Understanding Professional Counseling
What Is Professional Counseling?
Professional counseling offers a place to explore your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and experiences with a licensed mental health professional. Whether you're facing a particular challenge, adjusting to a life change, or looking to better understand yourself, counseling can help you develop new perspectives and practical ways to move forward.
At Grounded Therapy Network, counseling is provided by master's-level mental health professionals with varying credentials, specialties, and therapeutic approaches.
What Does It Mean to Be a Licensed Counselor?
Counseling is broadly defined as a professional relationship that helps individuals, families, and groups pursue mental health, wellness, education, and career goals. However, the term counselor is used in many different settings, and not everyone who uses that title has the education, clinical training, or state license required to provide mental health treatment.
In Michigan, clinical mental health counseling is a regulated profession. Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs) and Licensed Master of Social Workers (LMSWs) complete graduate-level education, supervised clinical experience, and licensing examinations. Limited Licensed Professional Counselors (LLPCs) and Limited License Master of Social Workers (LLMSW) have also completed qualifying graduate education and provide counseling under the supervision of a fully licensed professional counselor.
Mental health therapy may also be provided by other appropriately licensed professionals. Each profession has its own educational requirements, licensing standards, and scope of practice.
Why do credentials matter?
Professional licensure helps establish standards for education, clinical training, ethical conduct, and accountability. When choosing a therapist, you have the right to ask about their credentials, areas of expertise, and therapeutic approach.
A professional's license is an important starting point, but finding someone whose experience and approach fit your needs matters, too. Read more on different therapeutic approaches below.
Counseling and Psychotherapy: What's the Difference?
You may hear the terms counseling, psychotherapy, and talk therapy used interchangeably.
Counseling is broadly defined as a professional relationship that helps individuals, families, and groups pursue mental health, wellness, education, and career goals.
Psychotherapy generally refers to therapeutic methods used to address emotional difficulties, mental health conditions, and patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaving.
In everyday practice, these terms frequently overlap. What matters most is finding a qualified professional whose experience and approach fit your needs.
Learn more:
Finding the Right Counselor
Finding a counselor isn't just about credentials. The relationship you develop with your therapist can be an important part of the counseling process. As you explore your options, consider:
Connection: Do you feel comfortable talking with this person? Do you feel heard and respected?
Experience: Does the counselor have experience working with your concerns or goals?
Therapeutic approach: How does the counselor understand challenges, guide sessions, and support change?
Personal preferences: Do their communication style, availability, and approach work for you?
It's okay if the first counselor you meet isn't the right fit. You can discuss your concerns with your therapist or ask about other options.
Understanding Therapeutic Approaches
Why Therapeutic Approaches Matter
Counselors use different theories and methods to understand people's experiences and guide treatment. Some approaches emphasize thoughts and behaviors, while others focus on relationships, emotions, past experiences, or personal awareness.
Many therapists integrate methods from more than one approach. Understanding a counselor's primary orientation—and how they adapt their work to individual needs—can help you know what to expect
Examples of Therapeutic Approach Styles
Thoughts, Behaviors, and Coping Skills
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT explores connections between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It helps people recognize unhelpful patterns, develop alternative ways of thinking, and practice skills they can use in everyday situations.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT builds on cognitive-behavioral principles and emphasizes skills for managing emotions, tolerating distress, practicing mindfulness, and navigating relationships. Comprehensive DBT typically includes individual therapy, skills training, and additional treatment supports.
Supportive Therapy
Supportive therapy uses encouragement, reflection, practical guidance, and the therapeutic relationship to strengthen coping skills, confidence, and everyday functioning.
Self-Awareness and Personal Experience
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy emphasizes present-moment awareness and the relationship between a person's thoughts, feelings, actions, and environment. Sessions often explore how someone experiences themselves and relates to others in the here and now.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy explores how earlier experiences, relationships, emotions, and patterns outside conscious awareness may influence current difficulties. Greater insight can help people recognize and change recurring patterns.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a more intensive form of psychodynamic treatment, traditionally involving frequent sessions and extended exploration of unconscious processes and emotional patterns.
Jungian Psychotherapy
Jungian psychotherapy explores conscious and unconscious experiences through themes such as dreams, symbols, archetypes, mythology, and personal meaning. It may appeal to individuals interested in exploring identity, inner experiences, and psychological development.
Relationships and Family Systems
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)
IPT is a structured, time-limited approach that focuses on relationships and interpersonal difficulties, including grief, conflict, life transitions, and changes in social roles. It is particularly associated with the treatment of depression.
Systemic Family Therapy
Systemic approaches examine how individuals are influenced by the relationships and larger systems they participate in, including families, social groups, and communities. Therapy explores patterns of interaction and ways to support healthier relationships and functioning.
A Note About Integrative Approaches
Not every therapist practices within a single theoretical model. Some use an integrative or eclectic approach, drawing from multiple methods according to their training and the needs of the individual. When meeting a potential counselor, you might ask:
“What therapeutic approaches do you use, and what might our work together look like?”
A counselor should be able to explain their approach in language you understand.
Get Started with GTN
Whether you are looking to start services, or find the right therapist, GTN is here to help.
Need immediate emotional support?
Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. For an immediate life-threatening emergency, call 911.
Additional Counseling Resources
Learning about counseling can help you feel more confident as you explore your options. These resources offer reliable information about mental health treatment, professional credentials, and available support.
Understanding Counseling
Explore different therapeutic approaches and what to expect from treatment.
Learn how psychotherapy works and how it may help.
Professional Credentials
Check the licensing status of a mental health professional practicing in Michigan.
Additional Support
Find community resources and assistance throughout Michigan.
Explore mental health and substance use treatment resources.