Ways to Benefit from Counseling

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5 Ways to Benefit from Counseling
from the book "Seeking Wise Counsel" by Dr. Dave Stoop

1. Don't story-tell.
Up to a certain point, the counselor needs to understand the events that are going on in your life. This is called story-telling. It isn't counseling if all you do in your time together is review what has happened in your life since your last meeting. When a counselor allows this, he or she is either tired or lost and doesn't know how to help you get on track. Or you are such a talker that the counselor doesn't know how to get a word in edgewise. Good counseling always looks beyond the story to the underlying patterns, and then makes an intervention in the pattern in order to bring about change. So resist the urge to fill your counselor in on all the details of your life.

2. Don't be afraid to express how you feel about the counseling to your counselor.
I have some of my best sessions when people get frustrated, or even angry with me for some reason or other. I remember one woman who came into the session angry because during the last appointment I had encouraged her to tell me what was going on in her job. I didn't do anything but listen and she felt it had been a waste. I agreed, and we went at it and had a great session, due in large measure to her willingness to tell me how she felt about what we had done.

One of the important things a competent counselor will do is acknowledge when he or she has missed the mark. More important, he or she will be able to handle and contain your negative emotions, including, especially, your anger. If I as your counselor cannot accept your anger, even when it is directed at me, you are not going to feel very safe with me, and you will have problems trusting me with that part of your experience. And that will limit my effectiveness in working with you.

Further, what you are learning to do with your counselor is what you need to learn to do with the other people in your life. Your counselor is supposed to be a safe person with whom you can test new skills that are still uncomfortable for you. But when you learn to talk more directly and more assertively with your counselor, you will find yourself doing the same thing with the clerk at the department store, with your kids, with your spouse, and even with your parents.

3. Don't talk to everyone else about your counseling.
Quite often, people will begin to confront uncomfortable aspects of their personality in the counseling process. In their discomfort, which is usually experienced as some type of anxiety, they will talk in detail to their spouse, or to their friends, about what is going on in the counseling. They get differing opinions regarding their experience and unknowingly reduce the effectiveness of the counseling.

We can talk about our counseling, but a good rule of thumb would be to discuss only those parts of the counseling where issues have been resolved, or are close to being resolved. When struggling with something taking place in the sessions, keep it to yourself for a while so you can wrestle with it internally. If you don't agree with some aspect of the counseling, confront your counselor and work it through in the session.

4. Don't worry about becoming dependent on your counselor.
Many people are afraid of counseling because they know someone who became too dependent on their counselor. This can happen in the course of counseling and, as I said earlier, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in some situations, it is part of the treatment. Here are two ways it can happen - one good and one bad. First the good:

Remember, one of the issues we all work on in counseling is that of trust. Many of us see a professional counselor because we have trouble trusting others with very much of ourselves - we are "loners" emotionally. Usually our difficulty in trusting others stems from emotionally detached relationships in our early experiences, in particular with our parents. In a manner of speaking, we need to go through a re-parenting process with our counselor. This usually happens when we look at those early issues of trust, although it can happen in any good counseling.

But this type of dependency is good because it indicates our growing ability to trust someone with vulnerable parts of ourselves. We are close enough, and feel safe enough, to look at areas of ourselves that even we avoided before we started counseling. When we work with competent counselors, they will talk with us about our growing feelings of dependency, and help us work beyond that dependency to a healthy sense of interdependence with them and with other people in our lives. The dependency is a temporary part of effective counseling.

When is dependency bad? You'll notice we used the word competent in regard to our counselor. Not every professional counselor is competent in this area. There are some people who are professional counselors because of unfinished issues in their own lives. Often these issues revolve around dependency - they have a need fulfilled within them when other people are dependent upon them. In their counseling, they foster a dependency that isn't part of the healing process for the counselee. It is for the benefit of the counselor. This is bad, not only because it prolongs the counseling, but also because the issue of dependency is never successfully addressed for the counselee.

How can you tell the difference? It isn't easy, and the incompetent counselor may be very good at convincing you that what is in fact an unhealthy dependency is normal and part of the treatment. Instead of fearing this issue, here are two things you can watch for that will keep you on track. First, know that a healthy dependency in counseling is always moving toward interdependence, which is a connected form of independence. Our health independence is best expressed and experienced in the context of connected relationships. And our experience of dependency has as its goal our experience of healthy independence.

Second, don't listen to your family and friends right away. Assume that they are being alarmist, in part because they have always seen you as independent. They are alarmed that you are different. However, when they start to express concern that your dependency has gotten out of hand, and can give you valid examples of how you appear to be stuck at this stage, listen to them. Make it an issue with your counselor. And as you make it an issue with your counselor, talk about what is being done within the counseling to help you move beyond dependency to healthy independence. Remember, you are the consumer. You are paying the bill. Therefore, you are in charge of your treatment.

5. Don't limit the goals of your counseling.
Often we go to a counselor to resolve a specific problem. But we also can see the counseling experience as an opportunity to learn new skills, new more effective behaviors, and to become a more balanced person. Our true objective is to live life as Jesus wants us to live it, life in all its fullness (John 10:10). The training and the objectivity of a professional counselor can help me see my blind spots. This will enable me to resolve the problem that brought me to the counselor and to learn things that will enrich my life.