How Can Counselling Help You?
I would like to try and offer some understanding, share some of my knowledge and experience of working with people and let you know that I do my best to ‘get it’.
People are individuals and their needs are different. Although life events can be the same, life experiences are never the same. This is one of the reasons I trained as an integrative therapist, to be able to incorporate different approaches to meet the needs of clients.
The uniqueness and individuality of people, the different coping strategies people utilise and early life experiences all feed into our functioning, how we develop an existence as a person. My role is to help you build the picture, gain insight and clarity to work through distress, which may or may not be in awareness. Help you understand your relationships, who you are in those relationships and unpick patterns in your family systems and work systems which may be causing distress or unrest.
Counselling can help people in many ways, depending on your needs and what you are experiencing.
Some people enter therapy because things are just not going to plan, sadness has crept up on them and they have no idea when it started let alone how to get rid of it.
There may be feelings of dread, fear and worry taking over, there may have been warning signs, but there may not. All you know is that it is impacting how you live, stopping you in your tracks, halting any movement towards achieving, enjoying your life and impacting relationships.
It may feel like friends and family do not understand, they may become impatient, or even irritated, or conversely, you may find those closest being extremely helpful, caring and even stepping in to rescue you so you don’t need to face or acknowledge your fears. How those closest to us react and relate to us when we struggle can actually stop us moving forward. This is where entering therapy can really be of help.
Working with a therapist can offer an impartial view, an attuned listening ear. Without interruption, without an agenda and without needing anything from you. You do not have to pretend to be happy (if this is something you might do) and you do not have to minimise your issues to make others feel better. Counselling is about validating feelings and to bring into the open the unsaid, the unconscious and (at times) the uncomfortable. It has to be said that the counselling process is not always an easy one but, it is always at your pace.
The reality is counselling can help in many different ways, and people enter into it for many different reasons. I have tried to encompass some of those here but as people are so unique it may be helpful to make contact to discuss your individual needs, requirements or thoughts to see if it might be of help to you.
This time is for you to work it out, to hear it out loud and to share in the most confidential space what you are experiencing.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
- Albert Einstein