What is counselling?

Within my practice I can help you with the following problems:

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• Stress complaints/burnout

• Communication problems and conflicts

• Work related issues

• Emotional problems

• Self-esteem issues

• Problems related to your gender identity/gender dysphoria

• Problems related to your sexual orientation

• Sleeping problems and loss of concentration

• Feelings of depression

• Vague physical complaints

• Relationship problems

You do not need a referral note from your GP for counseling. 

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Counseling aims to help you with a problem that you cannot solve yourself. These can be personal, work or study related issues. These problems also often lead to complaints such as fatigue, depressive symptoms, tension complaints and a dissatisfied feeling. Counseling is suitable for anyone who is dealing with stress and feels stuck in everyday life for whatever reason.

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A counselor helps you to put your desired change into words, and to accomplish this in your life. The counselor does this by reflecting on the cause of your problem and searching for thoughts and feelings that contribute to maintain your situation. Your personal view on your situation has a lot of influence on how you experience your problem. The key therefore often lies in changing this perspective.

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The counselor helps you to reflect on yourself. Teaches you to look differently, provides new insights, and helps to change non-helping thoughts or beliefs into thoughts that do help. This gives you a clearer picture of how you can reduce your problem. The counselor helps you to develop goals and to achieve them step by step. The focus is on your own strength, and which skills you already have to take these steps. Where necessary, the counselor helps to teach new skills to do things differently than you did before.

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The ultimate goal is to leave with a new “toolkit-for-your-life” that you can use at the right moments in life.

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Difference between coaching and counseling :

When you experience  a problem and look for help, you come across different types of care providers. The differences between them ar not always entirely clear. The distinction between a coach is the most relevant for the counselor.

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"A coach drags you through it, a counselor teaches you to drag yourself through it!"

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Coaching is often strongly future-oriented. A coach teaches you new strategies and looks for possibilities to do things differently in the future together with the cliënt. Often exercises and assignments are used that the coach performs together with the client during the process. Sometimes the coach gives concrete behavioral advice to take home. VAT is charged for coaching. As a result, a coaching process can be relatively expensive. Last, a “coach” is not a protected title, so everyone can call themselves that.

In addition to the future, counseling also focuses on the past and present. A counselor looks at the client's underlying non-helping feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and helps teach new behaviors and thoughts. A counselor hardly does any exercises, but talks to you and listens. In counseling, the client formulates their own wishes for new behavior. No VAT is charged for counseling. A register counselor ABvC is a protected title that indicates that one meets the high requirements of the professional association.