What is Counselling?

Today I spent the morning writing  my entry for the Counselling Directory.

I was trying to say what I consider the process of counselling to consist of without using too much jargon or convoluted syntax. This was difficult and I found myself frozen in a condition of indecision for minutes at a time. I like to use words to pin things down but that is not always possible.

Firstly some words have been ruined by bureaucratic abuse, for example, the word 'empowerment'. Because it has been used by so many agencies in a glib and meaningless way it has become a pale and insubstantial term that signals dreary disempowering interventions by tired and uninspired employees of local government departments who themselves have been disempowered by bullying bosses, micromanagement and government initiatives.

Yet it should be a good word. It is important that we are empowered to make decisions and take control of our lives. David Smail in his book, The Nature of Unhappiness, points out that mental distress can be understood in terms of lack of personal power in the areas of action, thought and feeling.  Not having control in each or any of these areas almost inevitably leads to anxiety, frustration and depression.

Secondly, words, much as I love them, are limited. They don't comprehensively cover all the kinds of things that happen when two people communicate in the context of a counselling session. There are lots of non verbal communications occurring which are subtle and have the unique quality of the moment and which impart  a distinct flavour to the session. This is why transcripts of what is said during counselling seem rather banal. You can't determine what was occurring just by reading the words, just as you can't judge the performance of a play by reading its script.

But whatever is happening, the counsellor is helping the client regain his or her power over action, thought, feeling and I would like to add, meaning. One of the worst forms of disempowerment is the loss of the personal meaning we give to the events and the patterns of our lives. That is devastating. The counsellor helps* the client uncover meanings. Art, literature, music, science all deal with meanings as do family relationships, work, sport and love. We say 'It means a lot to me', when we want to indicate an event or situation that is of essential importance to us. When you find meaning...what happens? I'm trying not to sound as though I'm preaching a sermon, but that's difficult. When you find meaning you find life. That's the expression that came to mind but I hesitated to put it down for fear of sounding like Echart Tolle when I wanted to sound like R.D. Laing.

*'Helps'  a word now discredited because it has an undeserved reputaion of indicating a patronising situation. It needs to be reinstated as it is a very helpful word.