BEing There Counseling

BEing There Counseling Booklet #1 BEing There Counseling 823 Mease Road Grand Junction, Colorado 81505 Tel. (970) 245-6502 website: www.beingthere.net email: frontdesk@beingthere.net

2 BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction What Is Counseling? Counseling, also known as psychotherapy, is the process of learning about yourself and learning how to use that information to make changes and to be more effective in your life. This process is usually one of directed conversation. The therapist pokes around specific areas of your life looking for signs of pain or disharmony, much like a doctor might poke around your body to find clues of pain or discomfort that point to a source. Together the client and the therapist define the exact nature of the difficulty being experienced and the ways to proceed to maximize the client s emotional health and goals. This process varies in different settings to meet the goals of every client in the counseling session. Couples will be guided to interact with each other in healthier ways. Families will be guided to establish more effective relationships. And groups of clients will interact with each other as part of the counseling process. The needs of the client determine which setting is appropriate. The general goals of counseling remain the same in any Counseling is where the pursuit of happiness begins! setting: to gain greater insight and understanding, to increase interpersonal skills, to clarify the Personal Truth of the individual, to learn how to claim more self-responsibility while simultaneously disowning the responsibility of others, and to learn more effective strategies for creating what you truly want. Who Needs Counseling? Counseling is a skill building process. It uses the specific situations in your life as the training ground. Dealing with these specific situations requires learning and practicing emotional skills that are new and foreign to nearly everyone. Since very few people have received training in their emotional realm, nearly everyone needs counseling. Counseling is the only venue available to most people where you receive emotional training. If you have never received training about your emotions, then you will benefit greatly from counseling. People often use counseling to resolve marital and relationship

BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction 3 problems in its many different forms, to become better parents, to deal with occupation-related issues, or to clarify what it is they truly want in life. Having been raised with physical, mental, emotional or spiritual abuse always affects adult life in undesirable ways. Specific behaviors or moods that concern you, or others around you, should be examined in therapy. And major events in life draw forth strong emotions that need to be understood for peace of mind and heart. These are just some of the reasons people need counseling. The need for counseling is not necessarily a measure of the situations in your life being overwhelming. It is not about you being inadequate to deal with those situations. It certainly does not mean you are weak. Needing counseling is about acknowledging that life requires constant change, and changing requires learning new skills. The difficult situations in your life are merely the notice that change is due. And counseling is where you go to make that change. How Long Does Counseling Take? This is perhaps, the most difficult question to answer meaningfully for new clients. An entire chapter of the High-C Journal (Chapter 2: How Much Is Enough?, 1997 BEing There Publications) is devoted to answering it. Since everyone s problems are unique, along with the skills they bring into therapy with them, the sophistication of their self-awareness, the attempts already made to resolve their conflict, and so on, a prediction for how long it will take to adequately deal with your issues can not be made until these factors are considered. The largest factor will be your depth of commitment to your personal growth. If all you want is to resolve an immediate crisis, then a few hours of counseling should suffice. If you are inclined to search more deeply for the roots of certain recurring experiences, then you will need to invest more time. To be able to define your core issues and plumb their depth, so you can experience complete self-awareness in every moment, will require a long-term relationship with your counselor. These decisions are part of the counseling process, and will be discussed with you as one phase of counseling leads into another. Emotional education can be equated to mental education in this regard. You decide how much you want to know about yourself, how far you want to go. More education means more skills to define what you want and greater ability to create what you want. What About the Cost? Since everyone needs different amounts of counseling to achieve their goals, it is impossible to establish one product fee. If, for instance, we could

4 BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction say that everyone will need 20 hours of therapy, then one fee could be quoted for the full product of a set amount, say $2600. Then it would be possible to compare the price of this product against a comparable product, like one full semester of college. You would then see how counseling is really a bargain, especially when you begin to look at the effects in your life of counseling versus college. However, counseling must be charged at an hourly rate to suit the needs of a wide variety of clients. When one compares the hourly rate of counseling against other forms of services commonly charged by the hour, a construction laborer, an auto mechanic, a plumber, and so on, the hourly rate is more understandable. Lawyers, whose hourly rate is usually higher, often charge a retainer before beginning to provide service. This is because they know that the service they provide will require a number of hours that can not be predetermined. In order to compare apples to apples, you cannot consider counseling to be a unit of time that you purchase. Instead, counseling is an education that will take a variable amount of time to achieve. Many clients think of BEing There Counseling as an investment in themselves, and prefer to prepay a regular amount. They sometimes refer to it as the U. of You, as in University of You, and their payments as a self-determined tuition. It may cost you only a few hundred dollars for crisis intervention, or thousands of dollars if you fully commit to the pursuit of Higher Consciousness. While the total cost can not be predetermined, you can rest assured that Donna will always keep your costs in mind. We have seen many clients who were struggling with their budget succeed in their therapeutic goals. Money is hardly ever the limiting factor, although it is often used as an excuse. If you want to do your work, we will help you find a way to do it. What Is BTES? BEing There Enlightenment Systems, Inc. (BTES) is a private company, founded in 1990 by Stephen and Donna BE, devoted to helping people with their personal growth. As a professional counselor with over thirty years experience Donna offers a variety of counseling services. She specializes in marriage counseling, romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, personal growth issues, and other issues of emotional health. Donna BE helps

BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction 5 her clients deal with any situation that may be causing disharmony or disruption in their lives. Emotional pain is where most counseling begins. Counseling consists of a process of exploring situations and their associated emotions. All counseling clients must first learn how to feel and explore their emotions. This effort brings you a new sense of selfunderstanding. With this new insight and awareness, you are better prepared to make choices in your behavior that will lead to new consequences. The counselor is a guide for your self-discovery, teaching new emotional skills along the way. With self-discovery, greater insight, new emotional skills, and clearer choices, you claim a new level of self-responsibility. This results in a resolution to the situation which first prompted counseling, a resolution that is more complex than might have been expected. In addition, you experience new growth and a more profound sense of self. This is called personal growth. An interesting thing occurs when someone first experiences their ability to grow. Like a child first discovering the benefits of walking, the client is often eager to use and perfect the emotional skills they have learned by expanding their discovery into other areas of their life. By identifying common patterns of emotion and behavior, called dynamics, the client learns to recognize the issues that underlie all problem situations and experiences. The client is then able to deal more directly with their issues, which has a widespread effect throughout their life, instead of having to focus on the problem situations that reflect those issues. Knowing, recognizing, and dealing directly with issues is a more sophisticated level of self-awareness, which allows you to be more effective in all of your relationships and pursuits. It is through this process that you can begin to understand your lessons, which are necessary to develop a new level of consciousness. This allows you to deliberately create what you truly want, such as true intimacy. Situations, emotions, emotional skills, self-responsibility, personal growth, dynamics, issues, and lessons, all lead to new levels of consciousness and significantly greater effectiveness in your life. This process is called the pursuit of Higher Consciousness. BEing There Counseling nurtures you through each of these steps, guiding you in your pursuit of Higher Consciousness.

6 BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction Professional Counselor A Board Certified, Licensed Professional Counselor, Donna BE earned her Master of Arts Degree in Humanistic Psychology from the University of West Georgia in 1975. She has been married since 1974, and has two adult sons, Daniel and Andrew. She participated in training by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Sidney Jourard, James Klee (associate of Abraham Maslow), Rolling Thunder, Yang Jwing-Ming, and Ken Keyes, Jr., and has traveled in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Donna was selected as a delegate to the White House Council on Donna BE, M.A. LPC BCPC Aging in 1981 for her creative counseling programs. Her highest priority is her continuous growth, through every experience, throughout her life. This value has served as the foundation for her services for thirty years in various mental health services, including: crisis intervention centers, psychiatric hospitals, mental health centers, colleges, universities, and other services. Donna opened a private practice in 1981, in Portland, Oregon. She has been in private practice in Grand Junction, Colorado, since 1988, where she and Stephen BE founded BEing There Enlightenment Systems, Inc., in 1990. Stephen and Donna BE s first book, Feeling Your Way Along: Using Your Emotions as a Pathway to Enlightenment, describes the skills everyone needs to learn in order to deal effectively with any experience in life. Stephen has also authored a series of personal growth manuals, the High-C Journal, Vols. I-V, that guide you to anticipate some of the lessons everyone will eventually need to learn. Donna is trained in traditional psychotherapy and can help you with nearly any situation. She specializes in personal growth, romantic relationships, and conscious parenting, and in helping the client use these areas of his or her life to learn to create harmony and effective lifestyles. Her service is not just a set of psychological techniques, but rather the promise of a guide to someone who wishes to discover and live by what is true for them. Counseling is not just what she does for work. Self-discovery is a way of life.

BEing There Counseling #1 - Introduction 7 How to Begin Your Journey There are several ways to begin. First, you can call the BEing There office (970.245.6502) and schedule an initial appointment with Donna BE. How long it takes to be seen the first time varies according to the limits of her schedule. You may be able to get in right away, or it may take several weeks to find an opening in the schedule. Counseling will change how you pursue happiness. Second, or while you are waiting for your initial appointment, you can purchase the book, Feeling Your Way Along, and read it carefully. This will give you an understanding of what you will be learning to do in therapy. It is available in the BEing There Bookstore, www.beingthere.net/browser.htm. Third, you may immediately join and participate in www.beingthere.net, an international membership forum for the development of Higher Consciousness and Enlightenment. BEingThere.net is a unique and profound tool to guide you, educate you, and provide support on your journey of self-development. Take the tour, sign-up for the short course, and become a member. The more you participate, the faster you will grow. Fourth, enroll in www.emotionschool.com, and begin taking the training courses there. These are the very skills you will be learning in counceling. Donna is always receptive to those who are pursuing Higher Consciousness, who are willing to do their work and are seeking their issues. She will be able to help you with whatever situations and experiences you bring with you. Counseling is where the pursuit of happiness begins! Begin your pursuit of happiness. Call today to get started. (970) 245-6502 Just like on the mental aspect, emotional skills overcome emotional ignorance, and the sense of inadequacy that goes with it. (High-C Journal, Chapter 23)

BEing There Enlightenment Systems, Inc. 823 Mease Rd. Grand Junction, CO 81505 Counseling is the only venue where you learn the emotional skills necessary to deal effectively with any relationship or situation in your life. Everyone needs to learn the skills that are taught through counseling. Soon you too will be saying, It s the best thing I ever did for myself!