Having Counselling? Three Simple Key Tests to Get The Best Results.

Having counselling help or counselling advice can be a daunting prospect. No matter why you are looking for counselling on how best to tackle anxiety, bereavement, or marital breakdown, or trauma of any kind, there are three painful dangers to be avoided. But there is good news! They can be avoided with huge benefits

So Key Test 1:

The first key test needs you to make a simple acknowledgement that you are prepared to own your problem and with help, gradually solving it as the counselling progresses.

A good counsellor should only mentor you and counsel you. They most definitely will not want take over your problem and seek to deal with it for you. (I will point you to where you can find one a good one relevant to your issue).

To reinforce the point totally, see a lawyer regarding a problem and he or she will not only advise you and help you, doing things on your behalf to alleviate your problem.

But that’s very different from psychological counselling. As the saying goes, we need to learn to stand on our own two feet, psychologically speaking.

So own your issue and its solution! Only then will you get the best result out of the sessions you have.

Key Test 2:

Having resolved to own your problem, it is then fundamentally important that you commit to embrace the psychology of counselling. Don’t sit waiting for the counsellor to tell you what you should do with your type of issue. What should happen is that you take the chance to hear what you yourself think and what you say aloud about your own issues.

Only then can the counsellor advise you on what best to focus on first and can you yourself get to work on reframing the situation in your mind.

Merely seeing someone professionally in the belief that the visit in itself will do the trick never works. It wastes your money and their time.

So, for each visit, go with the predominant thoughts and worries you have in your mind at that time and share them honestly and fully in the session.

And finally, Key Test 3:

This a trap one must avoid at all costs!

Don’t imagine you can just agree to occasional counselling sessions, never reflecting further in between and your problem will be solved. It won’t!

The truth is that if we want to make changes happen, then we can. But we have to treat the counselling sessions almost as psychological pit-stops, or cognitive refuelling stations. Vital is it that our time between the sessions is planned and allocated partly to thinking, partly to reading and even to talking with confidants where possible.

Change does not come in hourly sessions. It comes in a 24 / 7 commitment to draw on the vast and ever-growing reservoir of wisdom available to us and for us to adopt it into our thinking until it becomes positively habitual.in our behaviour.


So to conclude:
• Always own your problem and its solution, sharing it with your counsellor.
• Listen to what you think and say aloud about it, enabling the counsellor to
point you to the information you need to review.
• Plan time between sessions to think, to read and to share where possible.

I wish you the best of luck.

To find a counsellor go to www.counselling-directory.org.uk It is an excellent resource base.

Sir Gerry Neale has lectured and trained under-graduates and post graduates at the University of Westminster in cognitive thinking. He has mentored courses for corporate strategic planning and how to position the organisation’s thinking and that of the individuals employed by them. He has conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with individuals in person and on-line.