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Welcome... Counselling can be a wonderful experience; finally unburdening yourself of things which have been troubling you for years. It can also be a painful, but necessary, medicine. It is often hard coming to terms with both our own weaknesses and problems, and also the pain that we really feel, and what has caused it. We have tried to include as many contacts and links as possible below, so that you can get in touch with a counsellor in your local area, if you feel you need to see one. The list includes Christian and non-Christian contacts, so please click on the “Contacts and Links” link above. It is essential that you trust your counsellor, so make sure you are allowed at least one meeting with them before you decide to commit to a series of sessions. You need to feel that your counsellor is listening to you and understanding what you say. If you are not a Christian, then you may feel more comfortable with a non-Christian counsellor. However, if you in the midst of finding out more about God and being a Christian, and you are comfortable with Christian ideas in general, then you might find it really helpful and perhaps reassuring to be counselled by a Christian. You can always try it and see, and be open and honest with your counsellor so that they know any worries you have. When you are a counsellee, it is obviously not helpful for you to be in any way pressured into agreeing with Christian ideas while being counselled. If you are worried about this, just ask your counsellor about their approach. |
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The Value of Counselling Counselling is essentially about having a formal setting to share your problems with someone who has been trained to be both sympathetic and analytic. Anyone can benefit hugely form this, particularly if there is a particular personal or emotional problem which the potential counsellee is experiencing. People who have been properly trained can be very good at spotting the underlying causes behind different problems, seeing things which we cannot - being embedding in the problem and so restricted in our view. You yourself will probably know if counselling would be beneficial for you. You can always try one or two meetings with a counsellor, and then decide if you would like more. You may be depressed or you may be experiencing loneliness, and counselling could be beneficial. Combined with other methods, such as prayer for inner healing for example, counselling can be very effective for bringing release from personal burdens. A few words about the cost element of counselling. I must admit that it often makes me feel slightly uncomfortable that you normally have to pay for counselling. I do realise that counsellors have to pay for their training and need a means to support themselves financially. However, it may be useful if I expand my point. The counsellor-counsellee relationship is a type of friendship. In strict terms, this perhaps should not be the case, as the relationship is a professional one. In practise, however, some sort of emotional bond is often formed between the two parties. It can feel awkward having to make a financial sacrifice - being charged, in order to offload burdens to someone who is acting as if a long-standing friend. Of course, your counsellor is not your friend as such, so a sentiment of emotional confusion, if it disrupts the counselling process, is unhelpful and unnecessary. Nevertheless, perhaps you see the slight conflict I am getting at. What I am referring to with regard to cost is particularly the case, I feel, with Christian counselling. As we involve God centrally in the healing and restoration process, and he provides his love and help to us totally freely and without condition, paying a counsellor - who is acting as a facilitating third party to the process, can seem contradictory, and confuse us. However, we must accept that we live in a world of money, and that God can use money - and is in control of it. If we think like this, our confusion can be remedied. In short, it is obviously perfectly reasonable for counsellors to charge for their service (although within reason!), and a great amount of benefit can be gained from such trained professionals. If you have any ideas or comments on these points, please e-mail here. If you find it very hard to afford counselling, as it is often expensive, then you have my sympathy. I would hope that some Christian counsellors, if they are financially able, would be able to have some sort of tiring system to charge lower rates for people who they are sure cannot afford the normal rate. Non-professional Church-based counselling If you cannot afford counselling, and you know someone - a friend or someone in your Church, who can counsel you on a non-professional basis, this could be a very good alternative to having to pay. Some people are very good listeners, and have good experience to draw on. However, it is so important that they really listen to you, and do not impose reflections of their past experiences upon your unique situation. Trust obviously needs to be present. Also, the gender of the counsellor and the counsellee needs to be the same. The reason for this is to avoid any possible sexual attraction distracting or endangering the process. One exception to this rule might be if the counsellee is facing the issue of homosexuality, and being counselled by a member of the same sex would tempt them. Less formal counselling, which is Church-based, can be particularly good because it may be a little easier or natural to involve prayer in the process, and also prayer for inner healing if this is appropriate. Christian Counselling; God and theory without Conflict As Christians, God is at the centre of our lives. Christian counselling takes this fact and brings analytic skills into a process which helps people understand the source of their problems. Ultimately, these problems will either be founded on people’s own sin, or founded on sin or misfortune that has happened to them. However, it is easy to oversimplify things; and so is highlighted a strength of counselling. Counselling at its best can recognise the different, and sometimes complex factors that go towards making a person how they are: their emotional, spiritual and mental states. If analytic processes or theories produce conclusions which do not correlate with what we believe about God, then they should be disregarded - or we should review what we believe about God. Certainly, there is no need to be threatened by ideas which we can see do us no harm, and which in practical terms prove helpful to those in need. God knows and has made our minds, so there is no problem with thinking things through. |
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