Sometimes clarity and insight can emerge for you during this process. Sometimes a deep awareness and understanding for why you feel the way you do. Sometimes there is a path or the next step that opens up through the process.

A counselor facilitates the process by a particular way of listening that he or she is trained in, so that what’s important to you and for you emerges. The counselor accompanies you step by step in this exploration. A counselor is trained to listen deeply and reflect to you the important threads of what you are saying and feeling and sometimes what you have left unsaid and not yet fully expressed or in touch with. When this comes into the light of your awareness, you see it clearly and are able to take some clear steps to support yourself and move in a life affirming direction. Each session is really dependent on what emerges for you and what is the best way to attend to whatever emerges. Here the counselor can be supportive by simply listening or inquiring with you about some aspect. The counseling or listening space is different in these ways from how it would be to talk to a friend, colleague or family member. The time is dedicated by the counselor especially for you and the space is solely for whatever you would like to explore or for what emerges during a session.

You can talk about anything that’s on your mind. We often hold our experiences within ourselves and don’t share it with others for fear of being judged or not wanting to burden anyone with how we feel or what feels challenging for us. Sometimes it doesn’t feel safe or supportive to speak what is truly in our hearts even with friends or family. You might not know what you want to talk about. And it is okay not to know that beforehand. You don’t need to know `exactly’ what is the help you are looking for. Sometimes we just feel a background anxiety or apprehension. Sometimes we just feel we are out of sorts, not really ourselves. We don’t feel resilient within ourselves. Sometimes we are just confused and unclear about a particular life situation or a relationship or we may just simply feel stressed out. Sometimes we know we have tried out everything within our current capacity and don’t know anymore the way forward or the way out. Not knowing is a perfect place to begin in counseling. As you speak to your counselor, greater clarity might emerge as to what is making your feel upset or stressed out and therefore what are the steps that emerge for you to take care of yourself or the situation. Something fresh usually comes when we sit and inquire together into these unknown spaces.

The counseling process is built on a felt sense of safety and trust that you feel as you explore things with a counselor. It does need time. Brief counseling sessions would range from three to six sessions. Sometimes one session might feel sufficient. Sometimes sessions may be needed for a longer period of six months to one or two years or more. Each individual and life situation is unique in how things have come together and therefore how it might unfold.

A counseling or psychotherapy session usually ranges from 45 mins to 90 mins. Your counselor will decide with you what is needed and appropriate for you.

Sessions are mostly held once a week. If there is a need to have more or less frequent sessions, it can be decided by you and the counselor. Counseling and psychotherapy is a mutually collaborative process between you and the counselor.

We at Just Being are trained in Mindfulness and Presence Oriented forms in counseling and psychotherapy. We also combine other methods in counseling like somatic, or cognitive work or art based approaches, depending on our individual specializations.

Mindfulness and Presence is based on engaging in a moment to moment way with whatever we encounter. This approach or orientation is based on the belief that we all have deep inner resources no matter what we are faced with and we can access these inner resources at any point in time.

Through the process, we touch into what feels `okay’ within us and from there we look at what we are faced with. It is a life affirming approach. It is an orientation that also includes somatic awareness or awareness of sensations in the body or how the body is also responding to how we think and feel and we attempt to include a bodily or somatic awareness as best as possible in the moment. It is not necessary to be oriented in the body and an exploration can also happen if you can’t sense or feel at that moment what’s going on for you in the body. However you are and whatever shows up is just fine. Everything that is brought up can be source of inquiring into more deeply to understand and respond to what is felt and needed as well as an opportunity to tap into our inherent sense of wholeness and wisdom.

The sessions might also include short guided mindfulness or self-compassion practices that are research based and are offered by the counselor if appropriate for you. These practices can really be helpful to us to be in touch with ourselves and relate to our experiences more deeply in a kind and compassionate way, thereby touching into our own inner resources.

Our approach is trauma-informed and trauma sensitive. What we mean by trauma is that sometimes because we’ve held our emotions for a long time within us or we experienced something at some point in our lives where we didn’t have the required care, holding or understanding needed, we hold these imprints in our body-mind. Sometimes life situations bring up these imprints. Sometimes in counseling and therapy and in mindfulness practice, these imprints surface. This is a good sign so we can look at what is waiting to be resolved. These imprints are often underlying the symptoms that we might be experiencing.

Counseling and Psychotherapy help to provide a safe space for these imprints to emerge so you can move forward in your life in a more free and spacious way and aligned with the deepest intention of your being. Our counsellors are trained in working with the body-mind in a way that doesn’t get overwhelming and are trained to respond to the overwhelm and modify any practice or method with the knowledge of how best to work with the physiology. Some of us in the team are trained in trauma resolution approaches and specialize in that area.

Counseling can be for anyone and everyone who wants to explore some aspects about themselves or their lives or simply to have a safe space to talk and explore what’s on their mind. Anyone can be benefitted from the counseling process. There are different approaches in counseling and it might take a while to see what is the approach that is best suitable to facilitate your own process. Sometimes we can be faced with little storms and sometimes some big ones. It’s always beneficial to talk about it in a safe space.