What is Counselling?

A counsellor is not a shrink, psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. Counselling is often called 'talk therapy', but there's much more to it than 'just' talk. In the process of acquiring a Masters degree in Counselling Psychology and being accepted into the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors, I have acquired a large box of tools to help you. The emphasis is very much on you: your circumstances, issues, problems, challenges – whatever brings you to counselling – are as unique as your fingerprint and personality. My aim is always to find the best possible means to fit your specific needs and preferences, as I help you to define and fulfil your goals and ultimately realize your potential as a unique and extraordinary individual.

Why go to a Counsellor?

Counselling has been proven to help people who suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, chronic stress, trauma, or phobias, allowing them to achieve long-lasting change and freedom from medication. Counselling also helps people to deal with relationship difficulties, developmental issues such as mid-life or end-of-life crises, life transitions, low self-esteem, anger management, or plain old unhappiness. But you do not need to have any clear 'issues' to see a counsellor, and there is no reason to be hesitant, embarrassed or ashamed when seeking this kind of help. The truth is, everyone would benefit from a good counselling session or two, and in an ideal world counselling would be subsidized, and as common as a check-up from your GP. At the very least, counselling could be seen as a life tune-up, a soul massage, a reality check, or a charging-up of the psychic batteries. If you feel dissatisfied or unfulfilled by your life, joyless, overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, or just in need of a change, counselling can help you figure out what could be better, and how you can make it happen. In just a few focused and productive sessions, I could help you totally turn your life around.

How does Counselling help?

Especially these days – when life is so fast-paced and complex – our thoughts, feelings, hopes and values tend to get tangled up in knots within our minds, hearts and bodies. Bombarded by our own personal life-storm, it is almost impossible to see clearly enough to make sense of our experiences and realize our own full potential. Friends and family are great for support, but they tend to offer a lot of advice and opinions, are quick to make assumptions and judgements, limit us with their expectations, pursue their own agendas, and ultimately get tired of hearing us talk about ourselves. None of this is very helpful.

If you come to me, I will:

create a safe and supportive space in which you feel comfortable getting to the bottom of your current situation
treat you with the highest possible esteem and respect, free of judgements, assumptions, prejudice, biases, stereotypes, and expectations
acknowledge you as the true expert on your own life, and help you to recognize your strengths, resources and possibilities
put myself in your shoes, so that I can relate to you and your situation with an elevated degree of empathy
build a collaborative, cooperative relationship with you, remaining utterly authentic, but also optimistic, constructive and highly focused
listen carefully to your story, using numerous unobtrusive techniques to help deepen, broaden, untangle and elucidate your truth.

Such skilled and intentional listening will help you:

untangle your life-knots, so that the many relevant strands of your life situation can be separated and laid out neatly to be worked upon
understand each of these life-strands with greater clarity and perspective
make priorities
set realistic, clear and attainable goals
create a plan of action, delineating the steps necessary to attain those goals
develop any skills necessary to meet those goals

My Therapeutic Orientation

The following phrases, arranged roughly in order of importance, will help you understand my own particular approach to counselling:

Client-Directed Outcome-Informed: Research has shown that no type of counselling is any more effective than any other. The single greatest predictor of therapeutic success – besides what the client brings to the table – is the degree to which the counsellor's strategies and interventions match the preferences, values, beliefs and goals of the client. Therefore, instead of embracing a single preferred 'approach' to counselling, I draw on numerous different strategies and disciplines, deliberately tailoring my work to fit each individual I see. This requires the fostering of a culture of feedback, pro-actively eliciting from clients information on how I could serve them better. It also means using a brief but powerful tool that enables me to measure a client's 'level of functioning', to ensure that progress is being made. If it is not, I will either try something new, or help them to find a practitioner who will be a better fit.

Person-Centred: My practice begins and ends with respect for the individual, not as a 'patient' to be 'fixed', but as a unique person who is the expert on their own life. Doctors do not mend broken bones: they apply casts to provide a safe space in which the bones can mend themselves. Similarly, counsellors do not 'fix' clients: we provide a safe, supportive space in which the psyche heals itself.

Relationship: Carl Rogers maintained that the relationship between counsellor and client is central to the healing process. My job is to be utterly authentic, present, grounded and supportive, demonstrating a heightened degree of empathy and unconditional positive regard, devoid of value judgements, prejudice and assumptions. When a person feels heard, understood, and accepted for who they really are, the healing can begin.

