Whole Self Counseling
If you are here, then this is true: there are places where your life feels out of balance. My WHOLE SELF COUNSELING approach will stabilize your problems and engage your strengths.
One way to to begin to define our problems and to focus our efforts to change is to look at ourselves as being made up of 4 basic parts: our Physical self, our Emotional self, our Intellectual self, and our Spiritual self. When one of our four basic parts becomes injured or distressed, the natural inclination is to focus energy on the wound. That makes sense: There is pain or a problem to be solved and we need to work on it. However, the universal law of attraction states that we tend to get more of what we focus on. Therefore, we don't want to spend too much of our energy focused only on one quadrant of our Whole Self. So, after getting some supportive first aid and doing some basic assessment, we should spend some time pivoting away from the wounded area and send some balancing energy to the other three pieces of you...thus re-balancing your Whole Self.
With over 20 years experience helping kids and adults, I remain very curious to understand the negative patterns of your life. Happily, I have found that fast and lasting change often comes best from building with your light than by trying to decrease the dark. Change really is possible. A candle needs but a match for its light to shine out.
If you are experiencing relationship/communication problems you most likely also have some history of personal trauma. Unfortunately, by focusing on the wounding patterns of our lives without changing them, we tend to get stuck repeating and recreating a shadow version of our past traumas. Regretfully, our current troubles may seem all too familiar...and troubles can show up in so many ways.
Allow me to go a bit deeper into this idea of the 4 part self… This is a construct of the persona or soul that you may have heard of before and you can find it talked about in many places. For our purposes, I'd like to say what each piece is most concerned with and some ways we can add strength to the system. (Please note: These statements are intended to start the conversation of achieving balance and are in no way intended to be complete.):
- Physical Self: Your body, with all its muscles, organs, aches, and pains. Adding strength to this quadrant can be done though exercise, good food choices, and roller coaster rides.
- Emotional Self: Your heart and all its emotions. Adding strength to this quadrant includes participating in therapy, having heartfelt conversations, analyzing your dreams or artwork, and watching movies.
- Intellectual Self: Your brain and all its knowledge and ideas. Adding strength to this part of our selves can be done by engaging in work, problem solving, reading books, watching a TED talk, or playing Minecraft.
- Spiritual Self: Your eternal essence. Adding strength here could be through organized religion or practice, but it really boils down to the ability to become awestruck by beauty and to know though a profound experience or a leap of faith that you are part of something infinite and wonderful.
If you'd like to explore these ideas more and see how you can find balance in your life, please give me a call. (530) 320-1348
