Making a Big Decision

So You Have  a Big Decision to Make...

Where do you begin? Psychotherapy is largely about insight into your thoughts and feelings leading to appropriate actions. While psychotherapy often looks at your whys and why-nots, and your psychological obstacles to making decisions by exploring the emotional back story, guidance assumes you know what you want and works with you to get there, or helps you make changes to your goals if somehow they keep being out of reach. Guidance is about action.

With guidance you state your crossroads and what you hope to achieve by making your best decision. You may opt to start with the most compelling option and start planning out that path. If the projected route brings up problems for you, we may examine the second most compelling option and talk that through. Eventually you make a working decision (which can be changed by you at any time). 

Here are some steps you can expect to take with guidance:

• You establish the goal. You may need helping putting it into words, so that's a guidance issue
• You explore ways of achieving that goal and select the route that fits your motivation, risk tolerance and time frame best
• You break down the tasks you'll need to accomplish to get there, with guidance helping you identify and define them
• You commit to taking step one (or more) by a certain time frame, with encouragement to aim high, but not impossibly so, in a short time
• In the next session you account for your efforts and report on your progress

The Whole Point of Guidance is Getting to the Point Where We Can Say