Individual Counseling
The psychological process of self actualization has the opportunity to begin when the individual makes the decision to change. Most often this decision to change takes place when the individual "hits bottom". This decision must be taken advantage of while the motivation is high. Our tendency to slip back into our habitual, mindless patterns of complacency is extremely entrenched.
Whether our habitual mindless patterns are wholesome or unwholesome they are never the less mindless. Therapy includes both work in looking at unconscious motivations and work at becoming more conscious in general. Helping the individual discover how meaningful the present moment experience is helps give them reason to let go of the past and to stop striving toward an uncertain future. Overcoming the tendency to hold onto past sorrows and to future worries brings stability of mind and tranquility of mood.
Individual Psychotherapy has become an accepted practice to those in search of clear minded serenity. Nowadays, individuals seek therapy in a path toward their own mental freedom. If you want to be free from suffering why not seek out a professional who's job it is to help people transcend their mental suffering? Psychotherapists help many high functioning, self actualizing individuals become better able to be successful in their own lives. Sports psychologists, for example, help many a top athlete develop their peek performance.
Often people approach individual therapy to find solutions for a current situation. Solutions are found when the individual takes ownership of his/her current situation, develops awareness and insight into the causes of the situation, and takes responsibility for they choices made, make, and will make. The therapist mindfully assist their client in this quest for solution(s) with full knowledge that that same process if awareness and insight is the key to mental freedom.
Regardless of what the client presents as the goal to therapy, the overriding goal should be to develop a greater capacity toward present centered awareness Awareness of one's own mind, insight into one's own motivations, bringing into consciousness that which was once buried, this is what we therapists must ultimately know how to do. Moving beyond mental impediments to the direct experience of a joyful life this should be our desire...for ourselves, and for clients.
We therapists must know the difference between knowing and being. We must know "being" (our true selves) right here right now, so that we can give up needing to communicate what we think we know to our clients. We must be able to show being to our clients through our own mindful wisdom and patient compassion. We must be a lot of things only few of us are. That is why you the client must choose carefully.