from Counselling and psychotherapy

PSYCHOTHERAPY IS ABOUT CONNECTION AND RELATIONSHIP. It is through developing a relationship with a counsellor you will discover aspects of yourself that have been denied or lost. Connection with a counsellor allows you to become conscious of your experience. This can bring up uncomfortable feelings as you become aware of the illusions you may have been living with in order to keep you from experiencing the pain of your suffering. Typically people report a mixture of feelings at the beginning of therapy. There is often relief from feeling supported and safe to express oneself, and overwhelmed by those experiences you have buried.  

THERAPY IS A PROCESS OF CONCENTRATED INWARD FOCUSING. Focusing inwards can put us intimately involved with what we are ashamed of. We can feel vulnerable and exposed. On the other hand, the process of telling someone about our innermost thoughts and feelings validates and begins to lift a weight off our shoulders. In therapy you don't have to worry about taking care of anyone else.

THERAPY IS DE-MYSTIFYING.  As we learn to live with life as it is and face the illusions we have constructed to deal with the pain and disappointment of life. At first illumination can be disturbing and we will want to resist as our defenses try to hold on and re-establish themselves. This struggle can occur internally as well as between you and the therapist. So what happens between you and your counsellor is important therapeutic material. How you experience me will reflect your perspective and the experiences you have encountered in your life. How I experience you, can give me clues to these experiences and the ways you may be protecting yourself. Direct feedback about this experience is part of the process. A skilled therapist will be able to pace this feedback in line with each client’s needs and ability to face their defenses.

Therapy therefore involves an ongoing self-examination into those internal processes that prevent you from living the way you wish and from creating unnecessary suffering for yourself.

We naturally want to prevent suffering, but the ways we try to hold back actually

create more suffering.

So as we become conscious and connect more fully with who we are we can begin to have a different relationship with ourselves. We develop more ease with difficult experiences and have less reactions to others opinions or reactions. Therapy is also about encouragement. Only you can change things in your life by doing something different out in your world. Therapy provides a place to rehearse and prepare with the support of your counsellor.  As you experience a different kind of relationship with your counsellor you will be encouraged to believe that you can have that with other people. For example, if you have experienced people dismissing you and have developed a belief that ‘everyone’ is not interested in what you have to say, the experience of your counsellor paying attention to you and hearing you can change that belief. As you change this belief your interactions will change with other people.

A Word about short term counselling vs. long term …

The above process takes time and speaks more to a longer-term process. In this society taking time goes against the general ethos. We want things fixed quickly and easily. Just gives us a pill or a ‘tool’ or an exercise that will give me control over this suffering. This puts pressure on all of us to come up with something to fix the difficulty at hand. It also creates a situation where once we have gained control again over a crisis we think we have ‘fixed’ it.

In the short term we will learn things, and we can gain control over a situation or process a decision. Where it becomes problematic is where our difficulties are causing ongoing problems and we are conscious of deep unhappiness or internal struggles that we are still looking to fix in the short term. 

Learning to live with oneself takes a lifetime.