Individual Counselling
Your trusted anchor helping you towards your best self
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
What is Individual Counselling?
Individual Counselling means working one-on-one with a professional counsellor or therapist (these mean the same thing!) to address whatever is getting in the way of vitality, safety and purpose. The work is about curiosity towards so called ‘symptoms’ (previously called ‘mental health issues’) learning to see them as clues towards what is missing from your life.
Counselling is like shining a bright light on areas that have been cloaked in darkness. Through careful attention we begin to see what what repetitive and limiting patterns are playing out in your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Freedom and relief occur when you feel seen, heard and understood by a skilled and caring therapist. New possibilities emerge that remained invisible in the endless loops of your isolated thoughts.
One on one counselling to help you to transform a negative and critical way of seeing yourself into one that is more peaceful yet more motivated. ‘Warning signal’ feelings of depressed anxiety start to lower, instead giving you more childlike spontaneity to remember what you want from life and how to go about it.
You will interact with your individual counsellor in a warm and kind yet very intentional environment designed to improve your well-being and life quality in the individual counselling session.
Who can benefit from Individual Counselling?
While our aim is to understand and appreciate you as a complete person, here are common issues people seek us out to receive help with:
- Low self-esteem or self-value
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Chronic stress
- Relationship issues
- Developmental or early-life trauma
- Grief, loss and life transitions
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Inner critic
- Self-destructive habits
- Anger and irritablity
- Saying no and setting boundaries
These listed issues are not your identity or who you are. They do not mean you are broken or that there is something with you.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Symptoms like these are side effects of overwhelm, fatigue, self-criticism and adversity. They are your body’s way of saying, something isn’t right in how I’ve been living. My work, relationships or habits are hurting me. It’s time to slow down and look closer.
Congratulations on learning to provide your system what it has so long been asking for.
Individual Counselling Benefits
While therapy can take other forms such as couples counselling, family therapy and groups, individual therapy remains the core service folks access to help transform their lives.
Seeing an individual therapist in one on one counselling session helps to build a safe, confidential and trusted relationship that deepens over time. As this relationship grows closer, you will undo the aloneness of unbearable feelings, increase mood resilience, improve outside relationships, gain career clarity, resolve identity challenges and move more into a peaceful and purposeful life.
- Personalized Attention and Care
- Development of Coping Skills
- Enhanced Emotional Regulation
- Trauma Processing and Healing
- Deeper Processing of Emotions and Experiences
- Safe and Confidential Environment
- Enhanced Communication Skills
- Personal Empowerment
- Building Resilience
- Reduction in Unhealthy Behavior Patterns
- Improved Self-Awareness and Insight
- Boost in Self-Esteem and Confidence
- Encouragement of Self-Exploration
- Cultivating a Growth Mindset
- Targeted Therapy for Specific Disorders
How Individual Counselling works
The first session is spent getting to know each other, building comfort, educating on the brain and body and establishing what sort of change you’d like to see in life. From that point, the work only deepens and becomes more powerful over time.
What to expect from Individual Counselling?
It’s important to go into therapy recognizing that it is a process. You hear this a lot but what does it actually mean?!
It means that counselling is less like taking a pill to cure something and more like looking closer and realizing there was nothing to cure in the first place. Symptoms were part of your system seeking balance. By listening with curiosity you learn that difficult emotions are your key to becoming stronger, more loving and more aware of what you want to do with this precious life.
Your therapist is there to help you to build mastery with emotion, patience with yourself, boldness in taking action and setting boundaries while releasing pain from the body. This is something that happens over time, not all at once.
Finally, we aren’t here to just give answers. That doesn’t create lasting change! The person centered approach in counselling means helping you to become the master of your own life (and you can 😉
Your healing journey
starts with a single step
Like I’ve been saying, counselling is about embracing a lifestyle based on growth and wellbeing. It’s a journey. The sometimes scary step of finding a therapist may be one of the most important things you ever do. When you take this step, you are choosing to look at what was too big and frightening in the past. As you show up for your first day of in person counselling or web work, you are making the decision to accept help and let go of what has held you back—an act of tremendous courage and compassion.
