We are faced with difficult and overwhelming life stressors on a daily basis. As an individual, we might not be capable of dealing with our own emotions, feelings and stressors completely on our own. We might need someone’s support to get back on our feet and navigate through life’s challenges. Sometimes we are looking for answers to confusing questions, or sometimes, we just want to vent. That’s when counselling comes in. Counselling provides us with a supportive and safe environment to talk about what’s been bothering us and how we can learn to manage our emotions, actions, feelings and thoughts in such a way that it turns out to be healthy for us
Concept of counselling
We are faced with difficult and overwhelming life stressors on a daily basis. As an individual, we might not be capable of dealing with our own emotions, feelings and stressors completely on our own. We might need someone’s support to get back on our feet and navigate through life’s challenges. Sometimes we are looking for answers to confusing questions, or sometimes, we just want to vent. That’s when counselling comes in. Counselling provides us with a supportive and safe environment to talk about what’s been bothering us and how we can learn to manage our emotions, actions, feelings and thoughts in such a way that it turns out to be healthy for us.
Counselling emphasises on growth and remediation for us throughout our life span, starting from childhood till old age. Counsellors specialise in providing support to families, groups, individuals, couples, and social systems that are dealing with developmental, situational, and/or short-term issues. Counselling appeals to people looking for healthy life transitions and fulfilling lives because of its emphasis on development, prevention, wellness, and therapy.
However, counselling hasn’t always been an all-encompassing and comprehensive profession since the beginning. Over the years, it has emerged from a variety of fields such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, ethics, history, law, and medical sciences.
Unaware of counselling's development, some people mistakenly associate counselling with educational settings or confuse counselling with the word "guidance." Consequently, they continue to hold outdated notions against what is actually true. They have a false impression of the nature of the industry and its practitioners. Counsellors themselves, who fall behind their professional growth, may be confused about what counselling is, where it has been, and how it is evolving .Hence, let us now try to understand what counselling essentially means and how it is useful.
Meaning of counselling
Although there have always been "counsellors"—people who listen to others and assist them in resolving difficulties—the term has come to be used incorrectly throughout time by being associated with insulting phrases to advertise goods. As a result, one may hear about counsellors for carpet, colour coordination, pest treatment, finances, camp counselling, and so forth. Most of the time, these counsellors are just enhanced salespeople, advisors, and managers of kids or services.
Early in the 20th century, the progressive guiding movement gave rise to the profession of counselling. It placed a strong focus on prevention and purposefulness, assisting people of all ages and stages to avoid making poor decisions and discovering purpose, meaning, and fulfilment in their work. Although the practice of professional counselling still includes mental healthcare professionals who prioritise avoidance of issues, problem solving and growth enhancement, the field now incorporates much more.
According to the 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling consortium, counselling is defined as follows: Counselling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals.
It's critical for consumers and counsellors to understand several implicit and explicit elements in the above definition-
- 1. Wellness, personal development, career, education, and empowerment issues are all addressed in counselling-
In other words the domains in which counsellors operate encompass a wide range of difficulties, both interpersonal and personal. Concerns about purpose, adjustment, and fulfilment in relation to one's physical and mental health, as well as the accomplishment of objectives in contexts like work and school, are some of these domains. - 2.Counselling can occur on an individual, couples or a group basis-
Counsellors see people from a variety of social classes and work areas.Their problems may necessitate short or long-term interventions that focus on one individual, a collection of related or unconnected individuals, or both. - 3. Counselling is diverse and multicultural-
Counsellors work with clients of many ages and phases of life, as well as from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Depending on their requirements, people from primary and minority cultures receive assistance in a number of ways, such as tackling more significant societal problems like prejudice or discrimination. - 4. Counselling is a dynamic process-
In addition to concentrating on their clients' goals, counsellors assist their clients in achieving them. This dynamic process is achieved by the use of several ideas and techniques. Making decisions and making adjustments are thus part of counselling.Counselling is lively and interactive. It is a rehearsal for action most of the time, either externally with behaviour or internally with ideas and feelings.
