counseling
„ All movement is a sign of thirst.“
Hafiz
PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING
Counseling is more short term oriented than psychotherapy and usually consists of 1 to 10 sessions. Counseling aims at supporting the client in order to gain new perspectives, initiate change or make decisions by themselves. It is especially suitable for specified issues, for example situations of decision making or conflict – not that much if those situations have been reoccurring for years, though. Practical advice concerning the outcome of your decision making process is not gonna be content of counseling. You are also free to turn to counseling with a specific question if you are suffering from psychological symptoms that you don’t wish to address in depth now – everything should be dealt with in its own timing and you know best about your timing. In case you’d like to find out if psychotherapy might be good for you or you wish to have more orientation in which therapy approach might be suitable for you, I’d be happy to support you independently on that.
SPIRITUAL COUNSELING
„The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
Aldous Huxley
In our western culture, spiritual phenomena tend to be either neglected or idealized which hampers their successful integration into our psyche. Spiritual experience is part of the natural spectrum of human experience, though. It can occur spontaneously or be transmitted by an induced altered state of consciousness. It is relieving to share that kind of experience with someone who is open and non-judgmental – whether it be to comprehend what wants to be comprehended or to give space to what has to remain in the realm of mystery.
Spiritual insight differs at its core from spiritual experience. Deeper insight into the “nature of things” leads to disidentification with our usual way of seeing the world and engaging in it or with it. The hindrances to getting in touch with “reality” shrink, you get in touch with life in a more direct and natural way. Your relationship towards life is altered all-encompassingly – rather in the sense of a life long journey than in the sense of a process with an end to it, though. The heart of this journey is a continuous approximation to one’s deeper self.
Especially in its beginnings, this journey is often bound to lead to enormous turmoil which either lies in its nature (experience of existential emptiness, loss of previous impulses and motivation) or is connected to conscious or unconscious trauma which is pushed upon the surface. The simultaneousness between insight and re-experiencing trauma can be massively confusing. It is helpful to differentiate between the psychological and the spiritual level, to gain an idea of your personal location in the process. Counseling can’t solve the innate difficulties of this journey but it can facilitate the discernment mentioned above and support you in your decision for or against getting into psychotherapy. If you are interested in the topic, read more in the section “Spirituality”.