Career Counseling and Coaching in Irvington, New Jersey.

Career counseling from a mental health lens looks different than working with a career coach. My focus isn't on the technical side of job searching. It's on helping you figure out why you feel stuck, burned out, or disconnected from your work. Using CBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we'll examine the beliefs and fears getting in your way, clarify what actually matters to you, and build a path forward that aligns with who you are. ACT is especially useful here because it helps you stop fighting your thoughts and start moving toward the career you actually want.

Many clients benefit from Vocational or Career Counseling. Often they do not know career goals or stuck in their present job. Chris Colasuonno has an Master in Business Degree and vast experience providing Career Counseling and Vocational Training. As a Life Coach, many skills transfer over to Career Counseling where we analyze your goals and job path. Chris has counseled many individuals in the Putnam and Westchester County area.

I don't do formal career counseling, but enjoy counseling entrepreneurs, business men and women, and performing artists. We would help you develop better assertiveness skills, clarify direction, improve motivation, encourage and guide you in negotiating higher salaries and rates, and cope with job/career crisis and change. I have worked with many people who lost their jobs in the current economic downturn. I also have a specialty working with performing artists to help them find satisfying jobs that allow them to pursue their art, and work with them on stage fright, creative blocks, and balancing relationship/work.

Career Counseling will look like life coaching in sessions using an individualized plan to formulate goals, identify strengths, discuss interests and using a guide to assist in career development, and insights will be discovered in how to better gain a sense of fulfillment at work. Learning ways to find a job, build connections, and become employable will also take place.

Various internal conflict underlie career problems. Often counselors give advice to those who come to them for career counseling, but I stay away from advice. Giving clients advice only keeps them dependent on you. Instead, I focus on the underlying conflicts that are related to low self-esteem, fear of competing or an inability to assert themselves. Often women have their own kind of conflicts about being a woman in a man's world, and internal resentments hold them back. My approach is to focus on the conflicts of each client and help them resolve them and cope more effectively. The approach has proven over the years to be quite successful.