Counselling and Psychotherapy produce change and make a difference.
HOW DO I KNOW IT WILL WORK?
When clients arrive they are anxious. They know they are in need of support but for those who are new to Counselling there is a myriad of reasons to be anxious. They are meeting a complete stranger: of itself potentially anxiety creating for some. Not only that but there is an anticipation of having to talk to a complete stranger about their feelings: potentially deeply personal thoughts and feelings which they may have never talked about before with anyone else. Still more weirdly, to the client, they are coming with some sort of hope that this act of talking will actually make a difference. And that is always the question. Will these meetings make a difference and how does that work? How long will it take?
A MEETING OF MINDS
What a relief. After the initial step across the threshold of my counselling room, the practical anxiety of where to sit. The anxiety of who says what first my key objective as the therapist is to meet my clients in those moments and to give empathy and warmth. Yes, this is weird isn’t it I think to myself as I help my potential client to settle. Now, what is it that brings you here today? Perhaps you would like to know a little of how and why I work and how and why our meetings and conversations will make a difference. What will happen is that our minds will meet and we shall form a relationship.
COUNSELLING: ART AND SCIENCE
So, perhaps my skill is is helping my clients to view themselves in their lives and to shine a spotlight onto and into their experiences which have brought them into my room. What is certainly helpful to the Counsellor is the scientific evidence that we can use to bring reassurance that what the client hopes for is both possible and probable. Not easy, usually painful, certainly courageous but ultimately rewarding. I explain that their lives simply represent the totality of each lived split second experience, especially relational experiences, from the moment of conception until now; synaptic connections between neurons: our neural pathways which form our assumptions about life. Poor experiences which leave us uncertain about our lives. Counselling and psychotherapy has long demonstrated that somehow a different relational experience provided in the therapeutic space on a regular basis, usually weekly, leaves clients feeling better about themselves and their world. Neuroscience tells us that neuroplasticity means that we respond to different experiences such that benign experiences become our expectation rather than those assumptions which leave us uncertain about, especially others, and ourselves with others. In other words: HOPE. I begin with empathy, warmth and HOPE. They leave with hope: and the journey to change has begun.