People seek individual counseling for many reasons. Usually, there is either a painful problem they want to resolve, or they are seeking increased personal growth, or both. Some of the issues addressed in counseling include:
- depressed mood
- anxiety
- panic
- obsessive preoccupation
- trauma resolution
- desire to improve social confidence
- desire to improve self-esteem
- assertiveness training
- managing toxic environments
- response to relationship changes and transitions
- improvement in decision making skills
- increased skill in handling strong emotions
- management of life stresses
- ongoing grief concerns
- support for the emotional impact of chronic medical conditions
- emotional issues related to end-of-life
- caregiver stress and burnout
The tools that a person may use in their therapy to promote real change will vary depending on both the nature of the problem/s, the client's personality, the client's pre-existing skills, strengths, and weaknesses, and their willingness to do homework. Getting an understanding of the problem set is important, but is not enough in itself to facilitate change.
Therapeutic tools used in individual therapy may include any of the following interventions or combinations of interventions:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Radical Acceptance and Commitment
- Mindfulness Skills
- Dialectical Behavior Principles
- EMDR
- Somatic Experiencing
- Hypnotherapy
- Homework/Bibliotherapy
- Desensitization
- Exposure and Response Prevention
- Insight
- Person Centered/Humanistic Therapy
At times, people begin individual therapy with the hope that they can eventually have marital, couple, or family therapy, too, with their individual therapist. However, it is my belief that individual and multi-person therapies should be kept separate, as doing so reduces the risk of therapist prejudice (based on knowing one of the clients longer than the other) or heightened client distrust (because the person entering a pre-established therapy relationship feels the therapist will take the other person's 'side'). In this case, the client will be encouraged to seek their couple or family services with another therapist, and referrals will be made when possible and appropriate.