Choosing a name for a therapy practice is challenging. It has to be relatively easy to remember, it should resonate with potential clients, and it needs to reflect something about the practice owner. Oh, and don’t forget, it has to be unique–literally!–there can’t be a business with the same name already registered with the Secretary of State. Once you’ve chosen a name and filed the articles of organization, the next step is to…head straight back to the drawing board to figure out a logo!
Why “Engaged Awareness?”
Change takes effort. The word engaged means “busy” or “involved” – signifying that someone or something is actively making an effort. In mechanical and physical terms, engaged can also mean “interlocked” or “attached”. Therapy is a process that requires connecting and working with someone else, the therapist, to bring about change. Humans are naturally social creatures, and since emotional wounds most often occur in relationship with other(s), the philosophy behind psychotherapy is that healing must also occur, you guessed it, in relationship with other(s)! When someone seeks therapy, they are making an intentional decision to connect with a professionally trained therapist to undergo a process of change.
I chose to depict this word in a shade of green to represent the heart chakra, which is associated with relationships, compassion, empathy, and connection.
Part of the change process involves developing increased awareness about self and our relationships to other(s). Awareness describes a state or condition of being informed, alert, knowledgeable, or conscious. Participating in therapy helps us gain insight and knowledge into our behaviors, beliefs, values, patterns…basically why we are the way we are, be it due to nature (our biological and genetic make-up) or nurture (how we were raised/how our environment shapes us). When we have access to this knowledge and insight, we are empowered to make better decisions to live in accordance with our values and in support of our own well-being.
I chose to depict this word in an indigo color to represent the third eye chakra, located between the eyebrows, and associated with perception, intuition, and self-awareness.
So, here’s the formula:
Active effort in psychotherapy + increased insight into ourselves & the people and world around us =>
enhanced ability to make healthy changes for a fulfilling life.
Now, the logo:
I searched for images related to the words “engaged” and “awareness,” and came up with gears, a light bulb, the outline of a person’s head. Somehow, these options seemed too…industrial. I wanted something more natural. Then I remembered how my mom had recently sent me several photos of rock cairns that she had taken during a trip to the west coast. (My mom takes lots and LOTS of photos wherever she goes, documenting the world she encounters.) I thought about how much concentration, effort, and intentionality it takes to search for and gather various sized stones of a certain shape, then carefully place them on top of one another so that they balance just so. I thought about how many times those cairns may have toppled before they finally stood tall? I thought back to one of the photos sent by my mom that had several cairns clustered together, and wondered to myself, who made them? Was it one person all at once? Was it a couple of different people together? Did passersby see the piles of stones, and decide to add their own? Was this an effort by multiple people who never even met each other, but had happened to walk the same path, one after the other, and decided to leave their mark behind?
A cairn is a human-made stack or pile of stones, which has been used since ancient times in order to serve as a landmark. These landmarks can have many purposes, and throughout history, cairns have been used to mark a trail, to identify the location of buried items (including grave sites), to serve as a monument for ceremonial purposes, and as part of a mechanism to survey large areas of land. Like the many uses of stone cairns over time, the importance of placing markers on our journey through the process of psychotherapy is multi-faceted.
When we begin therapy, the therapist usually asks something along the lines of, “What brings you in today?” By setting markers, we remember where we came from and where we’ve been, as well as how to return to the path of healing in the event that we somehow stray from the course. We can decide to put parts of ourselves, or events or relationships from our past, to rest, and to integrate them as part of our story by creating monuments or memorials. We might find some peace by knowing that it is our choice whether and when we wish to revisit these monuments, or simply heed them as reminders of circumstances that we do not wish to return to. Finally, we can use markers to map out our life story, to take a panoramic view of our challenges and successes, our strengths and resiliencies, what we have already accomplished, and what we are still striving for.
This is how Engaged Awareness Counseling & Consulting, LLC came to fruition.