Counsellors
Get to know our counselors and find one that resonates with you
Free Consult
Want to make sure that we’re a good match? Have a free chat with one of our counsellors:
Book Online
Use our confidential booking system to find a time that suits your schedule:
Where are Individual Therapy sessions held?
Downtown in the Roger’s Building at Granville and Pender, you’ll join us in one of six beautiful and eccentric themed counselling rooms designed by our friends at Rodrozen Design+Build. These include Sage, Ocean, Sunset, Jungle, Desert and Meditation Room.
…Or if you prefer, over the video-platform Zoom, which is compliant with Canada’s standards for professional and personal privacy. Just click the invitation link your counsellor will send prior to your appointment.
Individual Counselling Rates
COUNSELLOR
$165 + GST
INTERN
$65 + GST
Why choose Thrive Counselling Centre?
There are many excellent counselling centres around Vancouver (and several we can gladly suggest). Like all spaces though, Thrive has its own unique mission:
Helping our clients and counsellors to become who they are more fully. Our stance is that in safe and encouraging conditions, people naturally become who they were meant to be. We observe that this gets slowed down or outright stopped when traumatic events or periods get ‘stuck in the body.’
Our team is here to help remove blockages to your nervous system so you can confidently say I know who I am and I know what I want. We do this with modern, research-supported therapies designed to resolve trauma. These include EMDR, Emotion Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems, AEDP and many more.
We believe that healed nervous systems are naturally kind, patient, tolerant and curious to others. We don’t guide what your values should be, instead wanting to help you discover what your own values are from the deepest corners of who you are as a person. This is often a very different message from what our families taught us!
Individual Counselling FAQs
What are the types of individual counselling?
Individual counselling refers to the overall practice of seeing a therapist in one on one counselling session. From here, you may work with a variety of different approaches to counselling. These are listed on the bio pages of each therapist and include types of counselling our team has been trained in. Examples include EMDR, Internal Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of individual counselling?
In one-on-one work, safety may be built very quickly compared to groups and workshops. You have someone in your corner keeping you accountable to your growth who knows you more deeply with each passing week.
Relationship issues however—such as marital or couples challenges—are harder to work with. These difficulties tend to resolve better through couples and relationship therapy.
How can counselling empower an individual?
Feeling confident in our identities, trusting our emotions and allowing strong and safe relationships is called secure attachment. This is built by having a consistent relationship in which we are seen, heard and understood. Repeating this over time ‘programs security’ into the nervous system. After accessing counselling, folks tend to honour their needs, set more confident boundaries and leave negative relationships in favour of safer and more positive ones.
What is the difference between individual and group counselling?
Individual counselling means seeing a therapist one-on-one, whereas group counselling occurs typically with at least five other participants present (and often many more). Both may be done in person Vancouver or via the web. A range of both services exist, such as relationship or individual career counselling with the same options generally being available in population focused group work as well.
What can I expect from Individual Counselling Vancouver?
Expect to be entering a process where things steadily move towards what you want and need in life. I write ‘process’ because counselling isn’t like taking a drug that cures things. It is a journey of knowing yourself deeper, practicing insights in the real world, and then repeating the cycle again and again as life becomes safer, more meaningful and enjoyable. Both counselling in person or web-based work help to achieve this.
What are some signs that indicate counselling therapy might be a helpful intervention for an individual?
When thinking is constant and disorganized, when relationships are stressful, when work is unsatisfying, when the body is ‘protesting’ through illness or injury, or when the general flow of life is a struggle, counselling may be helpful.
Who are the individuals who need counselling?
The word ‘need’ is tricky. While indeed, oftentimes folks may be experiencing high levels of anxiety, depression or traumatic distress, anyone looking to enhance some aspect of their lives may benefit from counselling.