What is counselling | anna-alward

What is counselling?

Counselling takes place in a private and confidential setting. The counsellor or therapist, who should be fully qualified, works with the person, or client. The aim is to explore the client’s difficulty – which might be a specific problem or a sense of losing direction or purpose.

Clients are encouraged to explore various aspects of their lives and the feelings around them. The counsellor will listen to the client in a non-judgemental way, encouraging the client to be freely open in a way that is rarely possible with friends or family. Bottled up feelings such as anger, grief and anxiety can become very intense and cause great pain. The pain can be reduced through the opportunity to express it in a place where the aim is also to understand the cause.

Counsellors encourage the expression of feelings and, as a result of their training, will be able to accept them without becoming burdened by them.

Therapy often entails dipping below the surface and talking about things we feel uncomfortable about, and tend to push aside in everyday life. Although disturbing, it can be a great relief to air half-buried feelings. Some of these ideas and feelings are buried because we feel they are too silly or crazy to express in everyday life. However, they are acceptable in a counselling setting and it is important to express them, if we are to gain a better understanding of ourselves.

Counselling is intended to help people to explore different ways of looking at their lives more effectively, and hence, the more you feel able to talk about, the more you will find counselling helpful.