What is Counselling?
Counselling provides a safe, confidential space to help clients to enhance their wellbeing, improve self-understanding and work through life challenges. Reasons that a person might seek counselling include (but are not limited to) grief and loss, relationship issues, work stress, identity challenges, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety and addictions. Counsellors are skilled in using empathy, deep listening and providing a safe and collaborative space. Counsellors help clients to explore their emotions, become more self-aware, develop insights around their behaviour, regulate emotions and explore new ways of doing things and seeing the world.
A key philosophy underpinning counselling is the person-centred or humanistic perspective. This is the idea that we are all born with an innate capacity to achieve our potential. However, “conditions of worth” are often imposed on us, typically during childhood, which make us believe that we are only loveable, accepted or worthy if we conform to a particular ideal (such as always being a high achiever). As a result, we can lose touch with the essence of who we truly are. This can manifest in a myriad of ways, such as anxiety. Through the counselling process, the counsellor helps the client to connect with their authentic self so that they can lead a more meaningful and fulfilling life.
Counsellors are trained in a range of evidence-based interventions. The approach used will depend upon the needs of the client and the counsellor’s experience and training. Within Australia the term “Counsellor” is unprotected, so it is useful to check a counsellor’s qualifications. Most practicing counsellors hold at least a Bachelor Degree qualification, with many holding qualifications of Masters and above. The two major counselling bodies within Australia are the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) and the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA). Many counsellors will be a member of one of these bodies.
At Masterpiece Psychology (former Anxiety Solutions CBT Psychology Practice), we have a team of highly experienced Psychotherapists, Registered Psychologists and Clinical Psychologists who are well trained and have extensive counselling experience. For more information, or to book, please contact us or call us now on 02 9328 5899.
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