The single word “counseling” is not just another word you will find in the C sections of your dictionaries; it is a word that has been, is being, and will be used by man to move forward and help others do so. Nearly all fields have an area to be filled with the art of counseling: Psychotherapy (medical field) would not survive without it; most of the couples would fall apart without marriage counseling; students would not know where to go if they did not get career counseling; and this list rambles on and on. The point to be made is, however, extremely precise: we owe a lot of our choices and a lion’s share of peace of our mind to the expertise of counselors.
The foremost advantage of counseling, as identified by research, is the expression of problems and feelings that are kept suppressed and are in danger of erupting like a volcano. Bringing to the shore the foam alleviates the sense of suffocation and relieves tension.Therefore, the professional counselors usually start by encouraging the person to talk. They turn an eager ear towards whatever their client or patient has to say, be it relevant or not, and then filter out the real problems from the rest of the talk. This is the first challenging part of couples counseling Austin Texas: as a counselor, you yourself have to identify the problems, for most of the people are unable to tell what is actually troubling them. They will talk about a number of things, both relevant and irrelevant, and yet will not be able to pinpoint towards a single point that might result in the formulation of your strategy.
One most important point about counseling is that, contrary to the popular belief, counselors do not rule over their clients’ opinions, nor force them to act on their advice. They act as friends, inculcating thoughts into their clients’ minds, and telling them that there are solutions to every problem. They help their clients see a bigger picture; a married couple, for instance, might file for divorce out of hatred and anger for each other, and bring peril to their children in the process. A counselor, in this setting, will help the couple realize their priorities: can they compromise or should they really sacrifice their children’s grooming? Having said that, it must also be stated alongside that counseling is never about compromise at all times; it is about emphasizing on what will help you survive and how to expand those factors to overshadow the counter ones.
The final part of counseling is the formulation of a strategy. Though the art of behavioral sciences has separated this part as the final one in their writings, it is actually a continuous thing: the strategy starts to formulate from the moment the patient or the client opens his or her mouth. These strategies will help them cope with distress and arrive at any solutions required. A patient of cancer, for instance, will slide into depression were it not for the psychotherapy that is constantly given alongside. Counseling thus has evolved for the survival of man in the wild terrain of life.