Recognizing our Strengths

Mental health services focus on negative symptoms, and challenges that are causing distress and problematic behaviors. My approach also focuses on our internal character strengths based on the research and tools from the VIA Institute on Character. Per VIA, our strengths help us focus on “what’s strong, not what’s wrong.” Their research indicates that everyone possesses 24-character strengths in different degrees, giving each of us a unique character strengths profile. This is subject to change over the course of our lifetime (because change is the one constant we can rely on), with strengths shifting in response to new experiences, integration of new information and techniques, and self-discovery and change. I will ask you to complete the VIA Survey as part of our work together.

Knowledge of your strengths is a helpful reminder that you already have internal mechanisms in place to overcome challenges. While many of us might be able to acknowledge and name some of our top strengths, it is all too common NOT to rely on them in times of struggle. Completing a VIA Strengths Assessment will help show how your strengths are lining up right now. The top five strengths are known as “signature” strengths, and these are most central to your personal identity. Sometimes, because these strengths come more naturally to us, they end up working against us.

Applying our strengths can help us balance negative experiences, figure out the best way to avoid them in the future, and remind us that we have the strengths within to draw from challenging situations.