Don’t engage in therapeutic counselling if you…
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How do you know if you need to engage with a counsellor to help you explore difficult emotions? In this article, I will share some thoughts that could be useful for you to consider.
In the world of counselling, there are so many styles of therapeutic counselling that support clients with a plethora of emotional needs and there will be different reasons for engaging with counselling.
In this article, I am going to give some thoughts about engaging with the style of counselling that I deliver and why you shouldn’t engage with my work. My hope is that by reading this article you will get a sense of how may work could be useful to you if you have the need to engage with me.
Firstly let me explain what my style of counselling is.
Generically I would describe myself as an ‘integrative’ counsellor who mixes different approaches in the service of my clients. My training is mostly centred around Person Centred Counselling whereby a therapeutic relationship is set up with clear expectations on how that relationship is set up. The topics brought to counselling are ALWAYS decided upon by the client. My role is not to diagnose need but to work with my clients with what they feel their need is. I listen, I reflect on what I am hearing and I also provide honest feedback on what it is that I understand the client is expressing. In all interactions, I totally believe that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with my clients and that they have all the answers that they need within themselves, they simply need support in finding those answers. I don’t tell my clients who they should be or what they should do, they make those decisions. Ultimately my clients work with me to understand themselves better, explore difficult emotions and use the experience of working with me to find the next steps in their lives to ultimately unlock their potential.
In all my interactions with my clients, my work is always in the service of the client and I work within the ethical framework of the National Counselling Society to help them develop safely and in confidence. I also invest in engaging with my own supervisor so that I can work at my best in supporting my clients.
Five reasons for NOT engaging with therapeutic counselling with John Hicks.
So here are five reasons for not engaging in therapeutic counselling with me…
Do not engage with me if you don’t want to engage with me.
Ok, this may seem like an obvious point, but so often when one experiences difficult emotions we can be surrounded by friends, family and colleagues who think that we would benefit from some kind of intervention. It is quite common for parents or Human Resource managers to put forward people for counselling when the person in question really doesn’t want to or isn’t ready to engage with doing some work in understanding emotions.
If you personally do not want to do some personal development and get to grips with how you feel, then please do not give into the requests of others for you to do counselling. If you don’t think it will help you then don’t start on this process.
Do not engage with me if you think that you need counselling to benefit anyone other than yourself.
This point relates to the first point. Therapeutic counselling works best when the client is aware of their emotional needs and feel the need to address them for their own benefit. If you are being told that you have a problem and that in dealing with it you will benefit someone else, then that is not a good basis for engaging with counselling. You are you and only you should be responsible for changing aspects of your life, not someone else.
Engaging in counselling for the benefit of others means that the counselling is immediately affected by the agenda of someone outside of the counselling relationship. It should ALWAYS be your agenda that we work with.
Do not engage with me if you don’t want to do work in understanding yourself.
Like it or not, we are all on a lifelong process of change and development but over time we might find that we resist the need to adapt to life’s challenges and adopt change. Maybe it feels safer not to change or explore hidden aspects of ourselves. It may feel that in doing counselling could ‘open a can of emotional worms’ that simply doesn’t need to be opened.
If this resonates with you and you absolutely do not want to dig deeper into your emotional responses and understand who you are at a more fundamental level, then therapeutic counselling with me will not be a good fit for you.
If you are someone who is perhaps fearful of change but recognises that change is essential for living your best life, then I invite you to contact me because when working with me I always work safely and at the pace that my clients want to go or need to go at. All my clients are courageous simply by engaging and being willing to explore their emotional landscape.
Do not engage with me if you want me to tell you who you should be or what you should do.
I often have clients who sometimes feel frustrated because they don’t know how to approach difficult emotions or experiences with others, sometimes they say something like “Can’t you just tell me what to do?” This is totally understandable but if I was to tell you what to do then what I would be sharing with you would be something from my own experience of living. It stems from my own uniqueness and whilst it may or may not be useful to hear, the reality is that advice from me won’t be given from your perspective. It would come from my own interpretation of your perspective.
You really do have the capacity to work out who you want to be and how you want to feel and how to behave as a result, my job is to help you find the answers that help you in that process. If the answers come from you then you will find that you will have a much more of a useful experience of counselling.
Do not engage with me if you are looking for a quick fix for managing difficult emotions.
Person Centred Counselling is a process that can take many weeks and for some months. It takes time to establish the relationship between client and counsellor, to build rapport and trust and then traverse levels of emotional experiences. My approach to counselling gives clients space to work out who they are and this is not a rapid process and the speed of the process is very much determined by how fast the client wants to go. I always advise my clients to expect to engage in at least six, one hour, weekly sessions giving the process time to establish. Ultimately it depends on how much the client wants to explore themselves.
I am not interested in extending the process, I am totally committed to go as far along the process as you, the client, wants to go. If you are looking for a quick fix then I will not be a good fit for you.
Want to discuss whether or not therapeutic counselling would be a good fit for you?
If you have any questions or would like a chat about therapeutic counselling then feel free to click the button below and book a 15 minute meeting with me via Zoom or telephone at a time that works for you.