How do your clients relate to the potential and real possibility of doing meaningful work? Are they bringing up the subject with you? Career satisfaction, finding meaning and purpose in work life is now widely supported, even promoted. More and more, people feel that this could be the case for them.
Spending the day at work, or volunteering, while expressing deeper interests and values allows us to engage with others in ways that come from our more authentic selves. As we experience doing things that matter to us, and are validated with favorable outcomes, a real sense of self and identity can grow and mature. A job can offer a chance to be someone very different than one’s family scripted us to be. And as most of us don’t work in isolation, worldly connections develop that serve communities for the better, as the deeper nature of human beings, our goodness and trustworthiness is tapped and applied to business dealings.
If your client brings up work issues, it’s important to acknowledge the potential for change, but options might just take a little time to sort out. And what about any perceived barrier to change; do we have a values conflict to reflect on? Is a family of origin issue getting in the way of self-knowing and expression? Is a boss feeling like an abusive parent? How can you help your client assess what’s going on? What are the classic reasons we get stuck in dead end jobs?
Join us as we appreciate the work life needs of clients today. Given you may not be a career counselor, how can you support folks to recognize this aspect of an authentically lived life and begin to work towards it? The world of work offers us all a time and place to address important issues affecting our lives and life, as we know it.

Gail Nicholson, psychotherapist and career counselor, offers a holistic approach to career development counseling to support people searching for meaningful work, and a deeper, more authentic sense of self, purpose and community.
Gail’s approach pairs career assessment and exploratory exercises with psychotherapy. Career counseling clarifies what brings meaning and a clearer sense of identity. Psychotherapy works through personal and relationship issues that cloud the ability to define and act on what makes sense to do. Informed by studies in Existential Humanistic psychotherapy with Bob Edelstein, psychodynamic and other therapeutic modalities, Ms. Nicholson applies her unique approach to help people who are divorcing and exploring mediation and collaborative options. Gail provides guidance throughout career and life transition, job search and/or the beginning stages of a small business start-up.