Counseling

What is counseling?

Counseling is a process that facilitates better personal and interpersonal understanding & functioning. It relates to issues of life from childhood to old age focusing on emotional, intellectual, social, vocational and health related development. It has following major components :

• Better understanding of self and world around.
• Less distress & better adjustment through more effective coping skills.
• Realization of self potential & better quality of life through more effective functioning.

Counseling provides a safe and free platform which allows you to discuss & explore yourself and your life in an atmosphere of privacy, trust, respect and warmth along with psychological expertise of counselor. It provides an opportunity to vent out your feelings, to explore your positive & negative aspects, to discuss problems and to explore better options without any threat of being judged or ridiculed.in short counseling helps in living a better life.

It is confidential.

Counseling is entirely confidential. It is not necessary for you to reveal your details like real name, address, place of work etc. The life incidents and relevant information reveled by you remains only between you and your counselor. It is never discussed or shared with anyone under any circumstances. 

Types of counseling

• Emergency – It helps in urgent cases of threat, psychological catastrophe, rape, accident etc.
• Distance Counseling (Online Chat / Email / /Telephone) – It helps those who are unable to visit clinic for in-person counseling.
• In – person (in clinic) Counseling
  • Children & Sibling Counseling
  • Adolescent Counseling
  • Student Counseling
  • Professional / Career Counseling
  • Counseling for Men
  • Counseling for Women
  • Pre Marital Counseling
  • Marital / Couple Counseling
  • Sex life and Sexuality Counseling
  • Personal issues Counseling
  • Family Counseling
  • Social and Relationships Counseling
  • Old age / Geriatric Counseling
  • Spiritual Counseling
  • Health Counseling
  • Stress and anger management Counseling
  • Grief / Anxiety / Depression Counseling
  • Counseling for unwanted thoughts / feelings / behavior
  • Problem & Solution Focused Counseling
  • Self Management & Self Growth Counseling 

Conditions in which counseling is helpful

Some of the conditions are :

For major anxiety, depression, phobia, mania, obsession, schizophrenia and other psychiatric diseases, see Psychotherapy.

Benefits of counseling

• It improves your ability to understand and analyze yourself, the world around and the difficulties faced by you.
• It helps you to explore better options, grow in life and realize best of your potential and success.
• It helps to adjust better, resolve problems & crisis and move on in life.
• It helps in your search of self identity and self worth.
• It improves confidence, communication skills and give a positive personality.
• It helps in developing positive relationships, happy family and avoiding discords.
• It helps in releasing negative emotions, frustrations and increasing satisfaction in life
• It improves ability to plan, take decisions, face challenges and become more dynamic.
• It helps in removing stress from life, feeling good, being peaceful & relaxed and living more fully.
• It helps to remove negative thoughts / feelings / behavior and develop positive thoughts / feelings / behavior.
• It gives you a true friend who is non judgmental, objective and supportive with a feeling of trust, respect and warmth. 

Process of counseling

The process of counseling is called the therapeutic process where the counselor and counselee share a relationship of trust, respect and warmth. In this the role of person taking counseling begins before that of counselor. It is important for the person to come to counseling free from prejudice and wrong notions. He or she should have open mind and free from thought that ‘nothing works in life’. Counseling should not be seen as a threatening place where one can be judged, criticized or ridiculed. It is not about fault finding or pushing you to any particular thought or behavior decided by the counselor. A good counselor will help you in removing these false beliefs. A good counseling provides you an atmosphere of privacy, confidentiality, ease of mind, respect, trust and warmth along with the psychological expertise of counselor to help you to freely explore yourself, give vent to your feelings, re-look at situations in a relaxed & objective manner, explore possible options & ways and learn more effective strategies in life. 

Counseling schedule

Counseling can be divided into three schedules:

• Single session counseling.
• Short term counseling ranging from 2-3 sessions to frequent sessions for about 3 months.
• Long term counseling lasting months and even years with need based unscheduled sessions.

It can be individual, couple or in group. Counseling schedule depends on the need of the situation and person concerned. Short term counseling is for situations which require immediate attention and long term counseling is for sustained growth & prevention of relapse. It is possible for a person to take short term counseling for immediate need and later switch to long term counseling for persistent improvement.

A counseling session can be of 30 minutes to one hour. It can be longer as sometimes it is necessary to continue with the counseling process specially if it is in some crucial moment. The first one or two sessions are usually about information gathering which forms the basis of further sessions and direction of counseling. You can decide about the frequency of sessions.