First of all, let’s start with the conclusion: Of course, it is useful!
Research has shown that the working alliance between visitors and counselors has a very significant effect on improving psychological conditions.
(Zhang, Y, & Meng, T) Eysenck’s research points out that the effectiveness of psychological counseling achieved after 15 interviews, if it is spontaneous recovery, takes 2 years to achieve (McNeilly & Howard, 1991).
Many studies have confirmed that professional and ethical psychological counseling can achieve good counseling effects. Since this is the case, why would anyone still have such doubts?
Because psychological counseling does not produce immediate effects. In the first 1-3 sessions of counseling, counselors need to first understand the visitor’s concerns and personal background, establish a good consulting relationship, and gradually delve deeper. Everyone’s concerns are different, and the time spent resolving issues naturally varies. Often, the longer the duration of distress and the deeper the problem, the longer the counseling period required.
So, how is counseling conducted?
01 Counseling Setting
The setup and framework include the duration, frequency, cost of counseling, and the setup of the counseling room, etc.
Counseling setup is actually a set of rules that visitors and counselors need to abide by together, providing a protective and analytic time and space for psychological counseling. This time and space are protective and analytical, like a secure parenting bag that is not easily disrupted by real-life factors.
Everyone has different feelings towards the framework setup, and different reactions, showing different psychological states and coping patterns, which are very important aspects of counseling work.
Through discussion of these setups themselves, the visitor’s inner attitudes, perceptual patterns, and behavioral coping methods can also be revealed.
02 Counselor Functions
Mirroring Function
A baby looks up at the mother and sees himself in her eyes. Individuals become aware of their existence through others’ eyes and attention. By the time a child is over 1 year old, they can see themselves in the mirror and recognize themselves. This marks the beginning of the child’s self-awareness.
The mirroring function means that counselors use a neutral, non-judgmental attitude to help visitors see themselves at a psychological level, enhancing self-awareness and self-integration, like looking into a mirror to slowly form a more comprehensive, clear self-image.
Empathy
Creating a harmonious emotional experience to increase the visitor’s capacity to tolerate anxiety and negative emotions. When unable to bear intense pain, one can endure a little longer, not resorting to impulsive behavior to relieve anxiety easily. As the visitor’s capacity to tolerate negative emotions increases, they are more likely to handle emotional issues symbolically and psychologically, reducing the tendency to transfer anxiety through destructive means like arguments, violence, drinking, promiscuity, etc.
Providing a containing environment
This is a concept proposed by Winnicott. Just like a mother provides a containing environment for a child to freely develop, psychological consulting simply provides visitors with a containing environment, reducing their vigilance towards the environment.
By doing so, their attention can be focused on what has already happened in their inner world, what is currently happening, and what might happen in the future. They can safely immerse themselves in the awareness and development of their inner world without being disturbed or distorted.
Interpretation
Through interpretation, the visitor’s internal psychological experiences can be linked to external realities, connecting past experiences with current reactions. Fragmented emotional content of the visitor can be understood, integrated, and consolidated. Interpretation can prompt the visitor to explain and link their self-experiences, forming new perspectives of self-identification, assisting visitors in subconscious conscious processes.
03 Conversations between Counselors and Visitors
The way visitors express themselves and the content they share are important ways for counselors to understand visitors.
By talking about their own problems, visitors can give form to internal experiences that were previously unthinkably and unmanageable. These experiences and feelings were originally chaotic, with no clear point for expression or thought.
By verbalizing these incoherent contents and interacting with counselors, the visitor’s psychological content becomes visualized, allowing the once invisible psychological content to be seen by the visitor, enabling them to understand, reflect on themselves, and open up mental space.
Through verbal expression, emotions buried deep in the visitor’s psyche can be recognized, bringing forth a sense of reality to those previously unidentified aspects. Speaking enables us to gradually approach emotions we cannot express, sensations we cannot articulate, and indescribable states. Counselors will encourage visitors to describe even the most inexplicable inner feelings symbolically, abstractly, and sometimes inadequately.
Over time, visitors increasingly develop clearer feelings about those once vague and undefined matters within themselves, leading to increased emotions, experiences, awareness, and understanding. Speaking brings forth those previously unnoticed contents, naming and assigning meaning to them, turning the once unperceived into a tangible existence.
04 Transference · Countertransference
Transference means the visitor projecting emotions towards important persons in their past onto the counselor. This refers to individuals transferring feelings, attitudes, and attributes towards parents or significant figures from their past onto the counselor, and reacting accordingly.
Jung believed that the terms “transference” and “projection” share the same roots. Transference is always accompanied by projection or is rather an identification process characterized by projection.
The subconscious accumulates a wealth of psychological content, and once an “appropriate” object or situation appears, projection spontaneously activates and functions interpersonally. Projection automatically selects objects and situations, beyond conscious control, making it a spontaneous occurrence.
05 Therapeutic Alliance
Humans survive in relationships, bad relationships deeply wound individuals. For example, individuals harmed by their families of origin may have embedded a seed of “I am not worthy of love” in their subconscious, leading to various problems in their later lives.
Counselors will listen to you sincerely, respect your feelings, and accept everything about you. In other words, this is a relationship that allows you to experience the feeling of being loved and accepted again.
All wounds experienced in relationships must also be healed within relationships.
Only when that inner wounded child is loved again in the relationship, taken seriously, can they believe they are worthy of love.
Therefore, in the history of psychological counseling, there has been a miraculous discovery: the quality of the relationship between counselor and visitor, rather than the counselor’s techniques, makes counseling more effective.
This relationship is called the therapeutic alliance. Once the relationship is established, the alliance is formed, and the “treatment” begins.
The goal of psychological counseling is to conclude counseling. Eventually, visitors can disconnect from their counselors, internalize the counseling process, establish observational self, and become their own “counselor”.
