Michael Forster PG Dip (Counselling & Psychotherapy)

Of all the counselling models, the Person Centred Approach (PCA) appeals to me and fits with my own outlook more than any other because it’s essentially positive in its approach.

I passionately believe - and experience so far bears it out - that if we can find a good way of being with one another all kinds of things are possible.

People are often puzzled - and not infrequently rather frustrated at first - by the amount of silence in the counselling session, or by the lack of directions or advice.

And yet so often there is nothing helpful to be said; and why should the counsellor know the answers to another’s innermost dilemmas? And in any case, most of my clients already have quite enough people telling them what is best for them.

In session after session, with client, after client, the same awesome truth has emerged: it’s not what we say to them, it’s the way we are with them.

a way of being

a way of being with . . .

The Core Conditions for Therapeutic Change:

☀Congruence

☀Empathy

☀Unconditional Positive Regard

The Core Conditions work!

The Core Conditions rock!

A MATTER OF FAITH

Counselling is not dependent on faith or on religious outlook - and most of the time it’s not appropriate for the client even to know what mine is - but internally I may draw some support from it.

Accompanying the client on the journey they have to make can be a scary business, and not infrequently it leads to some very dark places. We must all have had the experience of being with a client whose experiences and feelings are beyond words and beyond any interventions to change. The call is to be there with them, as a steadfast presence, when all the most powerful impulses are to do differently: to get out of that place, either by ending the session and leaving the room or by saying (or, worse, doing) something - anything at all however unhelpful or counterproductive - to cover up our own inadequacy and save our dignity.

At those times, I am drawn to a central image of my own faith: a man hangs on a cross, in a place of utter despair, looking helpless (which of course he is). There is no hint in the darkness of that scene of any light about to break, and yet countless people now believe that his simply being there brought about transformation.

Part of that story relates a taunt, ‘Come down from the cross - prove that you’re someone special!’ Precisely because the temptation was resisted, there was that amazing dawn - but not until the dark time had run its course.

Now, let’s be clear: I don’t have any grandiose illusions that my experience is within a million miles of the pain of crucifixion - but the client’s internal pain may well be. And I believe - by faith and by experience - that if I can hang in there in their darkness, feeling helpless, stupid, useless as I do, that together we might in the course of time emerge into light.

To do that, I must resist the temptation to ‘come down from the cross’ to save my pride by some ill-advised and poorly-motivated word or act.

Then there is no joy like the joy of ‘resurrection’ - to see the person whose companion I am emerge into the light of a new life.

Now, that’s living.

And that’s why I’m a Person Centred therapist.