Basically I am a trained listener and I listen with all my senses. I hear what you are saying, I see your body language and I sense your feelings. I use my professional judgement to decide what seems important at any given moment. This is how I decide when to offer an intervention which could be a "uuhhmm"  or a reflection, where I repeat or reflect what you have said, an invitation to stay with a topic and explore it a bit more or a piece of psychoeducation. Most often I make very few interventions, preferring quality over quantity. I also believe the connections and understanding that you make for yourself will be far more valuable than anything I can tell you. 

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 I am not here to catch you out or prove how clever I am.

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I approach my client work with curiosity. I do not think I have the answers, my first step is always to find out what something means to you. I might ask you to explain what you mean when you use a certain word or phrase. Common expressions which might seem to have one clear meaning could actually mean something very different to you than they do to me.

Part of my work is finding clarity for and with my clients so they can more clearly understand and express their needs.

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I also employ fact checking or reality testing this is useful in challenging negative self beliefs and areas of confusion. I look for contrasts in my clients beliefs. "I know my children love me"  "I am unlovable". This is a very simple example of how we can hold contrasting ideas and even feelings. Both of these sentences can not be true, we can use one statement to challenge the other. 

 

I sometimes offer Psychoeducation which can form part of Normalising a clients experience. Many clients feel they are so far outside of the norms of society that they will never fit in. Knowing that there is an explanation within psychology for the way they feel or function can be very beneficial. If there is a name for it then it must be happening to more people than they realised. This can lessen fear and self judgment.

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I believe in the actualising tendency of all living things. This means that I believe we are all striving towards wholeness. We all do the best we can, at any given moment in time, with the knowledge and resources available to us. This belief or knowledge enables me to have unconditional positive regard for my clients. I know you are doing and have always done the best you can.

 

I believe our behaviours, even those we wish we didn't have, are in someway beneficial to us. I encourage clients to explore their behaviours and find what the benefit may be. I also encourage clients to soften the judgments they hold about themselves and their behaviours.

 

Harsh self judgment is a behaviour in itself the benefit of which could be

• Preventing oneself from thinking more deeply about a situation.

• Blaming oneself because it is safer than blaming another person.

• Finding safety in the familiar, it's something you have done as far back as you can remember.

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I have empathy for my clients, this is something which grows over time. As I get to know my clients I gain a greater understanding of them in their fullness of experience or phenomenology. I try to share my empathy with my clients, I want them to feel that I have empathy for them. This is one of the essential healing components of the person centred approach along with unconditional positive regard. I have noticed that clients can internalise the empathy they sense in me, finding more empathy for themselves.

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I work to understand my clients. This means I pay attention as you talk to me. You tell me who, what and how you are. What you think, feel, believe, dream anything that you chose to bring to the counselling room is relevant and important. Sometimes the things you bring create a sense of the things you are not bringing and that might be a sense I share with my you. This is a process of self exploration in company with another. It can go further than self exploration on your own because there is another eye on the process. In my work I have seen that understanding will often be followed by acceptance and acceptance seems to be the forerunner of change. When self help books, spiritual practitioners, bloggers and influencers urge you to acceptance as a form of healing they are missing the essential practice of thinking. Blindly accepting or striving to find acceptance as an abstract concept can, I believe, be damaging and at the very least exhausting.

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