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Counselling |
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Counselling is an opportunity
for you to explore whatever is on your mind in a safe, confidential
and non-judgemental environment.
Most people come to counselling after some trauma has affected
them, or they are in some way experiencing difficulty in
their lives.
It offers much more than just ‘a problem shared is
a problem halved’ - a counsellor will help in ways
which friends and family cannot. Often what happens is that
connections are made between past experiences and current
behaviour, pennies drop and realisations occur which allow
you to feel more at ease with yourself, which in turn improves
your quality of life in a sustainable way.
Anyone can benefit from counselling at any time - taking
some time to pause and think things through is an increasingly
valuable commodity in the 21st century. It is seen as an
essential element of Health in the Workplace; medical professionals
encourage talking cures in preference to anti-depressant
medication; the media trumpets how more and more people
are seeking therapy, albeit often with a cynical take: “celebrity
admits seeking therapy”. Perhaps because
of this, counselling has rather negative connotations in
some people’s minds, there’s a suggestion of
it being a last resort, perhaps even an admission of failure.
In fact, coming to counselling is a very pro-active step
in regaining control of your own destiny.
In the interests of dispelling any lingering myths it is
probably worth stating that counselling is not:
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the individual has within himself vast resources
for self-understanding, for altering his self-concept,
his attitudes, and his self-directed behaviour
– and that these resources can be tapped
if … a definable climate of facilitative
psychological attitudes can be provided.”
Carl Rogers American Psychology 1974 |
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| What’s the procedure? |
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Initially, by phone or email,
we would arrange a mutually convenient time
to meet and talk about what is involved,
and give us the opportunity to meet and
see if we can work together. My contact
details are at the top of each page and
in the links section
Once you have chosen to proceed we would
normally agree to meet regularly, for an
hour, every week to ten days, until such
time as you feel ready to stop. In person-centred
therapy it is you, the client, who drives
the session; you are free to talk about
whatever you want, there is no pressure
on you to divulge anything, withhold anything,
or to go any faster or slower than feels
right to you.
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- like anything you may have seen on television
- teaching, or giving guidance or advice (like debt counselling)
- diagnosing or treating ‘illness’
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What you might expect
from Counselling
Because
counselling is a very personal journey, outcomes are unique
to the individual. Here are some client’s comments to
give a flavour:
“ I feel like a person again!”
“ I never expected the self-confidence that came as
a result.”
“ It really makes you see a way through seemingly hopeless
situations.”
“Counselling helped me significantly in what was otherwise
a very difficult period in my life.”
Carl Rogers, the founding father of
the Person-Centred Approach to Counselling, described it thus:
“… clients ... move towards being persons
who accept and even enjoy their own feelings, who value and
trust the deeper layers of their nature, who find strength
in being their own uniqueness, who live by values they experience.
This learning, this movement, enables them to live as more
individuated, more creative, more responsive, and more responsible
persons.”
(Carl Rogers, Person to Person: the Problem of Being Human,
1967) |
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