How to Cope Between Counselling Sessions

For many people attending regular counselling sessions enables them to deal with emotional issues, that cause stress and other health-related concerns, on a day-to-day basis. Building a trusting relationship with a counsellor helps the client feel secure, and respected, within a counselling environment. Maintaining and sustaining this level of contact means the client/counsellor relationship can explore all the personal issues that are presented at the counselling sessions. Knowing what to expect however, will help the client understand how the counselling process can work for them.

The Counselling Sessions

Once a counsellor has met and assessed a client the counselling relationship can start to take shape. The counsellor will begin to build a rapport with the client during the allocated sessions. Each session will generally last between 50 minutes to an hour and will be arranged at regular intervals, around the client’s commitments. These ongoing sessions are arranged so that the client has a timeframe in which to work at identifying solutions to their concerns and issues.

Counselling sessions are generally arranged at weekly intervals. Meeting on a regular basis allows a respectful working alliance to be built between the counsellor and client, and also provides accessible support.

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Between Sessions

Between the mutually agreed counselling sessions a client has sufficient time to think about, absorb and consider all the information that the previous counselling session identified. The counsellor may also have issued the client with homework, and will expect the client to work through any additional thinking in time for the next session.

Because a counselling relationship is a cooperative venture mutual respect, between the client and counsellor, must be in evidence at all times. Besides being honest and open a client will be expected to work towards finding resolution of personal problems and issues. The more committed a client is, to the counselling relationship, the greater the personal sense of achievement and progress made will be.

The success of the counselling sessions very much relies on the client’s openness and willingness to explore the issues they present to the counsellor. Without the willingness to achieve positive results, and to undergo the clarification of their problems, a client will not be able to work towards a successful outcome.

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Additional Support

Once rapport has been built with a counsellor it may be difficult for a client to consider making decisions, relating to the issues they are been counselled for, without seeking guidance or acknowledgement from the counsellor. Attending counselling sessions regularly will help with this, although the client may express difficulty coping between each allotted session. A qualified counsellor is trained to provide the client with the correct level of support during the counselling process, and will be aware if a client is likely to require additional support. In these cases the type of homework a counsellor issues, between each counselling session, will be carefully tailored to provide positive support. This could include a list of empowering exercises, affirmations or journaling, that a client can work through on their own, in their own time. This form of support enables the client to maintain focus on counselling progression.

The Next Step

Now that you have read through the advice above, you might want to put it into practice. Our Counselling Approach Finder lets you describe what a client brings to you and find out which counselling approach is most evidence based for their situation. Try it now →