Counselling

What is Counselling?

Counselling offers clients a confidential space in which to deal with, change or work through difficult feelings, such as grief, anger or depression. Most Counsellors do not advise or tell you what to do but help you find answers, if there are any, within yourself.

Counselling is not ‘easy’ but often hard work for all concerned because therapists will challenge your thoughts and assumptions whilst offering understanding and empathy. They do this to ensure clients are supported to change and grow in supportive environment. Therapy is not a quick fix, but clients tend to feel a sense of relief in finding someone to honestly share how they are experiencing the world.

There are a huge range of different types of counselling available. Broadly there are three main schools of thought:

  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
  • Humanistic Therapy – of which Person-Centred Therapy is one
  • Psychodynamic Therapy

CBT attempts to get you to think more positively and realistically about situations. It states that changing what you do will change how you feel. You would usually meet with a therapist regularly often for about an hour.

Humanistic therapy covers a wide range of approaches (including person-centered) which aim to accept and more deeply understand your concept of self. The methods are  often non-directive, optimistic about people and their drive to grow, tolerant and creative.

Psychodynamic therapy states that most psychological issues are developed in the relationships of early childhood and in order to recover clients need to be analysed and understood from that perspective. A Psychoanalytic Counsellor will try to explore the ‘unconscious’ of his/her client – which is not considered in CBT.

Take a look here for some more information and videos about what counselling is and how it can help.

Michelle Woodall is trained as a Humanistic Counsellor, specifically a Person-Centred Counsellor. You can find out more about what this approach means here, and understand what this might mean for sessions with Michelle.