Humanist: Psychology tends to focus on pathology, what is 'wrong' with people. Abraham Maslow argued that we should also aim high, turning our attention to what is most successful, powerful, beautiful and healthy in each individual.

Solution-focused, Strength-based: In the past, counsellors have tended to focus on their client's problems and issues, encouraging problem-saturated talk, and often making the individual feel worse as a result. It has been suggested that you do not even need to know what a problem is in order to find a solution to it. Actively seeking solutions and focusing on strengths not only boosts a person's sense of self-esteem, empowerment, internal locus of control, optimism and joy, it can also yield tangible results very quickly, making therapy much more affordable.

Ethical: My ethical prerogative is to put the client's needs before my own. This means helping them to the full extent of my abilities; taking all possible precautions to do no harm; staying well within the boundaries of my professional competence, and referring clients elsewhere if it is in their best interest; persistently ensuring that clients understand what each therapeutic intervention entails, offering choices, and eliciting full informed consent; and respecting a client's right to privacy and confidentiality.

Constructivist: A constructivist (or postmodern) perspective acknowledges that there is no one objective truth or reality, indeed that we each inhabit a separate universe. As such, prejudices and assumptions are not only ethically wrong, they are absurd. A counsellor cannot be an adviser, guide or guru; instead we are supportive companions on another person's journey, facilitators with a helpful box of tools, beacons of hope and optimism. We lead from behind.

Multicultural: Differences in race, culture, religious belief and sexual orientation are only the most obvious examples of obstacles to communication and mutual understanding. In a sense, all counselling is multicultural, as we can never completely place ourselves in another's shoes. As such, it is essential to maintain an attitude of respectful and playful curiosity, inviting the other to explain their world to us, so that we can help them to achieve clarity, formulate goals, and generate solutions.

Systems and Family Perspective: An individual can never be fully understood separate from the many systems in which they are embedded, like layers of nested dolls. These layers include family, social institutions such as schools, clubs and churches, socioeconomic background, and the broader community, society, culture and nation in which the person lives. Of these, the family of origin is invariably of crucial importance.

Attachment Theory: During the first few years of life, infants naturally attach to their primary caregivers. When secure attachment is not achieved, maybe because a parent is abusive, chronically inconsistent, physically or emotionally absent, or in some way damaged themselves, the repercussions for the infant can persist across the lifespan, often emerging as social or psychological problems or issues. Those first, crucial relationships create a blueprint for future relationships, such that a person becomes entrenched in recurring dysfunctional patterns without understanding why. Frequently, a counsellor is the first person to accept the client unconditionally as the person they truly are. As such, this powerful relationship can often supersede the dysfunctional attachment relationship, and forge a new, healthy blueprint, built on trust, openness, mutual respect, and clear, consistent boundaries.

Existential: At bottom, we all struggle with the same existential givens of life: the inevitability of pain, uncertainty, constant change, disease, old age, and death; the fact that we are, in many ways, fundamentally alone; the necessity of living with other people who have their own needs and agendas; and the lack of clear answers concerning our complex human souls, and our place in the universe. We all look for meaning, purpose and hope. I consider my greatest strength as a counsellor to be my willingness to go deep with people: I will walk with them, unflinching, through the valley of death.

Spiritual: I am a deeply spiritual person. Though I would never foist my own beliefs or feelings on others, I believe that a deep spiritual strength and understanding underlies everything that I do. I believe that the spiritual dimension is a necessary component of a healthy existence, and can be satisfied in numerous ways that have no connection to religion, such as contact with nature, listening to music, contemplating beauty, doing yoga or physical exercise, or cultivating mindfulness. Ultimately, I believe that the spiritual life is the highest, truest answer to all of life's problems, though it is not an answer that everyone is ready to embrace.

Holistic: Counselling is not just about the mind. In counselling, the goal is to help the client achieve full health, which depends upon the development and interaction of all aspects of our life: physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual.

