Counseling is a hot topic, so hot that it was once the theme of World Mental Health Day 07 – “Promote counseling for mental health”. It is promoted all over the world, which is quite a big deal. So, what is psychological counseling? Is it just to talk to someone if you have something on your mind?
Yes and no. From the point of view of the person seeking counseling, yes. The counseling is for people who have something on their mind. However, not just anyone is considered counseling. You must have professional training in counseling.
And what is the professional training of counseling? The question of the wheel comes back. In the end, we do not understand the word “psychological”. What is the meaning of counseling is probably not wrong, but what is this “psychological” in the end?
What is psychology?
Psychology is nothing, that is to say, psychology is not an entity. The word “psychology” originates from a recently emerged discipline, psychology.
In fact, attention to the phenomenon of the mind predates written history. Archaeologists today find traces of artificially punched holes in the skulls of prehistoric humans excavated. Moreover, some of the holes are associated with skull lesions, while others are perforated in normal skulls without lesions. The former are presumed to be for medical purposes, while the latter are presumed to have been made to allow one’s mind to communicate with the gods. Anthropologists have also found that certain primitive tribal cultures that have been preserved to this day, although they do not have their own writing, also have concerns and explanations for psychic phenomena, and shamans are responsible for this.
The interpretation of human psychic phenomena has accompanied us on a long journey and has left behind many indelible cultural deposits. For example, some religious beliefs consider certain desires and impulses as manifestations of original sin and mental illnesses as the result of demonic actions; Chinese cultural traditions are so pan-moral that even the deformity of a newborn child is seen as the result of the family’s “lack of virtue”. It can be seen that an era has explanations for physical or spiritual phenomena that are appropriate to the development of civilization at that time. Of course, none of the above-mentioned explanations is psychological.
Modern psychology was developed from the nineteenth century by Wilhelm? Vonte founded experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He began with the relatively simple study of sensation and perception, and finally made people realize that, in addition to theological explanations, philosophical discernment, and secular understanding, the phenomena of the mind could also be studied objectively and scientifically. Over the past hundred years, psychology has made great progress, and finally, people can stop talking about sins or sins when facing their sexual desires and slowly learn to be kind to themselves; thus, when telling children the story of Sun Pang’s battle of wits, the word “psychological” is sometimes added after the long-known word “jealousy”. The word “psychological” is sometimes added after the well-known “jealousy”.
To sum up, psychology is the name given to some phenomena of the mind according to the psychological system. The same phenomena have been examined with other perspectives and given different names in the past, while some phenomena have been discovered or clarified only after psychological research perspectives were available.
On the other hand, psychology has not yet fully transcended common sense understanding in its interpretation of many psychological phenomena. Physics and its technological advances have gone far beyond common sense. We can infer from common sense how far a stone can be thrown and approximately where it will land. But with the principles of physics and related technology, humans can create precision-guided bombs that kill people from thousands of miles away, and there is no way for common sense to compare. But in the field of psychology, there is no such gap, and sometimes even less comprehensive common sense judgment. For example, people often find that con artists are very good at grasping the psychology of their victims, and even say that they are no less than psychologists. In fact, most con artists have not undergone any psychological training, and their grasp of the situation relies on experience gleaned from practice. A good magician is also good at attracting and even deliberately misleading the attention of the audience, only that beforehand he tells you that it is a trick. The average psychologist does not seem to have such a skill. Since psychology is not yet developed enough, sometimes there is confusion and a lot of specious “psychology”.
As described above, psychology is a perspective of studying psychic phenomena that is different from common sense and previous animistic explanations. Counseling, a branch of psychology, is the process of applying the body of psychological knowledge to help people resolve their inner pain and distress.
So, what are the advantages of counseling over other forms of spiritual communication?
What is good about counseling?
It is not easy to explain this question on paper to readers who have not been exposed to standardized counseling. But an example can be given.
For example, a young man comes in and complains that his mother is too much in charge and annoying as hell. In general communication, as listeners, it is easy for us to unconsciously take the position of one of the two opposing sides and judge the mother and son involved. If I were a young person with similar troubles, it would be easy to say, “Yes, some old people just don’t respect their children’s autonomy and always impose their views on others.” And if I were a parent who also had an adolescent child who was acting out, he/she would probably think, “The elderly are doing it for your own good, if they didn’t care about you growing up, how could you be here today? Besides, history and culture are inherited, so how come you can’t say no? Do young people ever listen to their elders with an open mind that your views are all right? There are a lot of immature places that have proven to be immature after the fact. How so incapable of understanding the plight of elders ……”
The above two attitudes are understandable, or are justified. If it is the first reaction, it may make the inquirer feel understood for a while, but how constructive will it be to improve the family atmosphere and relationship, besides “denouncing” together and taking offense? If it is the second response, I am afraid that the conversation will collapse at that time. It’s not a good idea. The counselor seems to be in a bad position.
At this point, an experienced counselor can listen carefully to the client’s narrative and complaints, and then give feedback in a genuine manner: “I hear your distress, and mom’s nagging not only does not help you, but adds to your worries. I sense from this that you especially want a generous and understanding mother’s love, is that right?”
