A Counselling Approach

In recent years, through my study on shame, I have seen the need to adjust my initial therapeutic focus. Nowadays, I try to remind myself to see each new client as a person to get to know, rather than a person with a problem I need to fix. In my mind, this is a slight yet significant shift designed to enhance client safety and build an effective therapeutic alliance. My hope is that as a client experiences my genuine interest to know and understand them in a non judgmental way, they will feel safe enough to explore and learn more about themselves. Then, as they understand themselves and their context more fully, they can decide what, if anything, they want to address, repair or change; with me as a support and guide.

An essential belief that informs this approach is that any issue we eventually mutually agree to address is more likely to be the central or core issue troubling the client, because it has been arrived at through a process of seeking deeper and broader understanding. By way of example, it is common for a new person in therapy to initially request assistance to become more disciplined to achieve goals set to improve themselves. However, these same people often discover, when they delve deeper into their life story, that much of their behaviour has been directed by externally imposed ‘should’ voices. Consequently, it is not unusual for them to shift their therapeutic interest from learning how to be more disciplined towards exploring what they think of and what they want to do with ‘should’ messages. For them, the issue to address is not lack of discipline, but the matter of choice.

Finally, I personally am more at ease with this approach because it extricates me from the so called ‘expert’ chair, elevates the client to a position of personal authority and allows us to pool our resources and put our heads together as a team.

Even though I have written this piece from the perspective of one on one counselling, it is something I also seek to apply in couple and family work.

As this is simply my personal view, there is no way I place it above any other approach, just alongside. I think there are numerous ways to work, based on each person’s unique combination of style, personality, training and experience. What is most important is what works for the client.

If you’d like to challenge or question this approach, I welcome your feedback.