Eagle Eye Counseling

Hey everybody, I'm offering sliding scale counseling to whoever needs it: in particular, I am serving young people, veterans, people with chronic illness and disability, and your everyday heroes... In general, my approach is extremely down-to-earth, heart-centered, practical, and straightforward. I like to help people see different perspectives of their lives and find ways to overcome their challenges. As I like to say, TRANSFORM YOUR VISION, TRANSFORM YOUR WORLD. ⁣⁣⁣
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Please feel free to share this with anyone who you think may benefit from some counseling.⁣⁣⁣
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Aloha, thanks, and good wishes!⁣⁣⁣
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Keith Hirsch, MA, LPCC

What is compassion? Where do we experience it in our life?

Click below to read my latest blog "The Value of Compassion in Daily Life".

The Value of Compassion in Daily Life - Eagle Eye Counseling What is compassion? This is a great question! Where do we experience it in our life? Maybe in our early years, we were touched by a caregiver or a friend. Maybe later in life, we witnessed someone’s true kindness. Interestingly enough, most of us morally acknowledge the intrinsic value of love and...

Hey friends, family members, community members, everyone,

I've just begun blogging on my professional website where I offer counseling and mentorship services to youth, veterans, everyday heroes, and people with chronic illness/disability.

You can find more about what I do on that website as well as read my newest blog post about Intrinsic Well-Being and The Value of Compassion in Daily Life. Click the link below.

Please feel free to collaborate with me here and post your thoughts and discussions so we can communicate in that way.

Inherent Well-Being - Eagle Eye Counseling What could a title like this possibly mean and how does it relate with me, my being? Well, I’m not sure really, but let’s explore. First of all, what it is not. Most of the time, we feel extremely limited, anxious, busy, confused, depressed, driven, competitive, angry, etc. Generally, somehow we...

Eagle Eye Counseling updated their phone number.

Dear Friends,

As we enter nearly one year of Pandemic living, many of us are suffering from isolation, disconnection, fear, depression and other concerns.

Given the heightened political situation, tensions are running high.

I am offering free 15-minute counseling initial sessions to Colorado residents, to offer comfort, self-regulation skills, and relationship advice.

Telehealth options are available.

Let’s lean into our inner resources and develop healthy community to overcome the hardship, from the inside out.

Keith Hirsch, M.A., LPCC
(720) 893-0377

I think we are lacking realistic ways to deal with our emotions; either we suppress them and become like a volcano or we express them unskillfully, causing more damage.

Counseling is more effective when a practitioner guides a client to their inner awareness, to develop a more positive way of relating, bringing them back to health, happiness and sanity.

Please call for a free 15-minute consultation, and learn tools to stay grounded in the moment.

Aloha,

Keith

Good morning, friends and family! I wrote something that I want to share with you today. ⠀
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The Dalai Lama often talks about the education of the heart. He says often that many of us in the West have developed strong cognitive faculties but are neglecting the way that we relate with our hearts and our emotions. ⠀
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It is clear that modern culture has emphasized external development and I feel we may have overdone the job. We may have forgotten our inner development in the process of cultivating peace and healthy relationships. ⠀
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As an adolescent, I always felt that the mind was very powerful, and if I just had the right training, I could harmonize my relationship with the world and the environment around me. I was very insecure and found the world confusing at times. I did not find such support available to me and turn to intoxicates like ma*****na and alcohol. ⠀
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Like many of my peers, I checked out because it was too difficult to face insecurity, anxiety, and figuring out who I really am.⠀
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I know I'm not alone in this experience and I look to the new generation of young people who have yet more chaos to face. I am concerned about them. ⠀
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By some good fortune after hitting some low points in my life, I started practicing insight meditation and developing a healthier, more loving identity. Years later, I've returned home and I'm picking up the pieces of relationships I left behind ten years ago. ⠀
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Now that I'm back on island, I'm interested in communicating practices such as loving-kindness and other resources for self-regulation, inner peace, and self-understanding.⠀
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I've noticed how inflammatory our political divide is, how families are separated based on superficial differences. I feel that the cultivation of love and understanding is necessary to bring us into a healthy community to face the despair and chaos which climate change, inequities, and violence have brought us.⠀
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I'm hoping and feeling that there is an incredible opportunity for growth and healing within this process as we collectively face unprecedented changes. With the right tools and mindset, we can create transformation inside our lives to cross the divides and begin working together. ⠀
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Kind regards, ⠀
Keith

Hello Everybody! I'm sharing this advertisement for coaching services in Hawaii, Colorado and nationally. Please share with your friends!

I use contemplative training and my graduate studies to inform my work with clients.

