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What is keeping you from using your unique talents to achieve your life goals?

At Carol Drury & Associates, conveniently located in Leonardtown, DM, we believe in empowering our clients with a focus on strengths and solutions rather than problems and pathology. With the support and encouragement of a therapist or life coach, our clients effectively work toward defining and achieving clear and attainable goals.

Our services:

• Individual & Group Psychotherapy
• Couples & Family Therapy
• Adolescent and Child Therapy
• Career Assessment and Counseling
• Separation and Divorce Counseling
• Sports Psychology
• Health Psychology
• Life Coaching
• Career Coaching
• Coaching for Effective Parenting
• Divorce and Family Mediation
• Business and Construction Mediation
• Disability and ADA Mediation

We work from the basic principle that every human being comes into this world with special attributes. Our goal is to help our clients identify their unique talents and realize their life goals.

Often people feel stuck -as if they were not growing. Together with a trained therapist or life coach, our clients can explore new options and learn to recognize and overcome unproductive thoughts, patterns, and behaviors. At the same time, they acquire the tools needed for continued and lasting growth. In this way, our clients create new and exciting possibilities for their individual, interpersonal, and professional lives.

Our emphasis is on enabling our clients to take the initiative and develop the competencies to accomplish their goals and lead a more creative and satisfying life.

Dr. Drury's Philosophy of Counseling

Let me introduce myself and tell you a little about my philosophy of counseling.

I've been practicing counseling since 1969, and have worked with athletes and sports teams, adults with disabilities, couples with non-fulfilling relationships, children with developmental and behavioral difficulties, and troubled adolescents. My interests include the mind-body connection, sports psychology and performance improvement, and health psychology.

Over the years, I've studied and tried a number of different approaches to find ways that we can help each other lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives.

Currently I've found that the approach that is called Solution-Oriented comes closest to feeling comfortable to me. I also borrow heavily from theorists who call their approaches Narrative, Strategic, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, Postmodern, Solution-Focused and to some degree, Cognitive Behavioral. Most people aren't interested in that, so if you're not, it's not very important. I include it here only for those who are interested.

Much of my training has been to learn how to help people make their relationships more satisfying. The places I've worked have given me a wide range of experience and finding ways to simplify everyday life is a special interest of mine.

Here are some of the things that I bring to my work:

• Counseling should focus on your concerns rather than what I might think is good for you (I believe that in most cases, I don't know). All of our work should be aimed at reaching the goals we jointly agree upon. The focus doesn't have to be a medically defined diagnosis but may be anything that you consider important.
   
  
• You have more strengths than deficits, and more than you may even be aware. Sometimes when we are having difficulties, we focus on our mistakes or failures, and we tend to forget we are more than our failures. An important element of counseling is identifying strengths and putting them to use in the problem context.
   
  
• Counseling works best when all parties work together to accomplish mutually agreed-upon goals. People don't get counseling so much as they participate in a discussion that is part of a process of change.
   
  
• It is not always necessary to go into the past to find solutions for the future. I tend to focus on the present and future, but if you feel it would be helpful to go into the past, that is where we need to go.
   
  
• Individuals control and are responsible for their actions but not their feelings. You are not responsible for your feelings but you can control how you respond to them. Often, when you change your actions, feelings will also change.
   
  
• Counseling usually does not need to be long-term to be effective. Lasting change may happen at any time. My aim is for counseling to be effective and as brief as possible. Having said that, I also realize that people change at their own rate, and I work to be respectful of that.

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