An Introduction
Tell Us Who You Are
My name is Jon. I am an LPC in the State of Texas. I have worked in several areas of the helping field, including ministry, victim advocacy, youth work, crisis response, sexual assault counseling, domestic violence counseling and individual/couples therapy.
What Type of Therapy Do You Do?
While I have training in different therapeutic models, I have a strong affinity for Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT). And I think you will find this blog to be heavily influenced by this model, since SFT has a strong emphasis on hope.
Why Are You Blogging?
Simply put: to reach a greater audience. To diversify my work as a therapist. To expand upon my work in helping people tap into their best hopes.
And to earn a little extra money along the way!
What Topics Do You Think You’ll Write About?
The overarching theme of the blog is discussing how a deep exposition of hope affects meaningful change in our lives. All topics will funnel through this theme.
Some topics will direct this theme towards specific client issues such as depression, anxiety, abuse and trauma. Learning how to find hope again in these challenges, and to even use hope in overcoming them.
Other topics may be more general, discussing the nature of hope in our lives, and how we go about maximizing said hopes. Lastly, some topics may go a little more complex into counseling theories and how they use hope in a session. I plan to have a balance between being technical and practical on the topic.
In general, I plan to write A LOT about hope, in a way that should be engaging, exciting, fun, emotional and beneficial for all readers.
Who Would You Love to Connect With Via Your Blog?
There are two sides of a coin I want this blog to reach: clients and therapists.
When I say clients, I DO NOT mean that anyone reading this is my client. Rather, I want to write from the “client perspective,” first and foremost. I absolutely love discussing a client’s hopes, helping them engage with it, and watching them bring the world to life they dreamed of. And I plan to write in a way where, if the reader were my client, they would benefit from the blog. I desire for the reader who is feeling hopeless to come away renewed.
Secondly, I also want to reach therapists. I find (and I am sure many others do, as well) therapy to be heavily focused on pathology. You come to therapy to discuss what is wrong with you. What is broken. What is failing. And this is not in itself an error.
Yet, while emphasizing the diagnosis of problems, therapists can often miss the amazing potential that a hopeful client brings to the session. No matter how broken someone is, or how pathological their behavior, hope can turn their world upside down.
I want therapist to be more capable of integrating hope into their sessions. So even when a client walks into a session thinking, “there is something wrong with me,” they can walk out saying, “there is something right with me!”
We can diagnose more than mental illness.
We can diagnose hope!