Work is Life

Our Approach

Career counseling is not mental health counseling, however it can be provided concurrently or consecutively with mental health services. Often it is the case that individuals with ambiguous career paths will feel anxious or depressed, and also other mental health challenges, such as occupational burnout, traumatic stress, or ADHD, can destabilize one’s chosen career path and necessitate a change that can feel intensely uncertain. Career counseling is a service that helps develop a path forward that engages the individual with vocational tasks that are sustainable, productive, and rewarding. There are three basic components of effective career counseling:

1. Values Assessment
2. Interests Assessment
3. Aptitude & Achievement Evaluation

When exploring values the path is often obvious, but difficult to follow nonetheless. We are often conditioned by well-intended instruction and feedback to question our values, to keep them from becoming unrealistic, and to reconcile them against the sometimes harsh reality of the world. But when we put our values into a box, what is really happening is we are confusing values with goals, and in so doing we are missing an opportunity to live a richer, more meaningful life through our vocational tasks.

That which is interesting and engaging is also that which is sustainable. Thoroughly assessing your interests is key in finding vocational tasks that will provide you with years of rewarding engagement. Guidance during this process is also helpful since sometimes we can confuse our interests with what is appealing. We might desire stability, safety, prosperity, and recognition in our career, but sometimes deep down we are more interested in tasks that don’t jibe with our desires. The process of openly, honestly confronting the disparities between what we want and what we tell ourselves we want is key in finding a sustainable career path.

Effective career counseling starts with goals in mind, then proceeds to create newer, bigger goals that the individual can take into the world, and into their work. Often the process of exploring values and interests opens up consideration of several career paths that each involve their own unique demands of physical condition, cognitive capacity, and emotional resilience. Evaluating these dynamic aspects of each individual is necessary work in order to engage in attainable, realistic career goals.