Jacki C Stevens, LCSW

Different Kinds of  Therapy

If you choose to seek counseling, your needs may be different from others who have experienced suffering– and your needs are likely to change over time. Counseling can happen in different ways:

Individual counseling allows you to talk one-on-one with a therapist. You can discuss what has happened, how it is affecting your life, and ways to cope in private, at your own pace. This type of therpay has often been exaggerated in the media, complete with therapists in white coats scribbling on pads of paper while the client re-lives his or her trauma on the couch. While therapy or counseling allows you to explore underlying thoughts or emotions, it is much more modern and relief from suffering can be relatively immediate.

Couples or family counseling might help you address, with the people you love, the ways that the suffering or a traumatic event has affected how you relate to each other. For example, couples counseling might help an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse and her partner work through their reactions and responses and better relate to one another. After a family rift, the family members might find that family counseling helps them to be together without communication errors, and understand the unique ways each family member contributes toward the family as a whole.

Group counseling, or support groups, can help you feel less alone. Being with others who have been experiencing what you have is important when friends and family do not understand, or feel that you should “just get over it” or “forget about” the past. Participating in group counseling or support groups with other survivors may help you to connect with other people dealing with similar issues and to share ways of handling them.

Which one is right for you? Only you can decide this and when you are ready, you can seek the counseling that makes you feel most comfortable.

Jacki C. Stevens, LCSW offers individual, couples and family counseling to those individuals who need intervention to assist in relieving current stressors. Group counseling can be recommended by Jacki C. Stevens, LCSW to promote learning awareness, and move toward acceptance of an individual’s response, generally to an identifiable event.