The reasons for seeking coaching or supervision are many and various. It can be lack of orientation, finding it difficult to make decisions in times of transition, e.g. when choosing a training, when returning to the workforce, with a job change or with career planning, or with living and working abroad.

Challenges in the digital transformation also require a high degree of flexibility in agile project management and in dealing with diversity in teams. Conflicts can arise that may be awkward. However, they often include themes as well as dynamics that invite innovation for the company. A goal that can be agreed upon can sometimes simply be to improve the quality of the common work.

In supervision and coaching we counsel you in reflexive processes. Together with you we identify issues where you are stuck and help you to discover hidden resources. New possibilities for action will emerge.

With our counselling expertise we facilitate different settings – individual counselling, conflict management, mediation, group supervision, team development and intercultural coaching.

Intercultural coaching especially when leaving, when on furlough, or when returning home, but also throughout your stay abroad:

Companies that operate internationally expect a high degree of mobility and flexibility from their employees. Employees and their families often experience a move to another country and a different culture as a great burden. Sustained good performance and a high motivation can only be achieved if counselling is offered at an early stage and continuously throughout in order to cope with the challenges. Going abroad and living in a foreign culture as well as the return home require good preparation, a good understanding of what is involved, and specific support so that the time abroad becomes a positive experience for all concerned.

© Foto: pixelio – Rainer Sturm

Separation and divorce raise many legal issues, especially when children are involved, e.g.

• What is my financial situation after the separation?
• Who is liable to whom?
• What can I do to enforce my rights with regard to separation / divorce?
• How can the contact of both parents with the child be arranged? (right of access, custody)

Our lawyer offers an initial counselling for questions about family law and for legal issues relating to separation, divorce or alimony.

© Foto: pixelio – Heike Zabel

The glass of wine to relax after a day’s hard work or because of mental stress due to lack of work, some beer to help you unwind after difficult days, and medication for sleepless nights... This seems to be “normal” in our culture.
But what if it’s a glass more here and a pill more there - do you know the worry slowly creeping in about yourself and the loved-ones around you? When it gets harder and harder to stay away from it but instead....

You know in your mind that it should not go on like this, yet it is so difficult to stop. What an ambivalent feeling of shame. This makes talking about it so difficult.

We offer you support and counselling as a help for self-help, for yourself or worried relatives.

© Foto: pixelio – Petra Bork

We offer psycho-social counselling on the recommendation of the job centre.

The counselling (§16 Abs. 2 SGB II) is aimed at unemployed people in long-term unemployment (Hartz 4), who cannot currently be employed due to psychological stress.

It is important for us:

• To activate personal resources and to foster maintenance and coping skills
• To strengthen social skills in family and education
• To counsel couples on relationship issues
• To prepare clients for the re-entry into the profession
• To provide assistance for a possibly necessary transition into therapy covered by health insurance, at a day clinic or as inpatient treatment

The job centre issues a counselling certificate and covers the costs for up to 19 hours of counselling.

© Foto: pixelio – I-vista

Opening hours: Every Monday from 12 – 14 pm, please call to make an appointment.

Available appointment times can be found here.

Who doesn’t know the feeling: the key is missing, you can’t remember the neighbour’s name of the birthday of your friend. Forgetting things doesn’t necessarily mean that you have dementia.

However, if dementia, e.g. Alzheimer has been diagnosed, live changes

• For those affected
• For the spouse / life partner
• For sons and daughters
• For the whole family

The affected persons and their relatives immediately get the feeling that they are left alone with their concerns and fears. You may be wondering

• What comes next?
• Will we be able to live with dementia?
• We still had so much we wanted to do – what will become of our plans now?

In dealing with dementia, it can be helpful

• To recognize and understand the symptoms and signs
• To maintain strengths and skills
• To find new ways of interaction
• To learn how to avoid aggression
• To develop self-care and mindfulness

People living with dementia and their relatives often experience that friends withdraw and show no understanding, are resentful or and react out of complete helplessness. That is why people living with dementia often try to maintain the façade to those around and try to manage their difficult everyday life on their own. The result is a
vicious circle of social isolation and the sense of being permanently overwhelmed.

We offer

• Meetings for people living with dementia in the early stages
• Support groups for carers
• Individual counselling
• Systemic family counselling
• Lectures and workshops

Do you have questions

• about the symptoms and signs of dementia
• support Services for care at home
• patient directive and power of attorney
• support groups for those affected
• dementia care and support
• services available in your area

Please feel free to contact us. The team of counsellors for dementia is more than
happy to answer your questions.

© Foto: pixelio – sokaeiko

We are a statewide recognised pregnancy conflict counselling centre.

Pregnancy counselling

Are you pregnant and looking for help and support?

You can come to us with questions about:

• changed living and work conditions
• maternity care
• parenthood and partnership
• contraception, sexuality and family planning

We accompany you and offer psychological counselling concerning:

• Feelings of insecurity, fears, doubts, and relationship problems triggered by
  pregnancy
• Before and after prenatal diagnostics
• When your child is disabled
• Difficult pregnancy or miscarriage or stillbirth

We provide information about services and legal claims (parental allowances and parental leave, AGL II, child laws).

In emergencies we provide information about financial benefits. We help you with your application to the “Stiftung Chance zum Leben” and “Stiftung Mutter und Kind”. Through these foundations pregnant women can receive additional financial support as well as vouchers for diapers.

