counseling serves as a path towards returning to a better balance than the individual may be mentally or emotionally experiencing.            

                Counseling is important because it provides us a more comfortable platform to acknowledge some or all of our denial. Through counseling, one can learn to be more accepting of oneself, which ultimately can mean a higher degree of self-satisfaction and fulfillment. It may not make you constantly happy, but it can increase your connectedness with what does emotionally fulfill and satisfy you. Counseling is a healthy way of questioning aspects of ourselves we weren’t completely sure were healthy or not. The counseling platform also indirectly reminds an individual of their courage in addressing what could be very challenging issues and, through this courage, attaining comfort.      

                Counseling also lends itself to being an opportunity to “add” choice to one’s thoughts and behaviors, rather than “changing” an individual, which some may be hesitant to do for various reasons; I frame counseling as an opportunity to add choices and alternatives, perspectives, etc. Through counseling and the addition of choice, we expand our ability to be adaptive through many circumstances and situations. Counseling can remind us that we “are good enough as we are” and that there is little to nothing sufficiently intrinsic that is worth rejecting or abandoning. Counseling is important because it can remind individuals of their worth, values, core beliefs, and reasons for living. In the fast-paced world we live in, these aspects of ourselves can be quickly put aside to do “what needs to get done.” This is where an appropriate pace in counseling is important in reconnecting us with all that we are and, at times, challenges us to refine ourselves along the way.