The Counsellor – And Feelings

One of the main objectives of Counselling is to help clients to notice how they are feeling, that the noticing should be accurate (in other words not influenced by inaccurate assumptions that are based on past unhelpful experiences) and to express those feelings accurately either in words or some other manner, i.e: tears, anger.

The key point is that our actions are based upon our feelings and those actions then generate another set of feelings and so on.

Clients come for counselling for a host of reasons but there is always a common theme which is based upon their difficulty in assessing accurately for themselves who they are and how they would like to respond in the best way for themselves in a present situation.  This is not to say that clients cannot manage aspects of their daily lives very successfully; what I am talking about is the reason that life has stopped working for them in a general sense.

The second key point is that our assumptions about life, our conclusions about how things will turn out under any given set of circumstances, will be informed by (early) experience.  This is what happened before when I did this or when someone did that and so I can expect this or that to happen this time and therefore this is the correct strategy to adopt.

The problems occur when our assumptions mean that our behaviour in later life is not appropriate because we have been given a basis for a faulty set of assumptions.

The counsellor intends to give the client a clearer and more accurate sense of self, who they really are, and to be able to notice more accurately what is right for them and others in any circumstances.

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