- It offers private, confidential space to voice and name issues that in day to day life may feel too risky to share. Talking through these things with someone who is not connected to one’s family, is bound by professional rules of conduct and confidentiality, holds no judgment, can take the weight of one’s gnawing sense of guilt that one is doing something wrong by talking or even having certain feelings, and can normalise the whole experience for a person. Somewhat similar to how people used to get solace and comfort from attending confession, counselling offers similar benefits, without requiring nor judging a person’s religious attitudes, whatever they may be.
- Counselling can provide a brainstorming opportunity to look at a person’s pressing problem in a fresh way. When faced with a new challenge, oftentimes it may be difficult to see the forest for the trees. This, and other blind spots like that, can be readily identified when talking to another person in an open manner. In this context, a counsellor is facilitating free, open exploration of ideas with the view to aid a person in seeing a different solution to their situation.
- The third use of counselling and therapy relates directly to addressing a person’s mental health. Whether it is a sense of loss, a heavy specter of depression, disconnection or dissatisfaction with work or life, betrayal, confusion, identity crisis, slow yet inevitable build-up of burnout, trauma, these human experiences usually befall us sooner or later. Facing these challenges, even admitting them, can be very daunting; this is where counselling can help. Typically, in these instances, a person is faced not only with external and overt crisis, but also something inside is brought up to the fore by these external events. These are the factors that can make the crisis genuinely overwhelming, however this also offers an opportunity for introspection and change. By addressing and correcting these inner patterns so that they start to serve a person again, as opposed to against them, counselling can aid in facing the external challenges. Take for instance, a person who is always putting a relationship first. Ends up giving more and more, partner leaves and the person is left bereft, betrayed, confused and hurting.
- A few counselling sessions may help that person realise that the sense of distress wasn’t coming from a partner who wouldn’t reciprocate alone, it was a well-etched pattern of obtaining love and affection by serving others, taken as normal and unquestionable from parents or caregivers. Helping a person see and process this fact allows them to confront the unsettling breakup with a sense of hope, agency and updated self-knowledge.
