What is the difference between counseling and psychotherapy?

  Counseling is a process in which counselors use the knowledge, theories and methods of psychology to help clients (visitors) reduce their emotional and behavioral distress caused by conflicts in their inner world, maintain and enhance their physical and mental health, and promote their personality development and potential development.  To summarize, the counseling clients can get help in many aspects: 1. to manage their emotions; 2. to learn to correctly understand themselves and the world around them, to improve their cognitive system, and to avoid failures due to misattribution; 3. to develop a sound personality, to get rid of inferiority complex, narcissism and autism, and to put themselves into study, work and life with a healthy and positive attitude; 4. 4.Help to get rid of the pain caused by life, interpersonal relationship, competition, unemployment, marriage, and teach you how to cope with various setbacks in life; 5.Help to improve social adaptability; 6.Help to overcome various crises and complete the development tasks of life safely; 7.Discuss with the visitor the future direction of self-development, and help to make correct and independent choices on major issues in life; 8.Help to Restoring the ability to love and perceive happiness. When it comes to counseling, many people immediately associate it with words such as “mental illness treatment” and show fear or anxiety. In fact, psychological counseling and psychotherapy are two different concepts. The main differences between psychological counseling and psychotherapy include the following four aspects: 1. It is a non-normal person with psychological or mental illness; the object of psychological counseling is generally not a patient, but a sub-healthy person with a basically healthy mental state, but with psychological conflicts.  2. The purpose of psychotherapy is to cure the disease. It needs to be carried out through therapeutic procedures, and is a process that requires clinical psychologists who are qualified to practice as physicians to use the techniques and methods of clinical psychology to treat patients’ mental illnesses; the purpose of psychological counseling is to help the target of counseling to discover problems and to relieve psychological distress by tapping into the target’s own abilities.  3. The relationship between the psychotherapist and the client is that of a doctor and a patient. The patient must listen to the doctor’s advice. However, the relationship between the counselor and the client is one of equality. The counseling process is a process of mutual discussion and study of problems, expressing one’s own opinions and communicating with each other.  4. The information that the psychotherapist needs to obtain is simpler. It is possible to select and implement a treatment plan based only on symptoms and signs. The counselor, on the other hand, needs to have a large amount of information and needs to understand the individual, family, social environment and other aspects of the helper in order to help him develop his own abilities and potential.