What is Counseling?

This is a common question. I appreciate the way a colleague of mine, Greg McBride, answers this question. I tend to to approach counseling in a very similar way.

"I see counseling as the opportunity to deliberately challenge the information that doesn't work for you anymore. It is a chance to unlearn what you were taught and relearn what can work for you now.

Throughout our formative years, we pick up information about the interactions with and around us. It's really all we can do to try and learn how the world works through these interactions. Sometimes we assimilate techniques and thought patterns that will help us later in our life - how to communicate openly, how to trust and love, how to cope. Other times, we are left with mixed messages, unhealthy tendencies, or destructive ideals.

Be quiet! Don't talk!I'll give you an example. Let's say, as a child, you were taught that it was best to not talk. Talking made dad angry and it made mom tearful and overwhelmed. You learned that talking threatened the security of your family's status quo. Maybe you were told this specifically and maybe you learned it indirectly, but the message was the same: your words are to blame. If talking is named as the source of another person's anger or sadness or their drinking or absence, it does not take long for you to learn, "DON'T TALK." As much as this lesson may have worked to your benefit before, that same lesson may fail you now.

Counseling is a deliberate attempt to challenge the lessons that might have made sense to you when the situation required them. As situations in your life change, what worked well for you, what made sense to you, and what was potentially correct for you before might now be hurting you and your relationships. A counseling session is the place to assess, in a frame of curiosity and ownership, these unhelpful lessons and their context. This unique space, both physical and mental, can help you to examine possibilities for change and to explore new wisdom in an updated context.

An important component of the type of interpersonal relationship counseling that I offer is accountability. Throughout the process, no matter what feelings are uncovered, maintaining accountability for our own actions is both a key focus and a desired outcome. Each one of us has control only over what we say and do, not how others react to us; understanding this aspect of our social construction helps the counseling process to be an opportunity for assessment and ownership."

Adam R. Seward
www.adamsewardcounseling.net