Counselling is very much a personal process.
You may experience an immediate sense of relief as you talk out things you have been carrying ‘bottled up’ for whatever reason. You may feel lighter after a session.
On the other hand, counselling may stir up difficult issues or insights you have previously buried (precisely because they are difficult). In the short term, if a session leaves you feeling more fragile, be kind to yourself over the next 24 hours.
Just as it can be painful, but necessary, to treat a wound to bring about healing, so in counselling things may feel worse before they get better. It can be tempting to stop counselling straightaway when this happens, but it is better to come back and talk through how you are feeling. Both counsellor and client need to take such feelings into account. It may be, for example, that the work needs to go at a gentler pace.
Longer term, counselling may bring various benefits:
- A clearer understanding of yourself
- A capacity to manage situations that felt overwhelming or perplexing
- A fresh focus on where you want to do things differently
- An ability to put some new strategies into practice
Other changes less easy to pin down, but no less real, may include:
- A deeper sense of well-being
- Greater peace of mind about what cannot be changed
- Increased self-worth
- Renewed confidence in your abilities
Although such changes are generally noticed first by others, eventually we should feel the benefit ourselves.
