My fundamental belief about counselling is that, whether in brief therapy (up to six sessions) or longer term therapy, change and healing are enabled by the development of an open, honest, and caring relationship; a relationship that is experienced as totally safe; a relationship that has the sole purpose of bringing an appropriate and sensitive response to a person seeking help.
By offering appropriate emotional support counselling frees the frozen abilities within the individual so they can address their difficulties in a more creative manner.
In the normal route through life, there are many challenges that can cause us to become frightened and distressed. There will be time when fatigue from dealing with more that we can cope with, or repeated experience of emotional injuries, causes us to become debilitated and hyper-sensitive to stress. When we are distressed, our emotions can reduce our personal competence so that we are unable to think clearly about the thing that is distressing us, yet unable to think about anything else. If we avoid thinking about it, distress sometimes grows into something more serious, like depression or generalised anxiety.
The aim of counselling is to undo this cycle and prevent distress from escalating into something more debilitating.
When counselling works well, it can bring a rapid sense of relief which comes from feeling listened to and properly understood. There are good reasons, arising from the way we are made, why a caring relationship helps to restore one's sense of wellbeing and personal competence. Often, when a person experiences being heard and supported in their distress, something changes: they become better able to bring a more balanced and enhanced strength and confidence, to explore what they need to improve their situation.
The focus of counselling will depend upon the needs of the person seeking help. It may focus on current difficulties so that the client becomes better able to see things clearly; separating issues into more manageable units so that positive decisions or plans can be made. At other times it may be necessary to explore and bring healing to emotional injuries that have affected the person from their past.
