The Ember Counseling and Coaching Framework
Three Pillars of Focus
You might be wondering what to expect and how we work. We are trained in many different researched backed methods of change and support, but we have condensed them down to three pillars: Wellness, Identity Development and Skill Learning, and Systems. We think of HOW we do therapy as relational, experiential, and goal-driven.
Wellness - Wellness can be a confusing concept and there are many different aspects to it. We begin therapy by completing a survey related to eight areas of wellness: Emotions, Work/School, Family/Relationship, Care for body, Stress Resilience, Friendships, Rest and Play, and Growth/Hobbies. Often, anxiety, depression, and other problems can be the result of being imbalanced in these areas. By taking the time to assess them, we are better able to understand what the goals are for us to work on.
Identity Development and Skill Learning - This pillar is all about understanding YOU. It is about understanding your story and the significant events that have happened along the way. We also spend time focusing on identifying your strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs so that you have a great concept of who you are and the life you want to live. We then focus on skills to help you live out your values and focus on your wellness goals.
Systems - This pillar differs for adults and minors. The systems in our lives are the structures that help the changes we make to stick. Without a great structure, life can happen and we are right back where we started. For adults we look at your schedule, organizational system, and your support system where we identify what is working great that we want to do more of as well as changes that need to be made to become more effective. For teens, we focus more on the family system. This focus is on family structure and we help parents create an environment that minimizes conflict and promotes a deeper connection between parents and child. We also help teens identify and evaluate their own organizational and support system. The goal of this pillar is to help families have a structure that helps everyone maximize connection and minimize conflict.
Three Ways of Doing Therapy
Relational - We all can admit that small talk is hard and isn’t the most enjoyable thing. The only thing worse than small talk is deep talk with someone that you don’t know. We know that opening up and sharing your life can only happen when you feel like you know the person and have a relationship. We prioritize ourselves as humans first and therapists second. Upon first meeting you or your child, we want to spend an extended amount of time getting to know one another. When you feel like you know us, it feels like talking to a friend and it becomes SO much easier to identify and work on the painful things that you might experience in life. While we are humans and include bits of our stories, the focus is still on YOU and Your goals. We consider it our job to spend our time focusing on giving YOU the best experience possible.
Experiential - We of course will talk in therapy, but sometimes it is easier to be creative. We believe that the best learning happens when we can connect therapy to how you process best. Whether you are a visual, auditory, kinesthetic (movement), or through reading/writing, we want to use methods that help you reach your goals. We use art, music, videos, drama, sports, and more to help enhance the therapy experience and help you experience lasting change.
Goal- driven - We want to be clear here, we all want a quick fix. Life is hard and just like we didn’t get into the situations that we are in over night, we most likely won’t get out of them over night either. Therapy is an investment in yourself. This means that for therapy to be the most effective, you will need to think about your goals and work on them outside of our sessions. We will take the time to define goals within the first few therapy sessions to chart our direction. It is impossible to say how long therapy will take because everyone is different, but if we develop a great working relationship that connects to your interests with clearly defined goals then the process can happen much faster.