Ecological Counseling

The ecological counseling perspective can help counselors narrow down the large number of potentially helpful counseling tools into a smaller number applicable across clients and life situations. It is not a unique theory per se but an integrative framework that suggests common principles across counseling approaches and creative ways to facilitate change with individuals, groups, and communities. The ecological perspective sees human life as an ecology featuring a thinking organism interdependent with the contexts (or environments) surrounding him or her. Who we are as individuals depends on how we are [Page 311]connected with the world around us and how we perceive and understand these connections. Facilitating healthy synergistic interactions is the concern of the ecological counseling perspective.