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Choosing a Counsellor by Andrea Sheehy

This article assumes that you have decided to go for counselling, and seeks to answer the question, "How do you select an appropriate counsellor?"

Perhaps the issue that you wish to resolve falls in a specialist counselling area; examples of this are couple counselling, psychosexual therapy, bereavement counselling, abuse counselling, fertility counselling and vocational counselling. Any counsellor should have appropriate qualifications and experience, and a specialist should have qualifications and experience relevant to their particular field.

Whether you go for a specialist or not, you should check with prospective counsellors that they belong to a reputable professional body with a code of conduct and a complaints procedure.

Qualifications and experience are important aspects to consider. However, the crucial factor is the quality of the relationship you have with your counsellor; improvement is much more likely to take place if the therapeutic relationship is right.

In order for counselling to work, you need an approachable counsellor that will hear what you have to say, identify with your concerns, provide insights, tools and techniques to help you move forward, and keep you safe from harm.

Of course, you can't tell whether you will have a good therapeutic relationship until you actually meet your counsellor… 

The Initial Consultation

The first appointment is an opportunity for you and the counsellor to get to know enough about each other so that you both can make an initial feasibility assessment. The counsellor needs to decide whether they have the skills to deal with the issues you are presenting, and you need to make a decision about the quality of the therapeutic relationship.

This does mean that the counsellor is working hard – sometimes one session is all that is required for fundamental improvements to happen, and, with all this in mind, the counsellor will usually charge you for the initial appointment.

Counsellors should be open and trustworthy. They should be able to put you at your ease within minutes of meeting them. You should find the counsellor easy to talk to, even if you are a person of few words. The counsellor should be the sort of person to whom you might be prepared to confide anything.

By the end of the initial appointment, you should know:

·         how much the counsellor charges

·         a little about the counsellor's method of counselling and the generalities of how it works

·         the duration of the sessions

·         how frequently you will meet

·         how often the counsellor will formally review progress with you  

Making a Decision

Having attended an initial appointment, you are now in an excellent position to make a decision about the counsellor; I suggest that you consider the following questions. The list might seem a little daunting at first sight, but don't be put off – seeing a counsellor can allow you to make fundamental and far-reaching changes to your life in a short space of time:

Again, the quality of the therapeutic relationship is paramount, and a little extra effort shopping around for the right counsellor will pay dividends in the long term.

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