What to Expect?

You can expect to be met with respect, compassion and patience. You can expect to be heard and understood in a nonjudgmental way regardless of the issues you (and your partner if you are doing couples counseling) bring to therapy and the information you share. You can expect my genuine interest and engagement with your life journey and my intention to help you to resolve wounds and create positive shifts in your life. Our sessions are always private and confidential.

We will begin together by setting initial goals to be worked on and any obstacles or troubling issues that get in the way of achieving these goals will also be looked at and addressed within our therapeutic relationship. I will guide you through a process to be more clear about where you are going in life and what is keeping you from getting there. From that awareness we will craft a step-by-step plan to help you take a skillful approach to creating the life you want, resolving specific issues/problems, and break away from unhelpful patterns, behaviors, actions, and belief systems.

Depending on what issues you choose to address in our sessions, therapy be can be short-term (6-12 sessions) or longer term. The first session usually focuses on an assessment of your (and your partner’s if you are doing couples counseling) personal history and the issues you are wanting to work on. The sessions following this will be collaborative therapeutic work focused on creating clarity and awareness of these issues, building skills to work with these issues, and removing obstacles to creating the healing shifts you are seeking.

Therapy is an adventure in which one’s self or one’s love relationship can be bathed in the light of awareness, envisioned, processed, transformed, and eventually birthed anew outside of the the therapeutic relationship. In my experience, your motivation and desire to heal are the key factors for change, and the likelihood of positive change correlates directly to your level of motivation.

Counseling involves both benefits and risks. Benefits for people who undertake counseling often include a reduction of feelings of distress, more satisfying relationships, greater sense of well-being, resolution of specific problems, a sense of self-empowerment and, as one of my former clients put it, “becoming your own best friend. ”

Growth nearly always brings change, and sometimes change (even positive change) causes stress. The potential risks of counseling involve recalling unpleasant aspects of your personal history that may bring up distressing thoughts and feelings. These negative feelings are temporary and the positive shifts are long lasting and another step towards healing. Please know that I always work with clients to make sure there is sufficient skill and support in dealing with anything distressing thoughts and feelings that come up in the healing process.

David S. Robbins, MA, LPC
3393 Iris Ave., Suite 206
Boulder, CO 80301
303.225.2700
email me