Centering the Client through Transparency
A person-centered and client-led approach means that my job is to make sure that our Counselling sessions are all about you. Your experiences, your circumstances and your hopes and dreams.
My job is to encourage you to dig deep, starting at the surface; the most obvious issues that you have chosen to share, and then make the connections between what you are going through and what you have been through before. You might work towards understanding your early care giving relationships, your intimate friendships and partnerships, your responsibilities towards others, and most importantly your awareness of and bond with yourself.
It takes time and effort to feel comfortable to do this work with someone you don’t know. The relationship we establish as Client and Counsellor is called the Therapeutic Alliance and builds over time. With every session we spend together, our familiarity, trust, rapport and comfort strengthens and grows, allowing you to explore more personal and sometimes uncomfortable or difficult topics.
One of the most important and powerful ways to achieve this is through the concept of transparency. Some might refer to it as honesty, truth telling, or being open with one another. Transparency is about removing all the barriers to getting to the heart of what is going on and how to move forward.
While the session is all about you, Counselling is more than talking to yourself in the mirror, although mirroring is certainly a skill that Counsellors need to know how to do. We reflect back to you what you are saying, thinking, and feeling. But you are not accessing a Counsellor just to tell you what you want to hear, what you already know or nothing at all, letting you do all the work. You might as well journal or talk to yourself if that is a better process for you.
A Counsellor has to use techniques to encourage an exchange of information, guiding you towards solutions, resolutions and transformation. And while there is an end goal, often a temporary one, putting you on a new path towards growth and self-development, the process to getting there is rich with behavioural and communicative practice, emotional and psychological purging and processing, aha! moments, and discoveries that encourage you towards clarity.
The way we talk to one another, what we find out about each other, how much we connect and sometimes even differ in our points of view, will determine the quality of the experience for you. A Counsellor can use subtle cues, motivational interviewing techniques, limited self-disclosure and co-regulation to support you to be immersed in the process for your ultimate benefit.
An effective Counsellor will meet you exactly where you are on any given day that you have a session, and will encourage you to explore your immediate capacity for thinking, feeling, reflecting and communicating, so that you arrive at a more stable and secure place. We do the work so that you feel better, know more, and have a broader level of understanding, acceptance and motivation.
Transparency is the way a Counsellor can facilitate you to highlight and filter your story, to validate and revitalise how you see yourself, your life and everything you are connected to. We walk with you through the process, some of the way on the path of your life, so you can keep walking without us.
Book your first FREE session today, or commit to 10 sessions over a year to receive a discount. I look forward to meeting you.
