Congratulations on finding us like a needle in a haystack! Just the mere fact that you found this page shows us how serious and committed you are in finding a way to pursue success in every aspect of your life. By success we do not refer to a life without challenges or a life of financial success. You landed on this page because you want to live in accordance with your deepest aspirations for your brief stay on this planet. Whether you are a partner, a parent, a worker, a student, a teenager, etc., all of us care for something: how to use the one asset that is non–renewable, the time we spend in these important roles.
Here’s a video version of this:
You’re here because you want to know how One Life Only Counseling Services can help you in your pursuit of becoming the best version of yourself and to understand what makes our approach different. Here’s what we think we can offer you:
- A Move Towards A Psychology of the Normal, Not the Abnormal!
- Our Basic Assumption: Countercultural and Counterintuitive
- No Labeling!
- Answering some of the important questions you may have when you seek counseling
- Journeying With You
A Move Towards A Psychology of the Normal, Not the Abnormal!
Most of mainstream psychology has focused on the 20 percent that are said to be suffering from some abnormal psychological state. Is it any wonder that there is such a stigma around seeking help for psychological concerns? You? Seeking a counselor or therapist? Well, you just counted yourself as one of those poor souls who, “need help.” Too bad you’re crazy!
There is an entire generation that believes there is something wrong with them biologically (e.g. chemical imbalance) or historically (e.g. difficult childhood) when they struggle with difficult thoughts and emotions.
The current system of mental health is similar to a doctor telling a patient that he only has to exercise when he develops diabetes. This is the result of a system that biomedicalizes normal human mental processes. In fact, we call it mental “health” (instead of mental resiliency or flexibility) for this reason. Here’s a quote that sums this up:
“An entire generation has grown up with the commercially useful but scientifically false idea that experiencing mental struggles means you have a specific biologically based brain dysfunction. As a result, consumers are less interested in psychotherapy, regardless of what the data suggest.”
Hoffman, Hayes, Lorscheid citing a study by Olfson and Marcus
Here’s what we mean by data (Olfson and Marcus):
- From 1998 to 2007:
- People using only talk therapy down 50 percent,
- People using talk therapy with medication down 30 percent.
- People using medication alone rose to two out of three people, or around 70 percent!
We don’t know the data about the Philippines, but you can probably tell from personal experience that there’s a significant number of us who have gone down this route.
Our Basic Assumption: Countercultural and Counterintuitive
“We don’t assume that left to their own devices, normal human beings are happy and that only an odd history or a broken biology disturbs the peace.
We assume instead that suffering is normal and it is the unusual person who learns how to create peace of mind.”
Hayes and Smith
“The secret is we all have the same secrets,” as Steven Hayes would often say. We all have this something in between our ears that if we don’t reign in, can get in the way of our own success as partners, spouses, children, parents, workers, executives, students, etc.
This is our philosophy. This is the perspective we take when we see you. It is consistent and pragmatic so you don’t get confusing messages about what it is that is going on inside of your most difficult inner experiences and how it is that you can handle them better. It has something to do with how we view human nature in its innate wonder and beauty.
No Labeling!
If you have gone to a mental health practitioner, you might have had the experience of being given a diagnosis after just less than an hour of sharing your concerns. Unfortunately, this can have deep repercussions to your well, let’s just say, your sanity!
Here are some of the usual side effects of labeling (adapted from Hayes, Hoffman, and Lorscheid :
- Makes clients feel like their problems are simplistic
- Makes clients feel threatened
- Makes clients feel there is something wrong with them and something in them is broken and needs repair
- Makes clients less of a human being
- Makes clients want to take shortcuts e.g. unnecessary medication
Some of the important questions you may have when we seek counseling
- How can you freely choose your way towards unsettling and yet meaningful risks in the form of open and honest communicating with the important people of your life?
- How can you remain kind in the face of irritation with your household members when you get home tired from work?
- How can you take on new challenges that come to visit your most important relationships? Perhaps people have betrayed you, disappointed you, or hurt you. What do you do in the face of this?
- How can you risk sharing your thoughts and feelings honestly and openly to your colleagues at work or loved ones at home even with a history of rejection, judgment, or shaming from your family or in past working environments?
- How can you handle strange thoughts and images when they arise so they don’t get in the way of the things that truly matter to you?
These are just some of the more common ones. There is more as we are complex! We would love to have the opportunity to help you find the answers to these troubling questions.
Journeying With You
Counseling or therapy sessions are like you and your therapist or counselor finding your way up your respective mountains. And within a brief moment in the therapy room, your counselor interrupts his climb to focus on helping you see from a different perspective your side of the mountain. It’s like a drone shot of what’s ahead of you, only this drone does not have to leave your side.
Counseling or therapy is your attempt at fulfilling your deepest and most important aspirations for yourself, your career, your relationships, your health, and your life. It is an invitation to take a step towards not just feeling good, but living well. Because like climbing a mountain, life is not only about reaching the top, but also and more importantly about, experiencing the climb.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard