Introduction to Counselling

The variety of situations
that contribute/cause/lead to a person’s request for counselling[1] services
are numerous and diverse. People seek counselling because they are motivated
for a change; because someone has strongly influenced them to come; because
they are desperate to stop doing whatever they are currently doing; because
they are curious; because they feel stuck and in a rut; and for many other
reasons.
hey also come with
different problems. Sometimes they feel they don’t love enough or correctly,
they chose the wrong job, they don’t know how to deal with a situation in their
life, and so on.
They also come with
different problems. Sometimes they feel they don’t love enough or correctly,
they don’t know how to deal with a situation in their life, and so on.
For our purposes, a case study
is the presentation of elements of a person’s life and history that is used to
seek patterns and causes for thoughts, behaviours, and feelings that can then
be addressed by counselling.
Five case studies have
been developed, representing a variety of common counselling scenarios. Each
case scenario provides much of the information typically obtained by a
counsellor in an initial meeting/interview with a client. The information is
arranged so that the you can assume the identity of the original counsellor
interviewer.
Each scenario
demonstrates common issues that counsellors are likely to encounter: sadness
due to loss, out of control behaviours, anger due to either external
circumstances (job loss or the like) or disappointment with self, etc. Also, all
scenarios provide sufficient information for you to make decisions. In the real
world, this might not occur in one session as you might need more than one
interview to get as much as has been provided.
Counselling someone and
working through a problem is not a linear progression. It is fraught with the
possibilities of mistakes/miscues or advances/breakthroughs; give-and-take
discussion; and forward, backward, and lateral movement (e.g., realizing that
you should have said this instead of that). Your decisions and subsequent
analysis may be very different from someone else who has chosen the same
scenario and recommendation. However, the differences are not necessarily
incorrect so long as you provide a rationale that is coherent and based on a
thorough literature review. With all this complexity and lack of
predictability, a goal of this course is to introduce you to a process that can
be applied in the majority of counselling situations.

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