Counselling is about helping you to explore the problems or issues you may be facing and to identify ways in which these can be overcome.
Counselling helps people to realise their own power and to take responsibility
for their own development and growth. The goal is to enable you to learn new ways
of dealing with old problems while learning about yourself along the way.Talking to a counsellor will help you to explore and clarify exactly what the problem is. This may sound simple but very often when we are having difficulties we can get stuck in our own thought patterns. Talking in confidence to a professional who does not know any of the people or events involved will help you to focus, and you may find yourself widening your thinking. This in itself can be helpful.
Listening
A counsellor is a trained listener and can help you to understand the problem more clearly. You will not be given advice or opinions but will be offered an opportunity to look at your difficulties from several angles and decide for yourself what you would like to try to do about them. You will be helped to recognize and to draw on your own strengths and resources and even perhaps discover new qualities you didn't know you had!
Change
Exploring and having a greater understanding of yourself and situations around you will help you to relieve distress, plan to make positive changes, and address behaviours and patterns which may have caused unhappiness to you or those around you.
Feelings
Counselling is not just about thinking. It is very much about understanding and expressing feelings: we all have individual ways of doing this. Being able to share how you feel about yourself and others with your counsellor and to have your feelings really heard and respected with out being judged can help you to decide what you want for yourself, without feeling guilty or beholden to others.
Looking at the past
We look at the past where it's approriate in counselling but also at the present - and at how things that have happened in the past or in your family or relationships might be influenuing you now. As you begin to understand and acknowledge your feelings you will become more aware of and able to resolve patterns which keep recurring and causing you difficulties. In order to understand your feelings you may need to look at the past and see where these feelings originated and how they developed. In doing so you will learn more about yourself, your strengths, weaknesses and needs and how these influence your feelings about yourself and your relationships with others.
Couples / Relationship Counselling
Couples counselling gives exactly the same opportunities, only as a couple. It gives you both an opportunity to address issues within your relationship that are causing difficulties and to explore the underlying problems that you both face in a safe and non-judgmental environment. Couples can use the process to explore their roles within the relationship and develop new strategies and approaches to each other. This may also require looking at learnt patterns and how others have influenced how you are in a relationship so you can get a greater understanding of yourself and each other and therefore enabling change and fulfilment
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