Please send a message if you are curious. Free 15-minute phone consultation for new clients.

Kamaʻāina and student rates apply!

Mahalo, thanks!

The Interplay between Spirituality and Personal Development

In many circles of people working on themselves, there’s a value placed upon EITHER spiritual or personal development.

The tendency to create a headquarters in either camp is very strong in my experience.

It takes a lot to build a bridge between a clear and deep loving awareness that one finds in spiritual practice, and the nitty gritty of: who am I? How should I spend my life? What are my personal boundaries and needs?

I’m really no expert in this field, but I’m sharing my experience, study, and practice.

The truth is that there are so many ways to learn who we are and develop our integrity.

What are yours? What brings you home? What gets you grounded and aligned with your deeper purpose?

Psychotherapy, meditation, and music have been such avenues in my own life. How do you build a bridge between your deeper self and your everyday personhood?

Cheers! Keith

Eagle Eye Counseling updated their website address.

Dealing with Discomfort

Life is uncomfortable much of the time. Even if we are fortunate enough to have many of our needs met, we may still feel a nagging suspicion or anxiety that our comfortable conditions may change or we might be haunted by some kind of emotional residue of the past.

Harder still, are the conditions of extreme poverty and illness. I know little about the former, but know the latter well.

How do we come to terms with the vicissitudes of life?

In my own experience of physical blindness, disability, and chronic pain, I discovered that no exterior condition or comfort could assuage the intensity of discomfort and pain that I faced.

At some point, I realized it was up to me to confront my pain, to face it, and make peace with it. This is no easy task, but it makes me think about the shared hardship of pandemic we are all facing now. I think we can all acknowledge that we have been forced to adapt to uniquely challenging and even fearful conditions. How do we make the most of our time and come to terms with the suffering we experience?

In my work, I invariably orient clients to the here and now, to the experience of the body.

Why do I do this?

As thinking beings in a modern culture, I often feel that we quite literally live in our heads. We have little awareness of the endless sensations of pleasure and pain that live in the body. furthermore, we don’t know that the body can anchor us to an experience of stable freedom and inner strength.

It is important for me to guide clients into developing their capacity for self-regulation and self-understanding by beginning to feel. This capacity called interoception grants one the possibility of understanding oneself more deeply; underneath the constant rivers of thoughts and emotions.

Counseling is one means for facing discomfort and such a healing relationship can ease the pain as one opens to their inner journey. Meditation directed to the immediate presence of the body also allows access to a pool of inner strength and resources.

On this subject, I recommend reading works by Dr. Reginald Ray who has expertise in using embodiment as a spiritual path and a way to process and integrate trauma.

Good luck! I hope our have found something useful in these words.

Kind Regards, Keith

What is the intersection between compassion and counseling?

I understand compassion as a simple warmheartedness or good will. The Dalai Lama is always talking about this. As a man who has suffered incredibly, you can always see that his smile radiates in an incredible way somehow. For me, warmheartedness is as much a feeling in the body as it is an intention in the heart. It’s generally taught that the application of compassion actually begins with oneself, and then extends to others.

In the Buddhist tradition, the kindness and presence one develops internally through during meditation gradually radiates to others; family members, friends, neighbors, enemies, everyone. The idea here is that compassion and tenderness is actually something like a seed or something inherent to every human being, and we only need to water the seed and practice compassion in order to reap its benefits.

Compassion actually means “to suffer with”. It is the gift of bearing witness to humanity with an attitude of mercy.

Who in your life has given you mercy, given you relief, or a break when you suffered? How did it make you feel?

For me, counseling is an opportunity to receive this type of break, especially in the places in me that need support. It is a kind of entrainment or learning process in how to develop warmheartedness to oneself.

With this kind of base, we can actually face the world with more trust, a good heart, and a sense of support behind us.

Kind regards and Aloha, Keith

P.S. Sharon Salzberg is an American meditation teacher who suffered enormously in her childhood. She tells the story of her life and how she overcame her emotional struggles, sense of depression, insecurity, and self-doubt using the path of meditation. I’m listening to the audiobook called “Real Love”. I’ve found it beneficial and highly recommend it to those who are interested in developing loving kindness or warmheartedness. Take good care.

Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Real-Love-Audiobook/B072FKBP83?qid=1594700750&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=DJPE6CR3NB8VE8J7R0M1

Print: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Love-Art-Mindful-Connection/dp/125007651X/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=sharon+salzberg&qid=1594700816&sr=8-6

Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

In my own experience of suffering, I’ve learned that it doesn’t really go away. The headache or incapacity might disappear and then be replaced by a distressing conversation, situation, or something else like that. In terms of the pandemic, I’ve noticed that sometimes we collectively get really fearful and tense about the situation. That’s natural because we are afraid of death and sickness, but I also notice that it can feel out of proportion at times. We lose our ability to enjoy life, and can’t relax. We make a solid situation of the whole thing and freeze ourselves into thinking continuously “there is a problem”.

