Problems and support in counselling

Abstract

Counselling takes time and energy on the part of the counsellor. The fact of being intimately involved in someone else’s world means that both counsellor and client form a close and sometimes painful relationship. If counselling is to be successful, it will involve change on the part of the client. It may also involve change on the part of the counsellor. Now most of us resist change — we prefer to stay as we are. In counselling it often seems as though the client wants problem resolution without having to change themselves! Clearly, life problems cannot change without the person who experiences them changing too. The nature of the counselling relationship, then, is one that develops, regresses, modulates and is finally outgrown. Along that dimension, various difficulties can arise and in this chapter a number of such problems are identified and explored.