The person in question will often answer “yes” because that is what he is calling for and longing for, and what we all need. Next, we can discuss together what we can do to create the right atmosphere for this motherly love to be expressed. If it is difficult to get it for a while, what can be done to ease the confrontation, reduce the pain and create conditions for a better parent-child atmosphere in the future ……
The counselor’s response here, although not superficially complex and without any psychological terms or theories, transforms the client’s complaint into a positive need so that further positive action is possible. This process reflects the difference between a trained counselor and a normal person. First of all, the attitude of “neutrality” and “non-judgment” is the basic attitude of counseling, which is easier said than done, but requires training under special supervision. In addition, the training is needed to appreciate the client’s suffering instead of allowing it to “resonate” with one’s own experience (e.g., to voice out together). The training actually changes the counselor’s own normal reaction as a normal person (taking one side) and trains him to be abnormal, i.e., unusually able to understand different sides of the conflict. This small example also involves transforming the complaint into a new perspective on the problem, a technique called “reframing”. The whole process also shows that the counselor is deeply influenced by the theory of “human needs” (Maslow, the need for love and belonging) and reflects the spirit of humanism (trust in the client’s ability to solve his or her problems).
The difference between counseling and psychotherapy
Another common question is, what is the difference between counseling and psychotherapy? Indeed, the two are quite closely linked and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them absolutely. On the whole, counseling tends to be aimed more at ordinary people with distress, while psychotherapy targets psychological disorders with a higher degree of abnormality. However, psychological disorders do not fall from the sky, and ordinary people’s distress also reflects a lack of psychological health, and when they accumulate more, psychological disorders will inevitably appear. This is the reason why it is difficult to separate counseling from treatment.
When to seek counseling
There are many types of counseling. The examples given earlier are about mental health and personal psychological troubles. Having counseling does not mean that you are sick. After 9/11 in the United States, there was massive psychological support help for the families of the victims. Most of them were successful middle-class families before the disaster and showed no signs of being more psychologically unhealthy than others. But in times of great disaster, professional psychological support can help them better face their misfortune.
In the West, people who want to understand what nature of work is more appropriate for their personality can seek career psychological counseling; for academic and educational problems, they can consult with educational psychologists. Especially when a child has uneven intellectual development, is overachieving in a certain area or is clearly struggling, the guidance and help of a professional is often more effective than figuring it out on your own.
In short, when you feel that your approach is not so effective and you are struggling to find a new way out, you can consult. You do not have to wait until you are so distressed that you have to take a break from school or even stop working to mend your ways.
Seeking counseling in the positive manner described above does not necessarily mean that you have a bigger problem than others, but that you may have more opportunities to thrive than most people who have the same distress. This is why the theme of this year’s World Mental Health Day is “Promoting Mental Health through Counseling”.
What can counseling solve (the problem of expectations)
Counseling is a process to help you understand yourself, accept yourself, and develop yourself, and does not provide a magic formula. In other words, counselors are not life designers, and their strengths do not lie in directly coming up with ideas and solutions to the client’s distress; rather, they help the client work together to find the deeper causes of the distress, hoping to break the impasse that the client’s consistent behavioral patterns cannot open through the lens of psychology. Only when the client realizes and acts on a new way of seeing and solving problems will his or her experience be transformed and counseling will be effective. In other words, real counseling is not done in the counseling room, but requires the client to bring the feelings and awareness gained from the counseling room and the new attitudes experienced into his or her own life.
What channels are available for counseling
If the counseling is academic related and child psychological growth, you can go to a counseling facility affiliated with a teacher training university. If it is of a psychological trouble nature, it is more complicated. Nowadays, although there are many counseling agencies in Beijing, and hundreds of licenses for counselors are approved every year, very few of them have actually gone through rigorous supervisory training.
We are not really an industrialized country yet, and the whole management is still more or less stuck in the era of agricultural civilization. So, to buy a house you have to pay attention to the five certificates, and to buy food you have to learn to read the label to identify the true or false. When you go to counseling, you have to identify the level of your own.
How to judge a good counseling
First of all, talk in. You talk a lot, the counselor speaks less. You feel that in the process of communicating with him your feelings are more fully expressed, and under his guidance, some feelings that you were not aware of are also expressed.
Secondly, the counselor spoke less directly, just like the short example above, which was an ordinary conversation on the surface. But it feels different from ordinary persuasion.
In this way, after effective counseling, you will feel that you have distanced yourself from your worries and are able to look beyond the original situation; your understanding has broadened, not just learned some new terminology. In terms of feelings, you feel more enlightened and empowered.
Finally, as mentioned above, counseling is not done in the counseling room. Through counseling, you feel that your life has changed: the same people and the same things, but the atmosphere of interaction is different and the results are different. It should be better.
One more thing to emphasize is that counseling requires the initiative of the person himself. Some parents of young people ask around by all means, register their children for counseling, and beg and plead for pressure to bring them to the clinic. This kind of “consultation”, which is “pushed” into the consultation room, is often not effective. How can the client participate actively if he or she does not agree with this approach?
Effective counseling must be the result of interaction between the two parties. If the counselor has a high reputation and experience, but cannot form an interaction, he or she will not be able to use his or her strength. This is very much like a young person looking for a date, the outsiders look like a good match again only for reference, the parties involved to talk is the key.