Different types of counselling
There are several different types of counselling made for specific categories of people in specific areas of their lives. Here are a few commonly practised types of counselling-
- 1. Individual counselling-
Individual counselling, also referred to as talk therapy, includes one-on-one sessions between the client and the therapist. This kind of counselling simply addresses the individual's needs, objectives, and preferences. In order to successfully achieve the intended result, the client and the counsellor establish a therapeutic relationship and collaborate on the client's goals. - 2.Relationship and marriage counselling-
During the course of a relationship, marriage and couples counselling may assist with a variety of issues. Counsellors may assist couples in communicating and expressing their own thoughts and feelings, as well as resolving particular relationship problems and strengthening their bond in general. Anyone in a committed partnership who needs assistance managing their relationship challenges can use marriage or relationship counselling. It might be for someone who is dating with the intention of being engaged, someone who got engaged lately, someone who recently got married, or someone who has been married for a long time. Any type of relationship could potentially be strengthened by couples counselling.It is mostly assumed that a couple goes to a relationship therapist when their relationship is completely falling apart. However, a couple could merely come to a relationship counsellor even if they have fewer relationship problems and want to simply work on knowing each other better and to understand how to navigate a healthy relationship. - 3. Group counselling-
A typical group therapy consists of five or more people who meet with one or two licensed group therapists to discuss their biggest issues. Members communicate honestly and listen to one another, sharing their opinions and feelings regarding each other's actions and words. Through these encounters, members may test out various approaches to being with people, develop more efficient methods to interact, and get a better knowledge of themselves and others. The essence of group therapy is usually to find a sense of community that restores faith in people about not being alone. The supportive group then helps each other identify and implement new perspectives and strategies to cope with life. The shared sense of experiences is what binds a group together. - 4. Family counselling-
The goal of family counselling, often known as family therapy, is to create and preserve strong, effective family bonds.The intent is to recognize and resolve family issues. These problems could be behavioural, psychological, or emotional in nature.
Family systems theory is the foundation for many family therapy techniques. This implies that families are not a collection of individuals that operate apart from one another, but rather operate as systems. Family counselling is often practised with the presence and consent of all family members. Equal focus is given on all the members and there’s no bias from the side of the counsellor. Family counselling can be a bit tricky because of the complex and unhealthy family dynamics involved, hence only a therapist trained in family counselling id advised to take this up. - 5. Career counselling-
Career counselling is a service that helps individuals begin, alter or advance their careers. What we study and practice as an occupation is extremely important in one’s life since we aim to spend most of our adult life at work. Hence, to have trained professionals work with clients for their career related issues is extremely important. Some of the themes they deal with are- how to choose a career, advancements in career, job dissatisfaction, changing careers, retirement and much more!
Apart from this, there can be other types too such as grief counselling, substance abuse counselling, online counselling, rehabilitation counselling and so on.
The psychologists at Infiheal, which is a mental healthcare company, would be delighted to help you guide through your counselling process. We have with us a panel of psychologists specialised in various areas like relationships, anxiety,depression, loneliness, grief and so much more.Book your session now at https://healo.infiheal.com/therapist
Purpose of counselling
If you ask a therapist as to what is the purpose of counselling, you might receive various different answers based on the type of therapy they practise. However, here are some general themes about the main goals behind counselling-
- 1. Therapy and Counseling Help Individuals Recognize and Feel Their Own Selves
It becomes very hard to have any type of real, secure, and satisfying relationship if people are unable to regulate their emotions. Therefore, the therapist's and therapy's purpose is to assist the patient in being conscious of their feelings, assisting them in making the emotional/affectual distinction between the past and the present, and assisting them in descending through their levels of arousal without getting overwhelmed. - 2. Counselling is a process of short term and long term goal setting
It's not about offering advice. Of course, there are occasions when a counsellor should voice an opinion or offer advice, but the foundation of counselling is the understanding that, for the most part, people are capable of making wise choices but are either too overwhelmed or confused, or lack the necessary support or self-awareness, to recognize or act upon what, on some level, they already know. - 1. Counselling is about fostering strengths and growth in others, it is not about making clients feel better
This point can be especially challenging for those who have been driven to helping roles because they desire to lessen suffering. The irony is that in order to heal, patients may need to endure agony that they weren't even aware they were in at first. Rather than trying to make the client feel better, the objective is to help them become better, which may eventually help them feel better.
