COUNSELLING/LIFE COACHING

Why Counselling?

What is Counselling?

What does Counselling do for me?

Great questions!

Counselling is a process that focuses on enhancing your psychological well-being, such that you are then able to reach your full potential. This is achieved with your counsellor aiding you  to facilitate personal growth, development, and self-understanding, which in turn will empower you to adopt more constructive life practices.

While counselling is not a magic cure, it can clarify problems and help in their resolution. It will also provide structure and support for you in painful and difficult times.

The main steps in the counselling process are:

• To help clarify the problem.
• To identify options open to you in the situation.
• To work out what you hope to achieve.
• Identify ways to achieve this goal.
• Provide support and facilitate the process towards achieving your goal.
• Counselling is most effective when it is a collaborative process between yourself and your councellor.

The following points maybe helpful for you:

• Be prepared to share your thoughts and feelings openly with the councellor.
• Feel free to ask for clarification at any stage during the counselling process.
• It is helpful to discuss any doubts, concerns or discomfort you have during counselling.
• Complete any homework tasks set to the best of your ability.

Are there any risks in attending Counselling?

During counselling a wide range of thoughts, feelings and reactions may be triggered. These can be either positive or negative, and will vary in type and intensity according to individual differences and circumstances. You may notice some changes in your thinking, your emotions or in your physical well-being. This is usually a normal stage of the therapeutic process, and you can discuss them with your councellor at any time.

What about confidentiality?

Everything you discuss with your counsellor is absolutely confidential, and will not be disclosed without your written consent. Marika, as your counsellor, has an ethical responsibility to maintain confidentiality.

Marika will take notes on personal information that are relevant to your situation. These notes will only be used as part of the assessment and/or counselling process.

In the following specific circumstances, however, your counsellor may be required to disclose information without your consent:

• If there is a risk of you harming yourself or others
• If the counsellor has reason to believe that you have or are going to commit a crime
• If a court of law subpoenas information about you
• In the event of these circumstances, Marika will make every effort to discuss any disclosure of information prior to doing so.

                                                                 LIFE COACHING

Why Life Coaching?

What is Life Coaching?

Why Would I Want Life Coaching?

GREAT QUESTIONS!

Just Look Around the World Today

There are coaches for many things, we have birthing coaches, every sport (individual or team) has a coach, we have coaches for our kids, we have coaches for music, we have coaches for just about everything. Except the day- to-day-struggles, trials and tribulations of life itself.

Years ago, life was simpler, slower and easier, but life has become so incredibly busy that we need someone to remind us of who we are, how great we can be and to help bring clarity to our daily routine. So it only makes sense that we have a Life Coach, because after all, aren't your life skills the most important aspect of your day to day existence that we all should strive to improve on?

Coaching by design, is simply a tool to help you grow, become more balanced and to get the most out of yourself.

So What Can a Life Coach Do For ME?

ANOTHER GREAT QUESTION!

This, of course, is the most important and most asked question.

What's in it for ME?

What can you do for ME?

Why would I want or need a Life Coach?

• A Life Coach will help bring out the true YOU and help you to make some of the most important and most difficult decisions of your life.
• A Life Coach will validate, champion and encourage you in your most important and more importantly, in the daily tasks, we call life.
• A Life Coach can help you realize clarity or the inner self that makes you who you are, but many of us often lose in today's busy world.
• A Life Coach will entice you to be your absolute best and encourage you to find solutions within yourself.
• A Life Coach will help you through difficult and trying times by being there to support and help you.
• A Life Coach will bring out the best you have to offer and then help you refine your skills to be even better than you imagined you could be.

We all have greatness within ourselves, but few of us ever discover how great we can be.

Life Coaching will help you discover your own greatness.

Psychotherapy and counselling look into your past, and try to find the answers to 'why' things are the way they are. However, the present does not have to be your future.

Life Coaching looks at the present and into the future of what YOU CAN BECOME and how you can grow to be that person.

A good Life Coach will be there to support and draw answers from within you. A true Life Coach will make you think about your options and possible solutions. The coaching sessions should feel more like time spent with a wise and supportive old friend who really wants to know the real you and wants to see, and help you do well, at whatever you choose to do.

What might we talk about?

HOW ABOUT: YOUR LIFE IN GENERAL, PROBLEMS, EXPERIENCES, WANTS, NEEDS, DREAMS, FUTURE, KIDS, INTIMACY,
RELATIONSHIPS, MONEY, TRAVEL, JOBS, SEX, PERSONAL GROWTH, SOCIAL STANDING, SELF ESTEEM...

Here is a short list of some of the most common items that come up in coaching sessions:

What the media has to say about Life Coaching

"A good coach is a listener and a guide, compassionate but firm, savvy in the ways of the world but open to matters of the heart - a compatriot who wants more than anything to see you succeed, a mom and pop dedicated to your own dreams, as opposed to what they had in mind for you. It's almost like having a functional family at the other end of the line." "Coaching clearly suits an age of pressurized ambition, when more and more people have less and less time to make the most of lives and livelihood." Orlando Sentinel, July 1999

"People from all walks of life " " are working with life coaches to help them develop a game plan for their lives and to show them how to stick with it to achieve greater professional and personal satisfaction." Austin Business Journal, February 2000