Why should I go to counselling at all?

Do you find the very prospect of starting counselling unappealing, off-putting or downright scary? You wouldn’t be alone to be feeling like that, and this could be for the variety of reasons.

If you’ve never had counselling before, you might:

1. think it would be weird to share with a complete stranger things that you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your own friends or family.

2. worry that it would be disloyal to talk about your loved ones and reveal things about them that they might not want to have shared.

3. be reluctant to focus on problems, because you would rather just ‘pull up your socks’ and ‘get on’ with things.

4. be wary of appearing weak or vulnerable for seeking help with your problems, because you prefer to be independent and strong and solve your problems on your own.

5. worry that going into counselling would be like an admission that you are crazy – only crazy people need therapy, after all!

If you’ve had counselling before, and it didn’t work for any reason (maybe because you were forced into it by your parents or teachers and you didn’t really want it, or maybe because you didn’t feel that your counsellor ‘got you’ or was the right fit for you), you might also be understandably sceptical about trusting yet another new person.

However, counselling can be a transformative and empowering experience if you are willing to commit to it and to allow it to work for you. Here are a few things to consider, in response to the fears I listed above:

1. If you did talk to your friends and family about certain things, this might affect them and they might respond in accordance with their own feelings about the situation, or they might tell you what they think you want to hear, or try to find you solutions for your problems. While this might seem helpful, their responses wouldn’t be impartial and they would come from their point of view and perhaps even serve their own purposes. In exchange, your counsellor would be entirely focussed on *you*. While your friends or family would offer you sympathy, your counsellor will offer you empathy, they will listen to your point of view and to your feelings, and they will work to enable you to understand what is important to you. The counsellor’s role is not to give you solutions or to tell you what to do, but rather to support you in working out what *you* want to do, and what it right for *you*.

2. Anything you say in your counselling sessions will be entirely confidential (unless you are talking about things that pose a real risk of harm to yourself or others, and even in that case, your counsellor would never convey any information about you outside the room without discussing it with you first). Additionally, your counsellor knows that whatever you are sharing is *your* perspective, so this wouldn’t colour their perception of anyone you might talk about, nor would this make them judge them, or you. Your counsellor is there to sit with you and listen to you, impartially and without judgement.

3. It’s okay not to be okay. Focussing on your problems is not a sign of weakness, but of strength, because you are admitting your vulnerability and making a determined choice to work through your difficulties. As Freud said, “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”. It is better to deal with our difficulties than to attempt to deny them, because this will only hurt us from within and come back to haunt us, perhaps in nightmares, or in physical illnesses (psychosomatic afflictions), or in behaviours or reactions that we can’t understand about ourselves and that have their root in the hurt we experienced in the past.

4. As the saying goes, ‘a burden shared is a burden halved’. You don’t have to struggle alone, and sharing your problems with someone who is there entirely for you, and devoted to understanding your perspective and to enabling you to find your own answers can be a deeply empowering experiences, particularly if you don’t feel like you’ve been listened to like this before.

5. You are not crazy for admitting your vulnerability and for choosing to work on yourself and allowing transformative change to enrich your life. The line between madness and sanity has often been debated by writers and philosophers, and no clear consensus has been reached. As the saying goes, ‘normal is boring’ and, as Zsa Zsa Gabor put it, ‘in this world, being a little crazy helps to keep you sane’.

Finally, if you’ve had counselling before and didn’t find it helpful, could it be because:

• Maybe it wasn’t at the right time in your life and you weren’t ready?

• Maybe your old counsellor just wasn’t the right fit?

• Maybe the style of therapy they practiced didn’t suit you?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions above, I would warmly encourage you to give counselling another chance, because a new person with a fresh perspective and a different style could be very helpful for you. Besides, you are yourself a different person now, because we humans are in constant flux and change throughout our lives, and it is very possible that this might be a much better time.

All in all, therapy can seem a crazy experience in itself because of how different it is from all relationships you’ve ever had before. However, it can be a space which is truly yours, a safe space where you are truly listened to and heard, where anything goes and you can say anything you need to. It can be a space for healing, support and, simply put, transformative change. Why don’t you get in touch today to find out more?