Conflict counselling (§ 218 / 219 STGB)

Are you pregnant and you don’t know whether to continue or not with the pregnancy?

We support you in finding possible solutions in order to come to a decision you can live with.

We counsel you in your personal conflict situation with regard to your relationship with your partner and your family as well as planning your future.

We provide information about social benefits and other possible support.

We also offer counselling after you made your decision, and to accompany you after an abortion.

We provide a certificate of counselling.

Conflict counselling is free of charge.

© Foto: fotolia – Anke Thomass

If you have experienced trauma, please be assured that it is normal to react abnormally to abnormal situations.

Trauma is an injury or wound that is treatable.

Focus and duration of therapy depend on the type of trauma. Whether it is a “monotrauma”, i.e. a single traumatic event like an accident, or a “complex trauma”, i.e. frequent, major, prolonged or biographically early experiences of violence, determines the therapy process. To start with, trauma therapy is about strengthening of resources, self-care and setting limits, about stabilisation in the ‘here and now’.

This is the so-called stabilisation period that can last months or even years. We have a competent team of
trauma counsellors and trauma therapists who can help you.

The next phase is then taken over by the trauma therapists, who deal with the trauma itself - the exposure phase. Different methods such as the “screen method”, EMDR or TRIMB help going through the trauma.

In the final integration phase, the experiences are integrated into one’s own life story and the therapy process is completed. This includes the ability to mourn, to comfort oneself, to deal with questions of meaning or of guilt. Spirituality often plays an important role in this phase.

The aim of trauma work is to “make the difficult easy” (Dr. Ellen Spangenberg) and to integrate this difficult experience into life.

© Foto: pixelio – S. Hofschlaeger

We accompany you through the process of separation, grief and reorientation.

Counselling for separated parents

Parents remain parents, even after a separation as a couple. We support separated parents to improve their communication as parents. We search for good solutions for the affected children, also with regard to care models. The wellbeing of the children is the focus of the counselling.

We advise in legal proceedings as well as in out-of-court procedures.

Mediation

We offer mediation to help you with making the separation process fair.

© Foto: fotolia – mizina

At the start of couple counselling we often hear things like:

• We don’t do anything together anymore
• I no longer have feelings for him / her
• We just argue
• My partner doesn’t talk to me
• No matter what I do, it’s always wrong
• We don’t have sex with each other anymore
• Since the birth of our child, I am no longer important to her
• He is extremely jealous and constantly controls me
• She has cheated and I can’t cope with it
• He just sits in front of the PC and has no interest in me anymore

The reasons why couples seek counselling can be very different. And yet, for most couples, there is a desire for understanding and change.

By engaging in couple counselling you show your partner, “Our relationship is important to me”. You have the opportunity to talk to each other and to listen to each other. The counsellor doesn’t take sides and therefore offers a safe space for this.

We put our many years of experience, our variety of methods and our personal commitment at your disposal, and would like to accompany you in finding your way.

© Foto: pixelio – twinlili

We support families with relationship conflicts as well as with educational issues, and accompany them in times of crisis, with their worries, fears and decision making regarding daycare / Kindergarden, school and family. Living in a family can give us security, love, support and confidence. At the same time, when people are close to each other, conflicts arise again and again. They are part of the daily life of every family, for example sibling disputes, rebellious children or clashes with grandparents and other relationship issues within the family. These conflicts take a lot of energy and often lead to frustration on all sides. They can develop their own dynamics and take on a life of their own. Children and young adults sometimes develop behavioural issues and symptoms. The demands of school and work also place an additional strain on families.

In the counselling sessions, we will take time for you, and look at the underlying needs of everyone involved. We clarify with you your goals for change, and support you to develop solutions that meet the needs and suit the abilities of the individual family members. 

Each family functions according to its own rules. As counsellors we try to understand those rules, and work with all the individual family members to find solutions.

We counsel and accompany you as parents with your children, or individual sessions for father or mother, or together as parents, or one parent with a new partner, as well as grandparents.

We also offer counselling sessions in English or Spanish.

© Foto: pixelio – JMG

During the course of their lives, everyone finds themselves into situations that challenge them. Trauma, crisis and difficulties are part of life. And often we can manage them and find solutions and strategies to deal with them. Yet sometimes there are situations that are difficult to cope with on our own, and in which we get nowhere with our attempts at solutions. In those cases professional advice can be very helpful.

You can come to us with:

• Feeling overwhelmed in everyday life
• Interpersonal conflicts and relationship problems
• Communication difficulties
• Family problems
• Separation
• Grief and loss
• Self-esteem
• Anxiety, guilt, compulsions and depressive moods
• Anger management issues
• Sexual problems
• Questions of life, meaning and purpose
• Bullying and stalking
• Professional difficulties
• Stress and burnout
• Burden of illnesses
• Drug and alcohol and other addictions

In a safe, trusting and confidential atmosphere we take time to listen to you. Every counselling process is different, as the age, life stories and personalities of those seeking help are different.  We arrange the duration of the counselling process and also the intervals at which the counselling sessions take place with you individually.

We offer a further option of outpatient psychotherapy to self-paying clients or within the framework of the “Heilpraktikergesetz”, which can be re-imbursed after a mental illness has been diagnosed if the health insurance company agrees.

© Foto: pixelio – Rainer Sturm