This becomes like a mantra when you are unable to see solutions. We can’t see life clearly because we are stuck in this holding pattern in our minds and in our bodies. Suffering is a really intense experience in life, and I feel we are all facing that together collectively. I really hope that we can develop our inner resourcing to be able to relax with the situation and be practical about moving forward. I have found that simple deep breaths can release this kind of anxiety and lostness when I’m wound up about the situation. What do you do to help relax and find joy in a fearful situation?

What a joy to know everything is okay even when it feels, at times, that it is not. That’s how I relate to the situation, and I think that the benefit of mindfulness awareness practice and learning how to observe your breathing and your body, enables you to see the bigger picture and have a greater landscape within which to hold suffering so you can feel more relaxed. Suffering is a natural part of life; I think we can all agree on that. Yet there is a point inside of how we relate to it. If we begin to look at it with curiosity and relax with it, it might begin to loosen its grip on us so that we can genuinely let go and enjoy our lives.

At any rate, I feel that each of us possesses a kind of wisdom and understanding on an individual level about how we relate to our life with happiness, joy, and relaxation. We each have unique tools; it might be dancing, music, conversation, meditation, yoga, swimming, gardening, etc. We can enable ourselves to connect with our inherent ability to see clearly and be happy. So, I really hope we begin to do that increasingly, as we are facing so much. In time I hope that we can, in a certain way, take control of our lives in how we relate to our difficulty.

Aloha to you.

Why Counseling? What can it do for me?

Counseling is an interesting art-science. On one hand, there are empirically backed methods like CBT, ACT, and DBT to counteract distress/depression and increase positive affect. On the other hand, is the potent power of relationship. That’s what I’d like to briefly discuss.

Attunement is a process whereby individuals communicate warmth and tenderness at the levels of the nervous system and emotional body. This translates to a sense of empathy, balance, care, and willingness to grow. The therapeutic relationship is one such dynamic where this process can take place. In this process, clients can experience dialogue, emotional processing/ relearning, resourcing, and can develop a heathy framework in the nervous system geared for increased resiliency, autonomy, self-regulation, and connection.

Therapy is not only limited to those of us who have suffered extensively. Because of its emphasis on relationship and connection, it can profoundly effect those of us who live in a culture which values material wealth and success versus inner abundance and healthy relationship. In many cultures, developing healthy relationships, family dynamics, and connections, are actually the same frameworks for having healthy community. The world seems increasingly divisive these days and my encouragement is to seek therapy for those of us who want to engage in healthier relationships and to discover greater inner abundance.

Kind regards,

Keith

Why do we suffer?

Is it because we feel we are alone in the world? Do we feel there's something fundamentally wrong with us as humans?

At any rate, we all do suffer. That is a truth, and a good starting point. So far, I've met no one who hasn't suffered in their life, no one. Big sufferings and small sufferings make up the day and much of the mind in my understanding.

But are the daily ups and downs the true cause of our suffering? Or is there a deeper cause, explanation, or understanding?

Certainly, the physical, emotional, and social pain we all pass through is very difficult, sometimes unbearable. We cannot deny that there is sickness, hardship, and loss in the world.

But even on a good day, in a good life, we may notice a kind of separation or disconnection from our life. We have the knowledge that this temporary joy may be gone in the afternoon.

What then? Should we throw up our hands in despair? Just roll over and complain like Moaning Myrtle?

I think rather we can investigate this feeling and understanding; Where does fear and separation from our experience come from? The main point I want to express here is that suffering is real, it's always there, and it's no indication that we are not living up to life's standards.

It's all part of the game, so to speak. So if we suffer, the questions why and how become very important.

Is the cause of our suffering exclusively the difficult and troubling conditions of our lives? Our concerns with our weight, psychological disturbance, the mean thing that somebody repeats in your ear?

I think we could delve deeper into experience itself, that means inquiry and learning to look within us to discover what is true for us.

Like a wanderer on a quest, we might wonder on the inside, what is true for us? We might make use of mindfulness awareness, stabilize our mind in the body and breathe. We might then know what is true, what is happening right now.

We might then understand that we are indeed suffering; sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. If we can be kind and gentle with this experience, we can find freedom and understanding.

If we let go of our judgements and expectations of how our mind, body, and world could or should be, we might relax a little bit with ourselves, which is something I feel we all want and need.

Kind regards, Keith

Eagle Eye Counseling updated their business hours.