Is it something for me?

Is it something for me?

The 'success' of counselling depends greatly on whether you feel able to talk about your life and experiences. It is very important to find a counsellor you feel good about. 

Together you are looking at moments and chapters of your life so far. What have you experienced, what touched your heart? What is your life like today? Are you who you want to be? What is it that you most seek and long to do? 

There are many different counselling methods and most cover areas of psychotherapy as well as coaching. It is a speaking therapy stream that fits with one leg in each field. Thus sometimes it can help with traumatic experiences as well as changing careers. Often these two are linked, like when a shock or a difficult experience hinders us from following what we most wish to do. How to find the courage to do what is in our heart? By looking at what we have experienced and working through difficult events this process of creating a more fulfilling daily life can be started. 

The key question for choosing between psychotherapy/medical support (for example by traumatic events or depression) and counselling is whether you are still able to support yourself after the sessions. Otherwise deeper care is needed instead of, or in addition to, the counselling.

The idea behind many speaking therapies is that life is a path full of meetings and experiences. We meet someone or something and have an experience which we (mostly unconsciously) digest. We take something from it as life experience, learning moments. Often this leads to tiny decisions, which we hardly notice. Especially when something was hard, we tend to forget about it as fast as we can.

But the tiny decision, which might be something like "I will never do that again" and the experienced feelings are still there. This could cost energy, influence unconsciously our desicions, how we feel in daily life etc. Once worked through in a conscious way the experiences becomes part of our story and gives us lifewisdom instead of remaining a tiny wound asking for our attention. 

There are many kinds of speaking therapies. I like to compare it with different doors someone could choose from to try to find a way forward with their particular problem. To name the most common ones: 

Biographywork

Counselling/Psychotherapy

psychological Psychotherapy

Psychosomatics

Psychiatry    

Biographical Counselling is a combination of the first 2. The main difference is that biographical counselling works to support and strenghten the healthy part of a person, our I or individuality. Through this the person can find their own solutions, feel more in touch with themselves and more able to take a hand in their own daily life. Whereas the doors of Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Psychiatry put a strong focus on the wounds and pathology that work inside the person, like a trauma, a tumor or a personality disorder. But all 5 have the same focuss in creating a warm therapeutic environment for the person to find a way forward. 

In the end the decision for which therapy is often based on what we know and who we know, together with our specific needs (medical/therapeutic). Each practisioner is different and an intitial session might therefor be the best way to find out.