A student was telling a colleague about a difficulty she was having with a client. She just didn’t like her and had a negative reaction each time she came. The colleague said ” It’s not about you. ”  He was wrong of course, because it is about you, how can it not be.? We need to understand ourselves before we can be of help to our clients. We need to understand our patterns of transference and counter transference,our triggers ,our needs and expectations of clients so that we don’t act out. It’s an on going process.                     How  many of us have heard ” I don’t need counselling , I’m only here because it’s a requirement of the course”  I find that when I’m met with a statement that jars, I will always ask for clarification, and in this case explore the idea of what counselling actually is. ” I want to help people.” (SC) ” Help people do what?” (Me) ” Help people with their problems.” (SC) “How do you do that?” (Me) This is usually followed by a list of qualifications or an explain action of how they had overcome their own problems and we’re now ready to impart their knowledge to others. They were “Done and Dusted” Or they wanted me to believe that.  What I see is someone who wants to impress me or show me she is up to the job. My challenge is to hang on to that and not to react with my trigger of “I’m not important”,where I’d feel resentful and jealous of her apparent confidence, or my “Please others” driver where I start to feed her need to impress. When met with a challenge we need to step back. It’s so easy to react from our “stuff”

We all have triggers. We need to know what our particular ones are. When I find myself reacting I’ll shelve it until I can answer the question of ” What’s that all about?”            Clients can be who they are how I work with them is all about me.

I’ve had more interest in the Couples Counselling course. We need 9 to run that one. (Most others 6 is enough)  

Look forward to hearing from you.

ps. Ben did a TED talk. I’m very proud of him.