One of the strengths of counselling is that the counsellor does not take responsibility for the client, does not give them ‘answers’, does not provide them with advice or tell them what to do. Instead, counselling is about enabling the client to access their own resources, to empower clients to trust in themselves & to learn that they can find their own answers … they don’t need to rely on a counsellor, or anyone else to find their way through their life.
A number of clients come to me ‘expecting’ me to tell them what to do to make themselves feel better or to improve their situation. At times, clients can be quite unhappy and I sense their frustration towards me when I won’t give them advice, when I won’t tell them what to do, when I can’t ‘fix’ everything for them. And it can be difficult at times when a client asks outright for advice and I know that it’s not what I’m there for. As a counsellor, I have to know at a deep level that I’m not responsible for my clients and their lives; my role is to encourage the client’s own discoveries and strengths. I don’t know what’s right for anyone else, I don’t have a book full of answers, and as we are all unique individuals, everyone’s ‘answer’ will be different anyway … it’s for the individual themselves to discover their own solutions. And as a counsellor, I’m in the privileged position of sharing in that process … often starting with the client’s frustrations at themselves, their situation , and myself, moving sometimes through a state of confusion, and then the enlightenment that occurs when someone suddenly sees a way forward, or begins to see things from a different perspective.
But I can’t do that for them. I can only facilitate the process towards that discovery. And sometimes, clients come up with solutions for them that I could never have imagined. Clients can be incredibly creative once they’re given the right conditions in which to explore their thoughts, feelings, emotions, options, etc. So often in life, friends, families and others are too keen to jump in and give people advice … and this can often prove counterproductive. People aren’t encouraged to trust in themselves or to discover their own resources or they often end up doing things to please other people rather than themselves. If they’ve taken someone else’s advice, it’s easy to ‘blame’ that person when things don’t work out, rather than taking responsibility for coming up with their own answers & implementing them.
When clients ask me for advice, or want me to tell them what to do, I simply reflect everything back to them. I often ask them the question that they’ve asked me … and sometimes, actually hearing that question being asked of themselves by someone else enables the client to answer it … I had this experience with a client recently.
I’ve had another client recently tell me about frustrated they felt with me in the early stages of our therapeutic relationship when they were asking me what they should do, and I wouldn’t tell them. That client has since learned that they have the internal resources within themselves to make decisions and implement them . And because of this, that client is learning to trust more in herself, to take more responsibility for her situations … and they’ll take this learning forward into future situations long after therapy is over.
And for me, enabling clients to discover their own inner resources, to learn to trust in themselves and their capabilities and to learn to take more responsibility for themselves and their life situations is one of the biggest strengths of counselling … and seeing these things occurring is one of the (many) privileges of being a counsellor.
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