What to Expect During Weekly Individual Counseling Sessions in Raleigh NC?

As a licensed couples therapist in Virginia and North Carolina, I specialize in working with high-conflict couples who feel like they cannot communicate with each other without fighting, so they get outraged, shut down, and shut each other out.

Such a relationship can cause profound disconnection, loneliness, and hopelessness.

If you are one of those couples, marriage counseling Raleigh NC can be a wonderful place to address your issues and rebuild trust and connection in your marriage.

Couples therapy can help you and your partner:

·       Strengthen your empathy

·       Understand your problems from a new standpoint

·       Learn how to rebuild trust after lies and infidelity

·       Recognize your dysfunctional cycle.

·       Improve communication

·       Practice constructive ways to resolve conflicts

·       Enhance mutual understanding

·       Increase the level of vulnerability in your relationship.

·       Rekindle intimacy

What Can You Expect from Weekly Individual Sessions?

Individual therapy work follows a timeline that is quite comparable to, if not longer than, weekly couples sessions.

Expect It to Last

As a psychotherapist, I am not interested in surface-level clinical work, giving you coping tools or breathing exercises and letting you be. Instead, during your weekly individual sessions, we will dig deep and understand your patterns and pain.

So, during our weekly sessions, we will learn a lot. Therefore, expect us to work together for at least a year, give or take, to be able to achieve the transformation that is going to sustain itself long-term.

My goal is not to have my clients back at my office or somebody else’s office six months or a year later. My objective is for psychotherapy to make its way into your being and remain with you.

Expect Things to Get Worse Before They Get Better

Individual therapy sessions can be unpleasant and perplexing at times. Because you have been waiting so long to seek treatment, you may expect to start feeling better right away. However, your nervous system may get overstimulated. So, you may feel worse when you eventually begin psychotherapy and begin unpacking everything because bringing everything up can feel overwhelming.

This is a normal reaction as we uncover everything that has been shut down for a long time. This will trigger you, and this is very normal and expected.

As your therapist, I will guide and support you through this self-discovery process while it gets better and better.

However, I will expect you to be patient and flexible to get through the rough patches and truly understand yourself and your past.

Expect a Lot of Inner Child Work

In both couples and individual counseling, I do a lot of inner child work. So, we will get really clear about how to go back and heal your inner child who wasn’t loved in the way they needed in childhood.

Most of us have some sort of childhood trauma. So, during individual counseling sessions, we are going to:

·       Get clear on what that little person’s needs are,

·       How can we meet them?

·       What is the ego’s role (which is the self that wakes up when your inner child is in pain)?

·       Activate your inner parent to tell your ego, “No more, I am in charge now.” Let me take care of my inner child,”

·       Identify and stay away from dysfunctional behaviors such as addictions and people-pleasing tendencies.

So, we will dismantle all these masks we adopted as children to receive our caregivers’ love and continue to wear them as adults.

Therefore, expect deep and empowering work during your weekly counseling sessions in Wake Forest, NC.

People usually come to individual counseling with a wide range of starting issues, such as anxiety, work problems, bad relationships, commitment problems, etc.

Whatever brings you to therapy, we will work on understanding your triggers, strengthening your self-esteem, owning your patterns, and practicing new skills.

Research shows that when we understand things better, we can integrate the knowledge and skills we learn. So, understanding your triggers, patterns, and emotions and then practicing new skills is the only way to sustain a positive change long-term.

Summary

Individual therapy sessions in Raleigh, NC provide a chance for tremendous deep work that you can do for yourself while also doing a huge favor for your children and many future generations since you are not simply carrying on the same patterns that were passed on to you. Instead, you are questioning, understanding, and deconstructing them so you can change and heal.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment in my Wake Forest or virtual office, do not hesitate to book your free 15 min phone consultation online by clicking here.