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What actually happens in a session
If you have never done this before, it helps to know what you are walking into. Here is the plain version.
The short answer
An hour, a quiet room, and someone whose only job is to listen
At Fleet you sit with the same trained counsellor for up to an hour a week, in private. What you say stays in that room.
There is no script and no worksheet. You talk about whatever is on your mind, and your counsellor listens carefully, without judging you and without telling you what to do. Sometimes they will reflect something back, or ask a question you had not thought to ask yourself. Often that is enough to make something shift.
The aim is not for someone else to solve it. The aim is for you to find your own answers and feel more in charge of your life again.
What a counsellor does
- Listens closely to what you say, and to what you find hard to say
- Takes your account of your own life seriously
- Helps you see how you affect other people, and how they affect you
- Keeps the same hour free for you every week
- Keeps what you say confidential
- Attends outside supervision fortnightly, so the work stays safe and honest
What a counsellor will not do
- Tell you what decision to make
- Diagnose you or prescribe medication
- Judge you, or be shocked by anything you say
- Report back to your family, employer or GP
- Rush you towards feeling better before you are ready
One limit on confidentiality
Counsellors discuss their work anonymously in supervision, which is a professional requirement and protects you. Very rarely, if there is a serious risk to your life or someone else’s, a counsellor may have to involve someone else. Your counsellor will talk this through with you at the start.
When it helps
You do not need a reason that sounds serious enough
Counselling can help when you are finding it difficult to handle the stress in your life — when you feel angry, upset, anxious or overwhelmed. It can help when things with a partner, a family member or a friend are not going well, or when you feel isolated and alone. The pressures of unemployment, housing trouble, raising children on your own or poor health all take a toll, and all are reason enough.
It can also be useful when nothing is obviously wrong. Some people come simply to take time to work out what they want next, at work or in their personal life.
Some people arrive expecting therapy to be painful. It can bring difficult things to the surface. But it is not only for the worst moments, and most people find that saying something out loud to someone who is really listening is a relief rather than an ordeal.