Counselling
Counselling can be referred to as advice, guidance, direction, assistance or help, depending on the counselling scenario at hand. Of course, there are a great many reasons why people would require counselling, and many ways of addressing each situation.
Trauma counselling is usually called for in cases where a disaster or traumatic experience of death, suffering or loss has adversely affected an individual’s ability to cope. They might experience extreme grief, an inability to come to terms with their emotional pain and may be rendered dysfunctional in their immediate society to some degree. A trauma counsellor will seek to assist the traumatised individual to come to terms with their loss and their emotions towards it, until they can once again face life.
Relationship counselling may be required in cases where individuals in a relationship have difficulty in working out differences or experience repeated occurrences of distress. A relationship counsellor could counsel both parties together, and may opt for separate counselling too. This kind of counselling could be required between couples, siblings, family members or work colleagues.
Marriage counselling may be necessary when a married couple have difficulty coming to terms with their differences and have repeated disruptive disputes that they cannot resolve by themselves. The counsellor establishes a confidential dialogue in order to normalise feelings, suggests potential and directions for change and empower the parties to take charge of the marriage. In addition, the counsellor identifies destructive, repetitive patterns and facilitate alternative methods of coping with these.
Counselling procedures may be of short duration for small problems and may be nothing more than a bit of advice in some cases. In terms of career or relationship counselling, the process may take much longer, depending on the severity of the problems. Trauma counselling may take years before a person has regained their coping skills and has come to terms with their loss.