Psychotherapy Vs Counselling - They are very different
Please note that Dr Blair-West does not do counselling. Counselling is the realm of general psychiatrists, psychologists and variously trained counsellors.
Dr Blair-West sees psychotherapy as going beyond simply resolving the presenting problem - it is about building resilience to ongoing life stressors and preventing relapse, while at the same time accelerating personal growth and avoiding future regrets. It is very different from counselling, indeed whereas counselling is designed to make you feel better in the session, people can leave a psychotherapy session feeling worse as they confront shortcomings in themselves that they need to work on. This is why psychotherapy is not a little different from counselling it is, in some ways, the opposite.
As can be seen from the graphic below, the benefits of psychotherapy are only noticeable gradually over time and are evidenced by the particular problems in question becoming less frequent in the future.
The challenging part for most people is that when they have a problem that is distressing them and they bring this into therapy, a psychotherapist's mind will be on the 'why and when' i.e. why did my patient respond this way and when in their formative years did they learn to respond in this way? This can feel like the therapist is not concerned about your distress compared to a counsellor who is there to give emotional support at difficult times. When you see the people in your life as the cause of your problems you will feel particularly annoyed at a psychotherapist who wants to focus on your contribution to the problem, rather than on the frustrating or painful misdeeds of others.
For these reasons, you should not take on psychotherapy while you are acutely depressed or anxious. You need to be relatively stable, and prepared to confront yourself, to do this work.
Jerzy Gregorek's powerful quote, below, sums up the issues nicely. Often the hard choice is to look at ourselves i.e. which part of the problem, which part of 'the blame', is ours? It is much easier, much more comfortable to blame others, indeed most people do. This is the victim position. The problem is that if others are to blame, unless we can get them to come into therapy, this takes us nowhere. We have limited influence over others. On the other hand we have total influence over ourselves and thereby the power to do things differently in future and make our life better - it is this central point that underpins psychotherapy.
Developing this perspective and the resulting authorship over our life is central to not just psychotherapy but to a rewarding life in general.
Dr Blair-West sees psychotherapy as going beyond simply resolving the presenting problem - it is about building resilience to ongoing life stressors and preventing relapse, while at the same time accelerating personal growth and avoiding future regrets. It is very different from counselling, indeed whereas counselling is designed to make you feel better in the session, people can leave a psychotherapy session feeling worse as they confront shortcomings in themselves that they need to work on. This is why psychotherapy is not a little different from counselling it is, in some ways, the opposite.
As can be seen from the graphic below, the benefits of psychotherapy are only noticeable gradually over time and are evidenced by the particular problems in question becoming less frequent in the future.
The challenging part for most people is that when they have a problem that is distressing them and they bring this into therapy, a psychotherapist's mind will be on the 'why and when' i.e. why did my patient respond this way and when in their formative years did they learn to respond in this way? This can feel like the therapist is not concerned about your distress compared to a counsellor who is there to give emotional support at difficult times. When you see the people in your life as the cause of your problems you will feel particularly annoyed at a psychotherapist who wants to focus on your contribution to the problem, rather than on the frustrating or painful misdeeds of others.
For these reasons, you should not take on psychotherapy while you are acutely depressed or anxious. You need to be relatively stable, and prepared to confront yourself, to do this work.
Jerzy Gregorek's powerful quote, below, sums up the issues nicely. Often the hard choice is to look at ourselves i.e. which part of the problem, which part of 'the blame', is ours? It is much easier, much more comfortable to blame others, indeed most people do. This is the victim position. The problem is that if others are to blame, unless we can get them to come into therapy, this takes us nowhere. We have limited influence over others. On the other hand we have total influence over ourselves and thereby the power to do things differently in future and make our life better - it is this central point that underpins psychotherapy.
Developing this perspective and the resulting authorship over our life is central to not just psychotherapy but to a rewarding life in general.