Heartwood Tutor Fee Scott provides an insight into exploring the unknown and the importance of this when on the journey to becoming a counsellor.
SOME people avoid speaking of their distress, not only to counsellors but to family, friends and partners because they worry that in speaking of their hurt, they will get caught up in it, make it worse and not be able to find a way out. That makes some real sense and attempting to keep the bad stuff in a box is a perfectly coherent response. Who genuinely wants to dig it all out and look at it when there are more fun things to do?
When I work therapeutically with people, it’s quite common for people to report a fear of letting go of all the tears inside them, for fear that they will never stop crying. I get this too.
These fears of getting ‘stuck’ in a particular place no doubt touch us all at different times and it’s important to weigh up the costs and benefits each time of remaining in this uncomfortable but ‘known’ place or shifting to a place of not knowing…
It’s something we Tutors at Heartwood College see often within student groups we teach. The difference being that undertaking study in counselling really necessitates a willingness and ability to move into ‘not knowing’ at times.
Counselling is an unusual subject (and art) to teach and to learn. Of course, particularly on our Integrative Diploma course, there is plenty of learning about theory, models, techniques, perspectives etc. Plenty of content which is stimulating and necessary and satisfying and provides a solid framework for counselling practice. And it is this content that can be learned and tangibly ‘known’ by students.
What cannot be taught in the formal sense of the word, but can be signposted, encouraged, nudged, directed and modelled, is the process of counselling.
The first part of this is supporting students to get to know themselves better, to be bold enough to rummage around inside and get to grips with their own issues/fears/defences/habitual ways of being and so on. Some of this happens in the classroom setting and some through the mandatory personal therapy they are required to undergo.
The second part of learning about process, about how to be a counsellor, is to let go of needing to know everything, to dispense with figuring out precisely what intervention to do, when. It is to let go of any idea of what a counsellor should say and do and to fully embrace who a counsellor is. Not doing. But being.
Real magic can happen when trainee counsellors build up and integrate these three parts; knowledge, self-knowledge and willingness to be fully present. And of course, the training programme is tough at times because all these things separately are challenging, let alone the integration part. Good job that learning to be a good counsellor is a lifetime’s work!
Heartwood Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Training are based at Dartington Space, Dartington Hall, Totnes.
Visit www.heartwoodcounselling.org or call 01803 865464.