About
When Counselling Feels Necessary
A person may come to feel in their familiar way of navigating life a certain amount of tension arising over changes that bring about an internal conflict. This may be an inner conflict of desires, like that between a desire for security and a desire for personal freedom. It could also be a conflict between the external demands of life/others and the person’s own internal needs, like that between a demand to fulfill a professional/familial role and an individual need for self-care.
Now, change can be hard; it can be disruptive; it can demand a lot of the self. A person may prefer the distress of their familiar way of living over the distress of facing up to problems and working towards change in a constructive way. However, frequently, the tension of a person’s familiar circumstances rises to a critical point at which it begins to negatively impact one’s daily functioning and relationships. They begin to feel more stressed, more fatigued, more overwhelmed and hence discouraged by life. At that point, the person may come to consider the potential distress of change a better option than the distress of continuing to go about life in the way that they have up to this point.
When change becomes a less distressing prospect, the person begins considering it a possibility, one which they have already innately begun moving towards actualizing, albeit often hesitantly and tentatively. Because facing change can be a confusing and disorienting experience full of uncertainty, it is at this point that a person may find counselling necessary.
My approach
I offer counselling based on the Person-Centered Therapy founded and developed by Carl Rogers. More specifically, I aim towards a style of counselling that is classically Rogerian and non-directive. What this means is that I adhere as strictly as possible to the notion that I do not direct the process of the client in session and refrain from redirecting it by means of probing, interpreting, reassuring, suggesting, or persuading. Rather, I focus on following as closely as possible the direction the client chooses to take in exploring their problems.
As I follow along with you and as you talk through your concerns, I listen carefully for the feelings communicated, and respond primarily with reflections of those feelings to test my understanding and check my perception of your experience. By this means, I aim to communicate my tentative and continually evolving understanding of your internal frame of reference, or more metaphorically speaking, your inner world.
By continually working from this framework, I believe I may help facilitate your self-exploration. I may help you disentangle and clarify what may be confusingly mixed feelings you have about your situation. In the process, you may come to recognize and accept the attitudes and impulses you hold that are basic to your problem, thus working towards integrating them. As a result, you may clarify choices and achieve insights that aid in unifying your sense of purpose towards change.
The Therapeutic Value of Counselling
You may still wonder: what can I get from counselling that I can’t get from other ways of dealing with my problems? Change is a difficult, uncertain process, a bit of a journey into the unknown, and we may experience fears and doubts along the way, to name just some of the negative and ambivalent feelings that crop up. We may find ourselves isolated and alone, drowning in our own thoughts and feelings, without the ability to release the healing forces that can come from social connection and the responsiveness of others. Or in the case of those with access to social support systems, we may still find barriers to free expression. Because those close to us are invested in their relationships with us on the basis of mutually dependent needs, it can be hard to express such feelings to them without judgment and personal bias on their part. When we do make efforts in line with others’ expectations of us, we may find resentment building up internally over time. As a result, a lot of these complicated feelings cannot be properly expressed, accepted, and integrated by us into a unified sense of self and purpose.
I intend to provide you with a warm, caring, patient presence in an permissive atmosphere free of judgment. You can then more freely begin to explore aspects of your experience and the feelings related to them that you may have struggled to find the space to allow yourself to express in the context of your daily life and your relationships to others.
Finally, counselling in the context of the Person-Centered approach is more about being than doing. If I can be comfortably with you, you may come to be more comfortably with yourself. If I can communicate an understanding and acceptance of you and all that you choose to share in counselling, you may come to have more understanding and acceptance of yourself. If I can listen to you carefully and attentively and reflect what I hear back to you, you may come to find that you are able to listen to yourself and to trust yourself more.