Getting the Most Out of Counselling

Suggestions From A Counsellor

Part of my job as a Counsellor, is to guide you through the therapeutic process, while the other part of my job is to assist you with “fine-tuning” your personal development and capacity for self-sufficiency.

The aim of Counselling after all, is to fill your toolbox with a range of new skillsets/resources, and which will support you through a variety of different life situations/challenges and assist you to address any future difficulties more confidently. The following illustrative suggestions are offered, to hopefully ensure that you receive the maximum benefit from your counselling experience.

1. Acknowledge that there won’t ever be a time when everything is fully sorted. Life is a continual series of unfolding interconnected events and so an imagined end point is illusory. Commit to enjoying your journey and let go of arriving at the destination. Set intentions for yourself, acknowledge your hearts yearnings, but give up trying. Trust that you are a better person right now, that you are whole and that nothing about you needs to be fixed.
2. Be willing to involve your whole self in the therapeutic process. Include all parts of yourself and dare to bring the parts of yourself that feel unacceptable to you. We all have an ‘inner critic’ for example or feel sometimes that we’re ‘not enough’. Understand that often what we resist persists. Ask yourself, what is it I am hiding and what do I really want to talk about? And then develop your curiosity about these answers.
3. Cultivate your capacity for stillness and space. We can feel lonely in a crowd and in full company in our aloneness. Observing your own mental, physical and emotional worlds requires quiet and contemplative spacetime. Meditative reflection supports deeper personal insight and the therapy room is a perfect environment to hold deeper work. Know too that you can always shape your environment to support your needs.
4. Dance with the unknown by viewing your personal story as an integral thread in the great tapestry of life. Own your own narrative and be prepared to unravel from it and step back to take on the broader perspective. Be willing to learn anew through unknowing and being open to what the stories of others can teach us. Swim happily in your personal stream of consciousness. And have faith that the collective expanded ocean of consciousness also supports you.
5. Focus on your relationship with your therapist and how that might be a rich source of growth and a learning opportunity. Open yourself up to present moment awareness and experience. Prioritise what’s happening during the sessions rather than using the time to detail things that have happened in the past and outside the room. And become the change you wish to create in your own life.
6. Honour everything about yourself as valuable and valid. Trust that your smallest inner experiences are equal to your biggest outer experiences. Attune to your personal felt sensibility and what’s arising in the moment for you. Offer them in your therapy even though you may fear them small or irrelevant. Embrace that which connects us all as human beings.
7. Know your support network well and seek to spend time with friends and loved ones who you feel positively energise you. Confide in them that you’ve commenced therapy because you desire change and when appropriate, share your therapeutic goals with them. Seek out new like-minded inspirational people, to strengthen your network along the way. Remember there will always be help available should you need it.
8. Respect your body as both a source and container of great wisdom. Bring mindful attentive awareness to your body and all it has to teach you. Anchor yourself in your physicality and listen to your body with care and respect. A wealth of useful information and healing can be found here. And move, authentically, expansively, joyfully with the knowledge that your body is key to your freedom.
9. View the whole experience as a creative process. Keep your therapy alive between sessions by writing, drawing, daydreaming, meditating etc. Respond creatively to your inner process, give yourself permission to write poetry, be an artist, keep a journal. Record and ground your personal insights through whatever kind of creative expression you enjoy most. Stay open and commit to the ongoing expansion of your creative toolbox.

Best
Susan J.
Holistic Counsellor

Adapted from excerpt Psychosynthesis Trust