Still confused as to what purpose would counselling serve for you? That’s okay. Counselling is an equally hard process for both the therapist and the client. It is not easy to be vulnerable with a person about things that have been bothering you. We understand the emotional struggle in your mind, and to help you cope with that, we, the psychologists at Infiheal have come up with an AI mental health chatbot, Healo, which can help you ease into the process of counselling especially if it’s your first time. Healo, our free AI therapist is trained to talk to you just like a human therapist. Can’t believe it? Try it out at https://healo.infiheal.com/
Difference between counselling and psychotherapy
In recent times, the differences between counselling and psychotherapy have blurred. There has been a huge confusion, especially amongst individuals from a non-psychology background about the distinctiveness of counselling and psychotherapy. Although there exist a few overlapping concepts amongst both of them, practitioners or therapists who have been exposed to both know that there are significant differences. Let us try to understand the main differences between counselling and psychotherapy through an analogy. Let’s say that you are a trained therapist stranded on a beach. You see your client shouting for help while being stuck in the sea on a boat. In order to help them and do your job, you wear your protective gear and set out in the sea in your own boat to help your client. Upon reaching there, you could be faced with two situations. First situation involves the client not being able to move his own boat till the shore. They feel stuck. In order to help, you as a therapist would then try to empathise with the client by putting one of your feet into the client’s boat in order to see where they are coming from, while still keeping your other foot in your own boat. This is essentially what takes place in counselling. The therapist maintains their own world while at the same time, takes a look at the client’s world to understand what is bothering them. Once the therapist has figured out the behaviours, patterns of thoughts, feelings, or emotions that are stopping the client from growing and moving ahead in life, they will try to steer the client in the right direction through psychoeducation, self-exploration, reflection and goal setting.
Now, let’s see what could be another possibility. Let’s say you encounter an anchor deep in the sea which is stopping your client’s boat from moving ahead. Neither you or your client have a way to find out where the anchor is coming from, unless you take a deep dive in the sea. The sea here represents the client’s childhood and past experiences. This is what psychotherapy looks like. The therapist doesn’t solve the problem for the client, they merely take a torch into the deep dark ocean to help the client identity their core beliefs and maladaptive thoughts. The job of pulling off the anchor and rowing the boat till the shore can only be done by the client.
Therefore, we can conclude that while counselling is a relationship between the therapist and the client where the therapist helps the client deal with daily life problems and unhealthy behaviours, psychotherapy is a deep intervention which might require an in depth exploration of childhood and past experiences. Since counselling deals with comparatively less severe issues, it is a short term relationship which can be held for weeks or months. On the other hand, psychotherapy is a long term relationship which usually lasts for years.
Conclusion
It is common in counselling to talk about traumatic memories and uncomfortable feelings. It can be challenging to bring up these ideas at first, and you could feel worse. You must first go through this process in order to proceed, and eventually you should begin to feel better.
Consistency is key to getting the most out of your sessions. Even if it may not seem like it at first, everything your counsellor does is intended to support you in the long run. Some sessions will feel more beneficial than others.
It's important to keep in mind that counselling is an endeavour and that your counsellor cannot give you advice. In order to successfully assist you in resolving your concerns, the counselling process necessitates both a solid relationship between you and your therapist as well as some work on your part.
