Chapter 67 How counselling works
How effective counselling is depends on the resources and abilities of counsellors and their clients. These need to vary according to the challenges faced but some key elements associated with effectiveness can be identified.
A client focus
Perhaps above all else, counsellors care about each of their clients and sooner or later clients come to realize that their counsellor cares about them ‘as a person’. The counsellor does not relate to clients primarily in terms of any characteristics that they may or may not have, such as a particular symptom, condition or pattern of behaviour. In the terminology of person-centred counselling, counsellors have a positive regard for – and an attendant warmth towards – individual people that is unconditional. As clients come to realize that someone values them despite whatever may be troubling them at the time, the foundations are laid for clients to increase their unconditional positive regard and warmth towards themselves. Receiving unconditional positive regard from another can thereby promote self-acceptance which alleviates psychological distress such as depression and anxiety. This, in turn, can increase clients’ abilities to address other challenges more effectively and, if necessary, change their behaviour (see pp. 136–137).
