Individual Counseling & Coaching
You don't need to know which one you need before we meet.
Most people don't arrive with a neat category for what's happening.
Something has been taking more effort than it used to.
A relationship keeps getting caught in the same exchanges.
You're functioning at work, but one conversation can stay with you for the rest of the day.
A decision makes sense until someone else has an opinion about it.
Maybe anxiety has started changing what you do. Your energy is lower. You're having trouble concentrating. You're grieving something. You're drinking more than you want to. You're carrying more responsibility than you can keep carrying.
Or life is working reasonably well, but there's a pattern in the way you're participating in it that you want to understand.
That's enough to begin.
You don't need to decide whether it belongs in counseling or coaching before you contact me.
Services may include therapy and/or coaching depending on your needs and location.
What we might work on
People come to me for different reasons.
Anxiety that has started organizing more of the day.
Low mood, reduced energy, or difficulty keeping up with things that normally feel manageable.
A relationship where the same exchange keeps happening.
Grief or a transition that has changed more than you expected.
Work that follows you home.
Parenting situations where you know how you want to respond and can't always reach it in the moment.
Anger that arrives faster than you can make sense of it.
A decision you keep revisiting.
Confidence that seems to change depending on who is in the room.
A habit you understand intellectually but continue anyway.
Drinking or substance use you want to look at more carefully or reduce.
Sometimes the reason is harder to name.
Things are functioning.
You just keep noticing the same thing happening.
How I work
I pay attention to what is happening underneath the problem you came in wanting to solve.
That might be the point in a conversation where you stop staying connected to what you actually think.
The amount of responsibility you're carrying for everyone around you.
A habit that looks like the problem but may also be doing something for you.
The way a decision changes once someone else responds to it.
Or what happens to your thinking when you're tired, worried, disappointed, angry, or uncertain.
I'll point out what I notice.
Then we'll slow it down enough to look at it together.
Not so I can tell you what decision to make.
So you can see more clearly what is happening while you're making it.
From there, we work with what is actually useful—sometimes understanding the sequence more precisely, sometimes changing something practical, sometimes building a skill you need when the same situation happens again.
Counseling or coaching?
There is a lot of overlap in how I work as a counselor and as a coach.
The distinction usually has less to do with the topic itself than with how much it is affecting your ability to function and what kind of support the situation requires.
When counseling may be the better fit
Counseling becomes more appropriate when what you're experiencing is significantly interfering with daily life.
Anxiety may be making ordinary things harder.
Depression may have changed how you move through the day.
Getting out of bed takes longer. Concentration is harder to hold. Things you normally care about feel farther away. Responsibilities are becoming difficult to keep up with.
In those periods, I stay closer to how you're functioning.
The next question may be very practical.
Where is your anxiety today?
What would move it one point?
What would actually need to happen for that to change?
The next step might be getting out of bed an hour earlier.
Setting up something the night before.
Going outside.
Making one decision you've been putting off.
When less capacity is available, the work needs to fit the capacity that is actually there.
As that changes, the work can change with it.
When coaching may be the better fit
Coaching often fits when you're functioning in your life, but you don't like a pattern you keep repeating.
You know what you want to say until you're standing in front of the other person.
You're carrying responsibility that doesn't belong entirely to you.
You keep making the same decision and regretting it.
You understand that a habit is costing you something, but understanding it hasn't changed it.
Or your life works reasonably well from the outside, and you don't like the way you're participating in some part of it.
That's where I get curious.
What is actually happening here?
What changes while it's happening?
What are you making the situation mean?
What's yours to do something about?
And once you can see it more clearly, what do you want to do differently?
Then we work on being able to do that while the moment is still happening.
You don't have to choose before you come.
Relationship difficulties can belong in counseling or coaching.
So can stress, grief, parenting, confidence, habits, work problems, difficult decisions, and major changes in your life.
The subject doesn't determine the category by itself.
And I don't expect you to figure that out from a website.
Bring what's happening to the complimentary 20-minute Meet & Greet.
We'll talk about what's been going on, how it's affecting your life, what you want to be different, and whether counseling or coaching is the appropriate way for us to work.
What individual sessions look like
Individual sessions are 55 minutes.
There isn't a fixed script for a session.
Sometimes we'll stay with one exchange long enough to see where it began changing.
Sometimes the useful question is much more concrete: what needs to happen between now and the next time we meet?
Sometimes you'll leave watching for something specific.
A pause.
The point where your attention moves toward the other person.
The moment you start explaining more than you intended.
The decision you were certain about until someone responded to it.
The work follows what is actually happening—not a predetermined program.
Fees
Individual counseling or coaching
55 minutes · $180
Complimentary Meet & Greet
20 minutes · $0