If you feel like your emotional balloon is about to burst, you need to release some of the air to ease the pressure. To do that, you need a space where you can say everything you need to say with no judgement, no criticism, no comeback. Just let it out. Once it’s out, you can figure out how to deal with it, supported all the way by your counsellor. It’s a therapeutic relationship. It’s unique and it’s just for you.
Your counsellor’s job is to ‘hold a space’ for you – that’s a bit jargony but it means that they are there entirely for you. Their focus is 100% on you. It’s your time, your space and there are no other demands on you other than to TALK.
Your counsellor will help you reflect on what it all means, help you make sense of things, recognise patterns, uncover things you hadn’t realised because – until that moment – you hadn’t joined the dots. You can’t figure things out when they are all crammed inside your head jostling for space – you need to take them out, look at them, find a different perspective. And know that you’re not alone. The things you are feeling are felt by lots of other people too.
Imagine unpacking all the thoughts swirling around your head, sorting through them all, making sense of them and packing it away nice and neatly so it no longer takes up too much head space and you feel better able to cope.
Is it normal to feel a bit scared about trying counselling?
Yes. It’s absolutely normal to feel nervous about confronting your feelings. But doing this work with a counsellor there to support you is safer than bursting into tears in the supermarket and oversharing with the guy who verifies you’re old enough to buy booze at the self-service checkout.
Will it make things worse?
If you’re working with the right person, counselling should make things a lot better, but it depends on two things:
- Are you ready, and is this the right time, to talk?
- Are you working with the right counsellor?
Is this the right time to embark on counselling? Are you ready to talk? Are your prepared for change? Only you will know whether now is the right time.
It’s hard work. After some sessions you might feel ‘lighter’, more optimistic and sleep better. After others you might feel heavy, exhausted, drained and you’ll need time and space to recover. Your counsellor will probably bang on about self-care because it’s always important to look after yourself and prioritise your wellbeing but when you’re ‘doing counselling’ and you’re peeling away the layers of life’s onion, you need to be extra vigilant that you are taking good care of yourself.
Ideally you need space in between your sessions to process and reflect what you’ve been talking about. Can you definitely attend at the same time every week or at the times agreed with your counsellor? This is really important – it gives you time to prepare beforehand and time to process and reflect afterwards. It’s fine to go fortnightly or even monthly after a little while, but at the start it’s generally more effective to attend weekly so you stay in the ‘therapeutic zone’.
The right counsellor is vital. You need to build an effective, therapeutic relationship where you feel safe and supported. If you feel uncomfortable, unable to disclose what you’re feeling, or the chemistry isn’t right, you need to try someone else.
If you choose to work with Clerestory Counselling we’ll help you find the right person with discovery sessions where you can meet your counsellor before starting work with them. (For what it’s worth, no counsellor should ever make you feel bad about wanting to stop or wanting to work with someone else. It’s all about what’s right for you.)
Person-centred counselling, which is the core of what we do at Clerestory, means you are in charge of what you talk about and where you go with it, which may be less risky than the types of therapy that seek to provide a ‘diagnosis’ or force you to dig into emotional territory that you’d rather leave undisturbed. We don’t diagnose, we don’t tell you what to do and we don’t label. We help you explore what’s going on with you.
So, will it make things worse? It shouldn’t do, but it can be hard work and there may be moments where you wish you’d never started but usually, if you’re working with the right counsellor, it can be a transformative experience, in a good way.