Psychotherapy & Counselling
Psychotherapy
Even though it is common for us to face difficulties and critical moments in our life, there could be some circumstances in which this could be seen as impossible to us. We might feel stuck as if we were facing a crossroad in which neither path seems accessible to us. We might feel like we don’t have any space to move and we can’t see any alternative on the horizon that will solve our dilemma.
In this kind of situation, it could be useful to contact a Psychotherapist who, after understanding the nature of the obstacle, could help us to construe alternative paths or new instruments to pass through it.
Psychotherapy is a long term work, created “ad hoc” according to the specific situation, to solve a difficulty or whatever represents “a problem” for the client.
It is an evolutionary process that helps a person look closer at long-standing attitudes, thoughts, and behaviours that have resulted in the current quality of one’s life and relationships. It explores the source, the basis and the utility of the problem so as to make sense of it.
The therapeutic relationship represents the main channel for this process and includes as main characters both the therapist and the client. The therapist is the expert in human change processes while the client is the expert of their own meanings, feelings and experiences.
The sessions represent a space of understanding and mutual experimentation where together creative solutions are found which permit the change.
Counselling
Counselling generally refers to short-term consultation which provides for a limited number of sessions focused on a specific problem: a difficult choice, an important personal or professional change, a relational difficulty, a difficulty related with a parental role or the death of a relative.
Counselling normally helps a client process powerful emotions such as grief or anger, deal with immediate causes of stress and anxiety, clarify values and identify options when making important personal or professional decisions, manage conflicts within relationships, develop better interpersonal and communication skills, or intentionally change unproductive thoughts and behaviours.
It helps the client to understand the meaning of his/her difficulties and, on that basis, to create new alternatives more useful and functional to manage his/her daily life.
In other words, counselling is more concerned with practical or immediate issues and outcomes while psychotherapy is interested in a deeper and wider understanding of how and why that problem is connected with their story, their meanings and their personal way of construing the world.
