Michal Irvin

Myname is Michal Irvin and I welcome you to an extention of my counseling practice. Seeking andaccepting counseling is not something to fear, but rather counseling is somethingto embrace. Taking control of your future by working through the difficultiesof yesterday and today will help to prepare you for a brighter tomorrow.

MakingSense Together Counseling Services is available to help empower individuals toachieve their potential and to balance life's challenges and opportunities,through compassion and understanding. This mission is driven by empathic,caring, and supportive counseling tailored to the uniqueness of eachindividual's needs and goals.

Counselingseeks understanding of what a person’ world feels like, of what emotional andrelational experiences it includes, often in a relentless manner, and what suchworld constantly permits and prevents. Counseling seeks an understanding of thenetwork of beliefs, the rules or principles that organize a persons’ world andkeeps one experiencing confined to their frozen possibility and limitingperspective(s). By making sense of such principles through a dialogic process(relationship) and by grasping their life- historical origins, counseling aimsto expand persons’ experiential horizons, thereby opening the possibility of anenriched and more flexible emotional life.

My special interest in counseling is in SelfPsychology. I do not subscribe to any ideology, nor am I partisan, or dogmaticabout anything. I remain open in search of new ideas, meeting persons wherethey are, within the context of their being (self).

Self Psychology makes a great effort tounderstand persons within their subjective experience and to regard the self asthe central agency of the human psyche. Self psychology builds on Freud’sclinical model, though adds a strong emphasis on the importance of empathy, “…thecapacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person”. SelfPsychology emphasizes the central importance of human relationships in what arecalled “self-object” experiences. The goal of counseling is to build a strong,cohesive self, the core of one’s personality and character.