Counseling

Kipos (The Garden) is offering mental health counseling sessions to individuals and groups according to the systemic tradition. Which means, that it approaches counseling from the perspective of the interconnectedness between us. Most problems people face have to do with relationships: relationships to other humans (or not), but also other aspects of their selves. The latter often reflect attitudes and roles that we meet in social fields but not exclusively.

In the Garden we focus on methodologies of the metamodern systemic therapies (solution focused, dialogical and narrative therapy). We perceive the therapeutic/ counseling procedure as a dynamic process, where everything flows: approaches adapt to individual or group needs, as well as circumstances.

At the same time, we recognise that it is impossible to enter any therapeutic/ counseling relationship without awareness of the power relationships among those involved in it – regardless of whether the persons (or institutions) involved are present at the time or not. With the language we speak, we do not just express different realities and states of consciousness, but we also construct them, we call them into existence even for a split second. In a way, language (co)constructs the worlds in which we live. And in this context, the role of the therapist/ counselor is to be able to listen, co-creating thus a framework that allows for dialogue and reflection to emerge.

Communication of course, never takes place exclusively in words (either written or spoken). Expressions, gestures, body movement come to complete, support, question or directly object to what is being said.

The body, too, has its own wisdom. And it couldn’t be otherwise. As Andy Fisher (2002) suggests “we body-forth our experience”. Hence, in the counseling process, body sensations (proprioception), but also the experience of movement (kinesthesis) are creatively included in a dialogical sense.