It could be said that the general aim of counselling is to increase the client’s self-awareness and insights and to marshal these new-found strengths in working towards an action plan that will help him cope more effectively with life (Stewart, 1983).

The aim of this chapter is to clarify what counselling is and is not, to develop understanding regarding the limits of confidentiality, explore what defines a ‘counsellor’, and identify the three basic elements involved in learning to counsel effectively – knowledge and understanding, developing skills, and personal development.

What Is Counselling?

The dictionary defines counselling as advice or guidance, yet the word ‘advice’ is an anathema to many counsellors, Figure 1 clarifies the differences.

Clarifying Why Counselling Is Not Advice-Giving

* Advice frequently means telling people what they should do or ought to do, and this has no place in counselling. Counsellors help clients look at what is possible, but do not tell clients what they should do. That would be the counsellor taking control rather than the client gaining control.

The counsellor who answers the question ‘What would you advise me to do?’ with ‘What ideas have you had?’ is helping the client to recognise that they have a part to play in seeking an answer. They help the client take responsibility for finding a solution that feels right for them.

Advice is often appropriate in crises; at times when a person’s thoughts and feelings seem shocked by an event. At times like these the counsellor will exercise greater caution than when clients are fully responsive and responsible. Advice offered and accepted when in crisis, and then acted upon, could prove to be, if not ‘bad advice’, not totally appropriate to meet the client’s needs. When people are under stress they are vulnerable. For all these reasons, counsellors are wary about responding to a request for advice.

However, it is sometimes very difficult not to offer advice. If a client is stressed, for example, the counsellor may suggest relaxation techniques to help reduce stress levels. Even though the advice might be ‘good’, the choice should always remain with the client.

Examining Why Counselling Is Not Persuasion

Counselling is not persuading, prevailing upon, overcoming the client’s resistances, wearing the client down or ‘bringing the client to their senses’. Persuasion is in direct conflict with at least one principle of counselling, self-direction – the client’s right to choose for themselves their course of action. If the counsellor were to persuade the client to go a certain way, make a certain choice, there could be a very real danger of the whole affair backfiring in the counsellor’s face and resulting in further damage to the client’s self-esteem.

This concept of self-direction, based on personal freedom, is the touchstone of the non-directive approach to counselling but is present in most others. The basis of the principle is that:

• any pressure which is brought to bear on the client will increase conflict and so hamper exploration.

Exploring Why Counselling Is Not Exercising Undue Influence

Some people believe that successful counsellors are those who are able to suggest solutions to clients’ problems in such a way that the clients feel they are their own. This is commonly called ‘manipulation’, behaviour from which most counsellors would recoil. However, situations are seldom clear cut.

There is a fine line between legitimate influence and manipulation. Manipulation always carries with it some benefit to the manipulator. Influence is generally unconscious. In any case, suggesting solutions is not part of effective counselling. There is a difference between exploring alternatives and suggesting solutions and manipulation. Manipulation invariably leaves the person on the receiving end feeling uncomfortable, used and angry.

The dividing line between manipulation and seeking ways and means to resolve a problem may not always be easily seen, but the deciding factor must be who benefits? Is it you, or is the other person?

(*Adapted from Going for Counselling, William Stewart and Angela Martin (How To Books, 1999) and used by permission of the authors.)