Narrative Therapy: We humans are natural story-tellers. We weave a story to make sense of the events of our lives, then we live according to the story. Problems begin when the story is a dysfunctional or limiting one. The fact is, the story is not real: it is an interpretation of events, but one of many possible interpretations. The problem is, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: it can become real. The counsellor begins with externalizing language, describing the situation in such a way that the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem. For example, the client is not an alcoholic: he is a person who has succumbed to alcoholism (and needs to fight back!) We then go back over the client's relevant history, looking for discrepancies: instances where the evidence contradicts the accepted story line. The client is not a failure: actually she succeeded again and again and again; she simply overlooked those successes because they did not fit in with her dominant narrative ('I'm such a failure!'). Thus we build up an alternative, more healthy narrative, initiating an upward spiral.

Somatic Experiencing: This perspective suggests that we have five key modes for processing information, summarized by the acronym SIBAM. These are: Somatic (body sensations); Imagery (including imagination and memory); Behaviour; Affect (emotions); and Meaning making (mental or cognitive). Most people tend to get stuck in one or two modes, which will only get them so far. A skilled counsellor helps their client to access the information to be gained by exploring all modes, moving from one to another in a manner that can become intuitive and revelatory, never lingering in one mode long enough to become saturated. Shift, inevitably, happens. The emphasis in this practice is on the Somatic element. Trauma gets lodged in the body, often resulting in a perpetual low-level activation of the fight-flight or freeze response, a state of hyper-vigilance that can easily be triggered into a panic, rage, shutdown, or dissociation response. By assisting the client to become increasingly aware of body sensations, paying attention to the quality and movement of those sensations, and encouraging these sensations to trigger revealing information from the other modes (mind, emotions, images and actions), the counsellor helps the client's body to follow its own wisdom and dislodge the blockage.

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: This orientation focuses on the cognitive and behavioural modes. This is the approach of choice in many cases, because our incredibly powerful minds are the root of many of our problems, generating thousands of thoughts per hour, most of which are 'automatic' thoughts that remain just below the level of consciousness, yet affect our emotions, behaviour,a nd physical health. I draw upon many strategies to help people turn the mind into an ally: problem solving; the identification and challenging of cognitive distortions; the identification of undermining automatic thoughts, and their replacement with more positive affirmations; the excavation, exposure and unpacking of deep-seated core vales and beliefs that underlie the automatic thoughts; numerous grounding exercises and visualizations; progressive muscle relaxation; manipulation of the antecedents and consequences of behaviours; role playing alternative behaviours; progressive desensitization; anger management; and so on.

Emotional co-regulation: As well as being aware of the power of relationship and attachment theory, a good counsellor helps their client emotionally through co-regulation. I often encourage my clients to depict their emotional life on a simple graph, as a wave that oscillates between two lines which represent the upper and lower limit of what they can handle emotionally without losing control (corresponding to the fight-flight response) or shutting down (the freeze response). This becomes more meaningful with comparison to similar graphs of their significant others. Being comfortable with a broad range of emotions is a skill learned in early life, and an important indicator of healthy function. Modern research suggests that when we are within six feet of another person, their nervous system interacts and resonates with our own. By remaining calm, grounded and unconditionally supportive, a counsellor can co-regulate their client's emotions, allowing them to handle emotions that lie outside their normal range. Like a muscle that expands through exercise, the emotional range broadens, and this alone can lead to a dramatic improvement in functioning and relationships.

Stages of Change Model: Research suggests that lasting change usually involves five stages, which overlap and frequently have to be revisited. In the Precontemplation stage, the individual denies having a problem, believing that nothing needs to be changed. In Contemplation, he admits that there is a problem, but is not yet committed to changing it. The behaviour in question has pros as well as cons, and all of these must be explored and discussed before a wholehearted commitment to change is possible. Most change projects fail because this stage is skipped or rushed through. There follows Preparation, Action, and Maintenance. Different stages require different therapeutic strategies.

Motivational Interviewing: This strategy is very effective at the Precontemplative or Contemplative stage. No change will occur until the client is motivated. So the counsellor elicits change talk, seeks out the leverage – the forces driving the client to change – and develops any discrepancy between the client's values or desires and their actual reality or behaviour.

Response-Based Interviewing: This narrative strategy is often used with survivors of abuse. Frequently, such clients are saturated with feelings of shame, guilt, despair, or self-loathing, often because they feel that they did nothing to defend themselves. But they did do something, which allowed them to survive. With skillful questioning, they often come to recognize their own strength, and the life-skills they acquired through adversity, finding renewed self-esteem, confidence, joy, and frequently a desire to help others.