Eropa

Counselling, what is that?

Everyone goes through times when things don’t go well. This could be at work, in your relationship, with your children or your family. You’re worried or you’re not happy. Your thoughts keep going around in circles without taking you any further. Then it is nice if there is someone who can help you get an overview of your situation. Someone who helps you clarify your thoughts and feelings. A counselor is such a person.

Counseling

Counseling is a form of professional personal guidance. This guidance consists of conducting conversations and generally takes place in three phases.

Clarify the situation

The first phase is about clarifying the situation you are unhappy with. A counselor will help you carefully examine how your problem arose and what areas of your life are affected by it. A problem is not always what it seems. Many people who come to a counselor for the first time do not actually know what exactly the problem is. They have a general feeling of dissatisfaction in many areas of life, but it is not clear what causes this. You may discover during the first conversations that the relationship problems you actually encountered are a result of the excessive pressure at work. Or that the argument with that colleague is a result of your own doubts and insecurities about the work. If you want to solve a problem or change a situation, it is important that you know what the cause is and what the effect is. There is little point in treating the symptoms if you do nothing to eliminate the cause. The first, clarifying phase is therefore very important.

Describe the future

The second step is to describe your life without this problem. The counselor helps you to create a clear picture of your desired situation. What would that look like, how would you feel, what would happen differently? By thinking about this and forming an image of it, you will not only see what goals you have in mind, you will also feel like getting started on them. And that is very important for the final phase of counseling, because change is not always fun. It is often difficult, it takes a long time or your environment is against you. It helps if you have a clear picture of your goal: what are you doing it for?

Phase of change

Once you see clearly what you want to achieve, it is time for the final phase: the change phase. An action plan is often used in this phase. The plan states what you are going to do, what steps you are going to take to overcome your problems or to improve your situation.

You choose all these goals and steps yourself, with the help of the counselor. So you will not be given assignments that you cannot handle or that you do not see the point of. In counseling you as the client are central, because you are the expert about yourself. What makes you happy, what needs to change? How can you achieve that, what can you do about it? As a client, you know this best.
Change is difficult. You have to let go of old habits and learn new things. That takes energy and perseverance. During the action plan implementation phase, the counselor therefore takes on a more coaching role. You implement the action plan, but the counselor helps you by continually motivating you, pointing out what has already been achieved, and reminding you of the goal you have in mind. You are not alone.

What makes counseling effective?

You have probably already thought a lot about your life and the situation you are in. There is a chance that your thoughts keep going around in the same pattern. It is always the same story for you, something you have thought about so often. Your thoughts keep going around in the same circle but it doesn’t get you any further. A counselor looks at your situation from a completely different angle. As a result, he can help you look at your problem through different eyes and think about it in a different way. The counselor offers different points of view, a new approach, a new insight. This way you come up with different ideas, so that a solution suddenly turns out to be much closer than you previously assumed.

Short term

The basic principle of counseling is that the process should not take too long. You don’t feel good about yourself, you don’t feel happy, you are bothered by something. Maybe you’ve been dealing with it for a while. That’s not good for you, and that’s why it shouldn’t last too long. Counseling is basically a short process. The counselor’s aim is that after about 8 conversations you can continue without guidance.