Why Counselling?

Why Counselling?

A question I have been asked a lot.

My usual reply is “Why not counselling?”

Actually, my own counselling journey started as a client. I had struggled for many years on my own, and I guess that’s the way we used to deal with stuff!

I was recommended a fantastic counsellor by one of my co-workers at the time, within a drug and alcohol harm reduction service.

It’s fair to say that it took me quite some to make what turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.

It seemed almost like an acceptance that I had issues that I had been unable to recognise on my own. No one is immediately prepared to accept that other people may have greater insight into them than themselves!

So highly recommended was this counsellor, that it required a significant journey to the venue. An odyssey full of self-doubt, resistance, scepticism and the dregs of denial that any of this was all really necessary. All on a rusty bicycle!

Maybe the session itself could be a subject for a future blog, but when I met Deborah for the first time, time seemed to stand still, and I had, for the first time I could remember, a sense of safety and calm. I felt listened to. I felt valued. I felt human.

I couldn’t have possibly imagined the impact that being heard, being given the chance to express myself, all the while feeling completely unjudged, could have on my life.

Without being being melodramatic, it was like having a brand new bicycle to ride back to Bristol on, and that’s when I decided that once I had gone further down my journey as a client, I would train to become a counsellor myself, so that one day, I could help someone else to have that feeling.

That’s Why Counselling!