Who do you serve?

Primarily, we serve English-speaking expatriates living in North Africa and the Middle East. We work with teens and adults. We also do consultations for parents of younger children.

What counseling approaches do you offer?

We customize our counseling to your needs. We primarily draw from Person-Centered, Cognitive-Behavioral, and Emotion-Focused approaches. EMDR is also available.

What issues do See Beyond counselors not address?

We are not able, at this time, to help those struggling with alcohol or drug addiction.

How do you handle confidentiality?

We value your privacy, and confidentiality is very important to us. Here is what we mean and don’t mean by confidentiality.

We will not share your information or the content of your conversations with anyone except in rare circumstances. We will share with appropriate authorities, specialists, and/or organizations, as legally or ethically required, when we hear, from our clients, about situations that involve harm to self or others.

Counseling clients' content (excluding identifying information) is only shared with other licensed professionals, for the purpose of increasing the quality of care. Your name, contact information, and type of service may be shared with a SB administrative assistant in order to invoice you appropriately.

We will only share information with third parties, specifically designated in advance (for example, organizations who are paying for services), items that are agreed to in advance by all parties. Our standard procedure is to share as little with third parties as possible—in most cases, only that the meeting occurred.

In the rare event that See Beyond is required to write a report for a third party, clients have a chance to review and discuss the written report in advance. This does not mean that clients can change or adapt the report.

When we meet online, we use HIPAA compliant platforms, and when internet difficulties arise, we only switch to other platforms with your express consent. We use a secure email system, but we can’t guarantee that a data breach couldn’t occur. The same holds true for forms submitted on our website, so please be selective about what you write on those platforms.

You can read our complete privacy and confidentiality policy here.

Can I pay for this through my insurance?

No. We do not bill insurance. Some clients have found that their insurance companies have reimbursed them for counseling or other See Beyond services. However, this is not common. We do, however, directly bill organizations who may be involved in paying for our services on your behalf.

What actually happens during therapy?

First Sessions: The first few sessions are to help us understand your concerns and the consequences they are having on you. Prior to the first meeting, you’ll need to complete several forms and assessments, which we will then discuss in the initial sessions. We’ll also cover confidentiality, your rights as a client, and other important policies.

Subsequent sessions: What happens in subsequent sessions varies, depending on your unique desires and needs. However, common aspects of sessions include: meaningful, co-directed conversations, intentional activities designed to help you discover and address underlying issues, skill development, and determining and reviewing between-session homework assignments.

Should I do coaching or counseling? What's the difference?

Both counseling and coaching are based on building a trusting relationship, understanding the client’s needs, and using intentional, co-directed conversations capable of helping you reach your goals.

Counselors are uniquely suited to help clients whose struggles are connected to distressing patterns and thoughts related to past wounding, as well as anxiety, depression, trauma, behavioral addictions, and longer-term or deeply emotional marriage concerns.

Coaches have a forward focus, helping clients to reach their goals, get unstuck, and move ahead. Coaches use an approach similar to Solution-Focused Brief Therapy used by counselors. Coaches help you think about your goals from fresh perspectives designed to bring about new awareness. This facilitates clients in choosing more meaningful steps toward their goals.

If your topic is primarily about reaching goals (internal or external) in the future, you may want to start with a free consultation with a coach. If your struggles are deeply emotional, perhaps rooted in the past, or involve distressing thoughts or habits, we suggest you start with a counseling consultation.

How do we know if we need Marriage Counseling or Marriage Training?

If you two are generally doing well and would like to further enhance your communication skills, Navigating Desires and Decisions in Marriage Training may be a good fit. If you have been wounded by one another, and those painful places are getting in the way of moving forward, consider marriage counseling. If you’d like to meet with one of us in order to sort through what would be best for you, please set up a free consultation by clicking here.

Where do you conduct counseling?

Because our clients are spread out across a vast geographical area, we do our best to come to you. We visit cities in Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia regularly. We can come to your home or another suitable private location in your area when we are nearby. We often do personalized retreats where you can receive intensive counseling at hotels or privately-rented homes. We offer counseling online to those who live in or have lived in North Africa and the Middle East. For clients now living in the United States, we must follow their state’s licensing laws, which we are willing to investigate.

What kinds of issues do See Beyond counselors address?

People most commonly come to us for anxiety, anger, depression, interpersonal problems, trauma, grief and loss, adjustment issues, behavioral addictions, marriage, and more.

What sets See Beyond apart?

See Beyond counselors currently live or have lived in North Africa or the Middle East, so they “get” what cross-cultural living in these areas of the world is like. They’ll “get” your unique vocabulary, and you won’t have to justify why you want to continue living overseas. Our counselors respect the value of living cross-culturally and want to help you “Do Better, Stay Longer” in your cross-cultural situation, if that is what you desire.

See Beyond is made up of a multidisciplinary team, so our counselors have access to certified and licensed debriefers, coaches, Third Culture Kid specialists, and others. The additional team members may have unique gifts to bring to your experience when counseling is not needed or doesn’t meet all your needs.

We seek to customize our services to meet your unique needs.

How long does counseling take?

Counseling normally consists of 50-minute sessions for individuals or 75-minute sessions for couples. Brief, intensive therapy typically consists of two or more sessions daily over a period of several days. We'll give you a good faith estimate for how many sessions we think may be needed. Traditional counseling typically takes place once or twice weekly.

Together, based on your individual needs, we’ll determine a target number of sessions. For scheduling and budget purposes, it is good to plan for ten sessions, although more or less might be needed.

Am I going to have to do or discuss things I don’t want to or find hard to?

We hope that you enter into counseling with a desire to learn about yourself and grow personally, and that you quickly develop a good, trusting rapport with your counselor. Should you ever feel uncomfortable, you are encouraged to share that with us.

We may suggest activities designed to help you move toward your goals. All activities will be explained, and we’ll seek your agreement before proceeding. You may be invited to discuss uncomfortable topics that need to be addressed to reach your goals. While we may encourage you in that direction, you have control and authority to only go where you are ready to go.

What is the difference between Navigating Desires and Decisions in Marriage Training and Marriage Counseling?

Navigating Desires and Decisions in Marriage (NDDM) is training in communication and a decision-making process in order to build greater intimacy and more effective and unified, forward movement. On the other hand, Marriage Counseling is a therapeutic process designed to uncover and repair underlying barriers to trust and intimacy, bring healing to past wounds, and employ new understanding and skills for fulfilling one another's attachment longings. NDDM is done by a couple with a couple and is focused on building skills for the future. Marriage Counseling is done by a therapist with a couple and is focused on restoration. It often includes skill building as well.