Counseling can help you mend psychic flaws, so many believe.
It can help you get your head on straight to better deal with the realities
or fantasies of life. It can enable you to improve your attitude towards others
and yourself. It can help you overcome your “hang-ups”, those inner demons, also called phobias and/or personality quirks that frustrate
your existence. It can help you learn about your inner-self, your motivations
and aspirations and your fears and revulsions. It can help you direct your behaviors
away from destructiveness to wholesomeness by learning coping habits that deal
with life’s vagaries. It can help you modify your behavior away from bizarre
actions to socially acceptable or normative ones. It can help you learn
self-effacing skills like anger management, other-directed communication,
tolerance and empathy. In other words, if some aspect of your psyche ails your
interpersonal relationships, getting counseling will fix it, that is, if the
counseling process goes well.
The counseling process can involve either a one-to-one relationship
or a group endeavor with a therapist, depending on available resources. The process is typically
conducted in short-term sessions of 45 to 60 minutes duration. However, the
session may be abbreviated or lengthened depending on need. The process itself
is verbalization of feelings in a non-judgmental setting that encourages
introspection and reflection. The listener’s role is to probe for deeper
meaning, to summarize or recap statements for affirmation or clarity, to
empathize with viewpoints expressed, to confirm understanding by restating the
subject’s vague expressions, to offer non-judgmental insights for remedial
action, or simply to listen. The subject’s role is to gain awareness of
self-perceptions that hinder effective behaviors and to internalize responses
to challenging stimuli that are effective adaptations to one’s emotional and
cognitive state. The result of the
process will be a catharsis of the subject’s behavior that provides a metamorphous
from dysfunctional to adaptive. In essence, counseling is a learning experience
that the subject undergoes to achieve existential self-actualization, in other
words, peace with one’s being and with others.
Who needs counseling? The answer is clear – virtually
everyone, except Jesus. If the resources were available, everyone would have a
personal, professional counselor whom they would visit regularly to maintain
their psyche free of neurosis and psychosis, self-doubt and hubris, egotism and
altruism. What a wonderful utopia we would live in - no strife, misunderstanding, contention, or
other adversity in relationships. The problem with solution is its impracticality,
needlessness and expense. Our efforts should be directed to fixing impaired interpersonal
relationships by simply admitting fault or by apologetic expressions. In other
words, go along to get along. No one is perfect.
