Counseling Philosophy Statement

Counseling Philosophy Statement
Establishing a theoretical counseling orientation is an important step in developing professional identity. Theories provide counselors with explanations of human nature, help with conceptualizing clients’ problems and deliver procedural guidance in predicting clients’ change. Contemporary counselor is expected to be integrative and eclectic, drawing inspiration from many approaches. It is also my hope to synthesize a variety of concepts and a diversity of strategies from different theories and integrate them into a coherent, comprehensive perspective.
It is important, in fact, to adopt one primary theory that would be the major force in constructing personal theoretical orientation. As Prochaska and Norcross

There is a third dimension that, combined with nature and nurture, allows us to gain a comprehensive insight on individual differences. The third dimension has different names: soul, choice, spirituality, free will. Unlike the other dimension, it focuses on the intuitive and subjective understanding of life and reality. It brings deeper awareness of nuances in psychological functioning of human beings. Pargament (2001) claims: “We can find the spiritual in a piece of music, the smile of a passing stranger, the color of the sky at dusk, or a daily prayer of gratitude upon awakening. Spirituality can reveal itself in the ways we think, the ways we feel, the ways we act, and the ways we relate to each other. Paradoxically, the presence of the spiritual dimension can also be felt through its absence, in feelings of loss and emptiness, in questions about meaning and purpose, in a sense of alienation and abandonment, and in cries about injustice and unfairness. Spirituality is, in short, another dimension of life” (p.3). To some people spirituality can be the main coping tool used to deal with stressful situations, potent source of comfort, hope, and a way of making sense of incomprehensible experiences, suffering, loss, dying, and

Attachment, the product of nature and nurture, is critical to human development. Children learn about important aspects of their physical, emotional and social world through experience. The value of this experience is directly proportional to the quality of the attachment children are forming with their caregivers. Through the positive experience of emotional connectedness, children learn to build and maintain loving, trusting and secure relationships with others. If the caregivers are available to them, sensitive to their signals, consistently responsive to their needs, infants develop secure style of attachment. If the caregivers are indifferent or neglectful, inaccessible, unresponsive and unreliable, infants are prone to developing anxious, avoidant or disorganized attachment style (Pearce, 2009). Difficulties in forming childhood relationships significantly increase likelihood of interpersonal conflicts in adulthood. Anxiety disorder, PTSD, dissociative identify disorder, borderline, narcissistic personality disorder are dysfunctions that are linked to attachment insecurities. Interpersonal adult conflicts, such as divorce, family abuse, child neglect, sexual abuse, substance abuse are responses to emotional dysregulation caused by deep wounds in