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Psychosocial counseling briefly explained

For many of us, everyday life is associated with enormous stress – not infrequently caused by difficulties in the work environment or by problems in the partnership or family. Others suffer from health complaints that are difficult to determine where they actually come from. In these situations, professional psychosocial counseling that works specifically on your problems can be a very concrete help.

The aim of psychosocial counseling

Psychosocial counseling offers you professional support in decision-making and change processes, in questions of finding meaning, in crisis processing, in clarifying conflicts, in processing feelings, thought and perception patterns, and in promoting relationship skills and awareness. The goal of psychosocial counseling is to alleviate your current suffering, to make the difficult situation manageable and to find new ways and possibilities for constructive solutions – with the focus on establishing and strengthening your self-determined, self-responsible and community-oriented thinking, feeling and acting. And it supports you in developing your behavioral and experiential patterns and improving your personal state of mind, your interaction with your relational environment, and your coping with upcoming life tasks.

Fields and types of psychosocial counseling in distinction to other forms of relationship work

Psychosocial counseling is a service that defines its mission through a clear agreement in a formulated context. It is applied in the accompaniment of individuals, in couple and family counseling and in organizations. It is aimed at individuals and groups who manage their lives independently overall, but are looking for support on individual topics and issues, developmental problems and life crises.

It differs from other counseling formats in that it focuses on your concerns in your social context. She works on your content, process, and the goals for which you seek counseling. Compared to medicine and psychotherapy, it offers you help and support, not a cure, but the development of your skills in various areas. Psychosocial counseling, therefore, looks at your problems from the perspective of experiences of conflict and disorientation and how to cope with them, rather than from the perspective of concepts of illness.

Psychosocial counseling offers you help for reflection, orientation, planning, decision-making and action, works resource-oriented and has a preventive, problem-solving and developmental effect. The fields of activity of the counseling are manifold, among other things it takes care of questions around the topics education, sexuality, life management, education, interculturality and migration as well as health, debts, conflicts, separation and divorce.

Find suitable advice

In our directory you will find around 500 professional counselors for the psychosocial field, all of whom have a sufficient background of experience as well as the necessary quality.

Please pay attention to the following criteria when choosing the right professional for you:

  • Is the counselor the gender and age you are comfortable with?
  • Is the type of counseling (e.g., individual, couples, family, personal, supervision, coaching, learning, career, health, or addiction counseling) appropriate for you?
  • And very important: Check the feasibility of the effort you have to make in terms of time, local accessibility as well as costs.

An important decision-making aid is your personal impression, so take advantage of the opportunity for an initial consultation before you decide to go further. You can find out what to look out for and other useful tips in our information sheet, which we have compiled for you as a helpful guide.

We are competently there for you.