Career Counseling and Coaching in Franklin Square, New York.

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.

As a psychotherapist, I can help you make decisions about your career life. The difference between a career coach and a psychotherapist is that I will help you understand the underlying emotional needs you have and in what ways they are driving your career path in one direction or another. To make a change in career is to acknowledge that there might be conflicting needs for personal stability, adventure, and financial security. Two fundamental questions I will help you answer is "Why do I want to change careers?" and "Why now?"

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.

Level Up: Maybe you’ve actually been thinking of taking the next steps in your life. Whether it’s more job fulfillment, thoughts of leveling up in your career, as a parent, teen, young adult, or senior and wondering about the future…this is a great time to begin to work on those goals! Through motivational work and looking at your strengths, and building skills, you might just be surprised where you might be able to go with your perseverance and skills!

Learning how to navigate the professional world can be more than daunting. We are given the skills and tools we need to actually complete jobs, but not the training to learn how to navigate the political and ever changing professional world. In counseling with me, you will gain insight into your hopes for the future, as well as the fears that might hold you in what is currently comfortable. From there, we will set practical and achievable goals both for the short and long term, helping you to realize your perfect or dream career!

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.

Careers are integral to the identities of many people, while for others careers are simply means for attaining a happy life. Whether you’re developing your first career or looking to switch careers, I use a combination of assessment batteries and counseling to explore my clients’ goals, preferences, and aptitudes to identify their career path and develop a plan for achieving it.

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.

Do you feel like lack of social confidence, anxiety, and poor social skills are keeping you back at work? Or maybe you are just starting your career and selecting jobs that won't require talking much to others or socializing, because you just feel so anxious even thinking about that. Do you dread group work, social events, speaking out in meetings, parties and networking? I have good news for you! Social confidence is a learned skill, one you can learn just like any other. You just need the right information, some support and feedback and the drive to try some new things. The rewards are potentially very large, especially at work. Level up your career and your life!

While most career counselors love to give you capacity based profiles of what your talents and interests are for your best bet career choices, Grey Matters international believes that most people make predictably irrational decisions and then after making them learn way to make them fit into their identities using various types of rationalizations and strategies. We are able to assist folks in career counseling type settings by giving a deeper look at their decision making profile so they can better understand where the core frustration or desire is coming from in the world of work. Contact kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161