Does everyone need therapy? How will I know if therapy is right for me?
No. Not everyone needs therapy, and therapy isn’t something people should pursue by default. It’s most useful when something in your life feels unclear, stuck, painful, or harder to navigate on your own.
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You may find Counseling helpful if you’re noticing recurring patterns, struggling with a specific situation or decision, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, or wanting a clearer understanding of yourself or your relationships. Some people come with long-standing concerns, and others come with something specific they want to sort through and move forward from.
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In some cases, even a single session can be useful. One conversation may help identify the scope and origin of what’s happening, whether therapeutic work is likely to be helpful, or whether a different approach would be more appropriate. This is especially true for parents seeking support for their teens, where understanding the nature of the concern is often the first and most important step.
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A good indicator that therapy might be right for you is not the size of the problem, but your willingness to engage thoughtfully in understanding what you are managing. If you’re curious, open, and willing to reflect therapy can be a useful and clarifying process.
How do I decide between therapy and coaching?
The distinction comes down to focus and function, not importance or intensity.
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Psychotherapy is appropriate when concerns involve emotional distress, mental health symptoms, trauma history, relational patterns, or situations where understanding psychological processes and nervous system responses is important. Therapy provides a clinical framework for exploring these experiences and is available in person in Nassau County, FL and virtually to Florida residents.
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Life coaching, as offered here, is non-clinical and forward-focused. Coaching is best suited for individuals whose lives are relatively stable and are seeking clarity, structure, or momentum around specific areas such as parenting challenges, career transitions, leadership development, relationship decisions, life direction, or personal growth.
Coaching focuses on perspective, strategy, and application rather than diagnosis or treatment of mental health conditions, and is offered virtually to individuals anywhere around the world.
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If you’re unsure which is a better fit, often a brief conversation can be helpful in determining which direction to go. In some cases, a single session can clarify whether therapy, coaching, a different approach, or no ongoing work at all makes the most sense.
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Please note that life coaching is not considered a medical or mental health service, and insurance does not cover coaching sessions.
I’ve never been in counseling. How will I know if it’s working?
From the very beginning, we work to define what “working” means to you. In the first session, we clarify the concern you’re bringing in, refine what a meaningful outcome would look like, and outline a practical framework for how we might get there. Progress is not measured against a generic standard, but against how you define success in your own life.
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As therapy unfolds, the work focuses on helping you take concrete steps toward that outcome — whether that involves changing patterns, making decisions, tolerating emotions differently, or relating to others in new ways. You should notice increasing clarity, movement, or capacity over time, not just insight without application.
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The goal of good therapy is to help you move step by step toward your goals. The goal of great therapy is for you to arrive where you intended, with a clear understanding of how you got there. Ideally, the changes are not dependent on the therapist, but on skills, perspectives, and systems you’ve internalized and can apply going forward.
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When therapy is working well, progress feels owned rather than managed. The therapist’s role becomes increasingly less visible as your ability to navigate challenges independently becomes more established.
How long will I be in therapy once I start?
There isn’t a predetermined timeline. The length of therapy is shaped by what you’re working on, how you engage in the process, and what you define as a meaningful outcome.
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Some people come in with a specific concern or decision point and find that a small number of focused sessions provides the clarity they were seeking. Others are working through longer-standing patterns, losses, or relational dynamics that unfold over a longer period of time. Both are valid, and neither is assumed at the outset.
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From the beginning, we pay attention to progress. As insight turns into lived change and your capacity to navigate challenges independently grows, the role and the pace of therapy naturally shifts. The goal is not to stay in therapy longer than is useful, but to support change in a way that is integrated and sustainable.
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When therapy is working well, it moves toward an ending that feels appropriate rather than abrupt, and usually the client and the therapist both recognize this together.
How is blue chair sessions different?
Blue Chair Sessions is built around a clear clinical philosophy: therapy as a human encounter should be both relational and precise. The work emphasizes understanding patterns, clarifying what matters, and using time intentionally rather than defaulting to a one-size-fits-all approach.
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Rather than relying on a single modality or extending therapy by habit, the focus is on discernment. The goal is clarity that supports movement and applies structure only where it’s useful. This allows the work to be scaled appropriately, whether that means a few focused sessions or a longer period of deeper exploration.
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Another difference is the emphasis on agency. The goal is not to make therapy something you depend on, but something you learn from. Over time, the work is designed to help you internalize the way change happens, so you’re better equipped to navigate future challenges independently.
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At its core, Blue Chair Sessions prioritizes thoughtful engagement, clarity, and respect for the person’s time and autonomy. The aim is not to be everything to everyone, but to do this work carefully, responsibly, and well.
What’s the story behind the blue chair?
The name comes from something very simple and very lived.
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When I left graduate school and community mental health to take my first full-time job in a group practice, I didn’t have much money. I bought a few basic pieces of furniture for my office, including a navy chair. That chair is where I sat during my first years of concentrated learning about how to be a therapist. It was where I listened, struggled, made mistakes, and slowly found my footing. When I later opened my own practice, that chair came with me.
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My other favorite chair is a blue beach chair someone once threw away after deciding it had seen too much wear. I rescued it from the trash, and despite the rust and fraying upholstery, it’s still the first chair I choose when I sit on the beach more than a decade later.
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Over time, those chairs came to represent something important to me: the value of being the same person across roles and contexts. Whether working as a therapist or living my life in the same small community where I practice, I believe consistency and humility matter. A blue chair is just a blue chair, and empathy becomes easier when we recognize how alike we all are.
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I chose the name Blue Chair Sessions because I didn’t want my work to be defined by labels or problems to be solved. I wanted a space where people could sit, be met with care and attention, and be engaged as fellow humans with the capacity to carry their own experiences, effort, and dignity into the room.