Clients frequently utilize terms counselling and psychotherapy interchangeably but it might be useful to explain many of the differences forwards and backwards.
Counselling offers a sympathetic ear to an individual in distress. Ideally the counsellor listens with full attention without interrupting for corrections, analysis or advice. The therapeutic valuation on being truly listened to really should not be underestimated. Deep listening seldom happens in ordinary conversation, where each person is evaluating the validity of what each other claims or thinking about his / her next response. Realizing that one’s listener has no other agenda, and does not interrupt, provides the speaker the freedom to express emotions or difficult thoughts in more detail, often making unanticipated connections in the act. Counselling does not necessarily require professional training. A reliable friend can frequently fill the role of counsellor.
Together with listening, a counsellor offers solace. A heart-felt empathic response including “of course” offers the distressed person together with the type of safety and support a loving parent provides child. An assurance that this distressed person possesses the interior resources to cope with the issue accessible might help to mobilize those strengths. A counsellor could help someone in danger to realize his / her thinking as being distorted in some way, at odds with objective reality, perhaps exaggerating the negatives while overlooking the positives. Ideally a counsellor may lead the distressed person from confusion by eliciting suggestions for getting through a situation instead of just providing answers.
Counselling could bring relief for confusion, distress, non-traumatic grief, temporary loss of self-esteem, or bewilderment in the face of crisis. Counselling alone cannot heal true mental disturbances including depression, anxiety, traumatic grief, unresolved childhood issues, or not enough self-esteem as a result of destructive core beliefs. These require psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy also involves carefully listening to be able to comprehend the presenting problem and also to detect the use of unexpressed issues. A psychotherapist invokes techniques learned during professional training to assist litigant effect adjustments to their life. There currently exist some fifty different therapeutic techniques, with Adlerian Therapy, Animal-Assisted Therapy, and Art Therapy at one end from the alphabet and Spiritual Therapy, Systems Therapy and Traumatic Incident Reduction with the other. But all have in keeping the effective use of specifically-chosen techniques to result in change. In general, psychotherapy comes about over an extended time frame and in most cases relates a client’s current difficulties to life-long, even multi-generational, patterns of behavior. Personality disorders like schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, may require medication as laid out in a psychiatrist in addition to the therapeutic intervention which a psychologist or psychotherapist can provide.
For additional information about Adult & Children Counselling & Therapy take a look at our new web site