Basic Counseling: Finding what works

Human Growth and Development

As Professor Cyrus Marcellus Ellis, PhD said many times, the hallmark of counseling is human growth and development. Counseling is about helping people grow throughout their lifetime and helping them to arrive at their full potential. A lot more is involved in providing counseling to clients, but for the client this statement is especially important. You don’t have to be “mentally ill” to seek counseling. Yes, counselors are trained to give a “diagnosis” when required by insurance, but the counseling focus is on growth and finding better ways to deal with life issues.

The basic model is that throughout life people encounter “events.” Most of the time people respond to the event and learn how to deal with it. The response is “adaptive” (Ellis, 2003). The experience gained in successfully coping with a life event represents growth and is used to help with the next life event. Sometimes an event comes along and we don’t adapt. Our response is called “maladaptive” (Ellis, 2003). Or more simply, most of the time when life events happen we find a response that works, but sometimes what we try doesn’t work. Then we need a new approach.

I Must be Crazy

Professor Catherine Sori, PhD liked to tell us that “the definition of crazy is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.” So… when a response doesn’t work, something has to change. People are very capable of learning from their own experience and many correct what is not working by themselves. However, sometimes people get stuck or get tangled in some way and haven’t found a way to change what they are doing. That is a good time to think about counseling.

Finding What Works

In counseling a client there are three phases described as Exploration, Insight, and Action. This structure was emphasized in my internship by Professor Byron Waller, PhD, and detailed in the book Helping Skills (Hill, 2004). During exploration the client and I explore their past experience to answer questions like “So, what brought you here?”, or “How was your anger this week?” This is a continuing process, may take several sessions, and is revisited in a looping fashion. Insight takes place when we begin to understand what is going on and especially how past experience is influencing current action. This one can be very surprising for the client. Action is that part where the client begins to “do something different”, avoids the repetition error pointed out by Dr. Sori, and finds an approach that works. The new result encourages permanent changes in how clients respond to situations in their life.