1.Can’t change reality, only your perspective
Life can’t be all pleasure and no pain, and counseling is certainly not a quick-relief painkiller. Counseling can’t do anything about people’s real-life dilemmas. If you complain to the counselor, “Why did he abandon me?” “Why did my boss fire me?” “Why is it so hard to make money?” Then the only thing he can do is to encourage you to accept it.
If a person has fallen out of love and is in pain, the counselor must admit: “Of course it’s painful to fall out of love, it’s normal and natural.” But if the pain has been too deep and too long, the counselor will analyze it with you: “Why is this pain so magnified? What deeper psychological meaning does it have for you? Why do you need to hold on to it for so long?” Your story, the counselor is listening, but he is listening with his eyes. He observes your expressions, your emotions, your unconscious movements, and analyzes how you are telling the story, what in the story you are explaining and what is your fugue. A good counselor is always inspiring you to reflect on yourself and make you see yourself in your problems. Sometimes, you are inspired to change your perspective from “I am a passive victim” to “I am the formulator of a certain problem”, and many things will become different.
2, can not play a “father”, “husband”, or “spiritual mentor” to you
If a woman, growing up with her father’s deep feelings, ask his father to get ideas on everything; grew up and married, this “pillar” by the husband to assume, every problem, she got comfort, support, guidance from her husband. Later, when her husband left her, she found a counselor in pain and naturally hoped that the counselor could tell her, as her husband and father had done in the past, “You’d better do what you can. If the counselor satisfies her – you need a father, fine, then I’ll play a father to you – she will immediately be greatly comforted and grateful to the counselor. But a mature counselor will not do this. When she says, “I have a problem that I need the counselor’s opinion” or “I have a worry that I want the counselor to help me solve,” he may seem incompetent or even hateful, either vague or He may seem incompetent, or even odious, either vaguely, or else he may not be able to say a word about it. Because if he takes on this role, the counselor will continue to depend on the relationship and lose the opportunity for independence and growth. Very often, we are like a chicken in an eggshell, imprisoned by a certain way of behavior, and what counseling does is to help the chicken break the eggshell and let it come to a wider world.
3.No or very difficult to get immediate results
One of my peers met such a visitor: for a whole hour, she cried and cried and cried, and he listened to her cry and cry and cried, and when the time was up, she said, “I haven’t finished, can you extend it for a while?” He said, “Come back another time.” When the next appointment came, she missed it, but her mother showed up at the clinic and asked the counselor, “What did my daughter say?” The counselor said, “You can ask her.” The mother said, “She won’t tell me anything, except that the counselor just listens and will only listen for an hour, and that I can find a friend and talk about it for as long as I want for three or five hours.”
If she just cries, the counselor can only be a good pair of ears and provide the most basic psychological support. He must wait, wait for a moment, wait for an “entrance,” wait for her to get past the initial cathartic stage, wait for her to be ready to understand, wait for her to become engaged, and then wait for her to grow and change slowly. If the therapeutic relationship is broken at the beginning, it will be a failed counseling session and the visitor will not gain anything. Counseling is not like an internal medicine treatment for a cold, where one dose of medicine can cure the disease. A briefest short session requires 8 to 10 sessions of 30 to 45 minutes each.
In addition to time, it also requires financial preparation. The current fees vary, in hospitals, social consulting agencies may mostly 1 hour about 150 yuan, some charge by the time, 200 to 300 yuan / time. Some foreign-related medical institutions, 1 hour 100 U.S. dollars.
4.Different from the talk with friends
When the mood is bad, we will also do some heart-to-heart talk with close friends, and often have very good results. The kind of close and trusting relationship in counseling is sometimes very similar to the feeling of a friend, but not exactly the same. Your feelings and opinions are completely accepted and respected by the counselor, and your privacy is kept absolutely confidential; at the end of the counseling, the relationship is immediately broken off and there is no involvement – this brings a great sense of security and privacy for confiding.
The counselor’s words are often very different from those of a friend. If a person tells a counselor, “I want to kill myself.” He would not say, “Don’t ever.” He might discuss with you: What would be a happier way to commit suicide? What problems will be solved if you kill yourself? What problems would be left behind? Is there any other solution than suicide? Of course, people who need to discuss suicide with a counselor often have not really made up their minds to take action.
If a person tells a counselor, “I had sex with a prostitute and I’m afraid of getting AIDS.” The counselor will not simply say, “Get tested! If it’s negative, you’re fine, but if it’s positive you have to get treated quickly.” — then the visitor is thrust into a bigger crisis by the counselor. The counselor should consider all the possibilities in advance and help the client prepare psychologically accordingly: How great is the risk of infection? Does the visitor have enough support systems to get through the crisis, for example, is he happily married, does he have reliable friends? What is his financial situation? Will he be able to afford medical expenses if he is found to be positive? If negative, is he in a dangerous lifestyle …… etc etc.
5. One counselor can’t be suitable for all visitors
Every counselor has his most suitable visitors. A counselor once said, “I am most suitable for those who have the same psychological problems as me.” Like two objects, the closer the frequency of vibration, the more likely it is to resonate.
Ideal counseling is like falling in love; both parties have to find the feeling and interact on the same channel for the impact to really happen. So, you are choosing the counselor and the counselor is choosing the visitor. Of course, the more mature and experienced a counselor is, the range of suitability will expand. If a counselor is perfect for you, it’s a chance; if he doesn’t accept you or you don’t accept him, it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, maybe it’s just that the channels are different.
6.Likely won’t make you feel satisfied all the time
Many people have a misunderstanding about counseling, thinking it’s like a counselor and a visitor sitting together and sharing candy, hello and good for everyone. In fact, there are times when counseling is painful, and the counselor will not always make you feel happy. Experiencing pain also has an important meaning in counseling, because the crux is often there.
In addition, there is a very important element in counseling, which is to discuss the relationship with the counselor. Many visitors, during the counseling process, have developed opinions about the counselor, such as thinking that the counselor does not care enough about him or feeling angry about certain words or actions of the doctor, but are afraid to expose them for fear of offending the counselor. In this way, the interaction is hindered and the therapeutic effect has to be greatly reduced. In fact, these feelings are very important to let the counselor know at all times as a way to adjust your relationship.
7, you are the water, the counselor is the boat, the water rises
Freud said, “Psychoanalysis can only cure people with psychoanalytic minds.” To wit, the visitor is the subject of treatment, the counselor is only a tool, he is passive, subordinate, like a dictionary on the desk, when needed to go through. Once a therapeutic relationship is formed, you must be committed, actively confessing your confusion and problems, rather than waiting for the counselor to do something, because if you are not committed, the counselor will have to wait.
Another aspect of commitment is that once you decide to go to a counselor and accept his help, you have to have a psychological mind and make an effort to be aware and analyze yourself in every moment of your life, to find different ways of dealing with problems and to accept a different perspective. This work is not only done in the consultation room, but also in your life. When you face the counselor, you have to tell him about the different inner experiences and effects of the same scenario under a new approach and perspective so that you can form a good interaction with the counselor. In fact, the key to successful counseling is the counselor’s own preparation, inner growth motivation, and the degree of real commitment in counseling.