Explaining Counselling
What is counselling?
“Counselling promotes personal growth and healing by helping people overcome life challenges, so they can function more effectively.”
The terms counselling, psychotherapy, and talk therapy are often used interchangeably. Throughout time, people have sought help from a trusted friend or relative when encountering situations they couldn’t manage alone. So, talk therapy is not a new idea. In my practice, I strive to create a safe place where we can openly discuss clients’ concerns and work together in finding ways to resolve their problems.
Demystifying counselling – a brief explanation.
As caring and empathy are natural human traits, people have always tried to help one another by sitting down and talking about their problems. While there is no magic to the idea, two people working together can often produce great results.
There are records of talk therapy being practiced in various forms over 2000 years ago. The ancient Stoic philosophy supported the idea of using “Healing words to help people who are perplexed by problems in living.”
Epictetus (55 AD) was a teacher of stoic philosophy and said “People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.” This is a similar perspective to today’s cognitive behavioural therapy.
In 1880, the term “talking cure” was used by a woman called “Anna O” to describe a new effective therapy she was receiving from a Viennese physician called Josef Breuer. This “talking cure” became a valued way of helping people resolve issues and forms the basis of today’s counselling modalities.
Epictetus (55 AD)
Josef Breuer
Today, psychotherapy and counselling are general terms used to describe the process of helping people cope better with their life challenges: During this process, a trained therapist helps the client cope with, and or resolve, life problems. Research suggests that successful outcomes are most often achieved by the therapist forming a therapeutic bond with the client and helping them to discover solutions and coping strategies that fit the client’s personality, ability, and life view.
Thoughts About Healing
Jean Paul Sartre
Philosopher
"Everything about life has been figured out, except how to live."
Rachel Naomi Remen
Professor of Family &
Community Medicine
“Healing may not be so much about getting better as letting go of everything that isn’t you.“
Virginia Satir
Pioneer of Family Therapy
“Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open and rules are flexible.“
Andy Warhol
Artist & Philosopher
“They always say time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.“