You Won’t Get Advice
If advice is what you’re seeking from counseling, I’m sorry, you won’t find it there. Well, to be honest, I’m not sorry. This opens up the possibility to get so much more from your time in therapy! Help and advice are not the same thing.
When searching for advice, clients often ask me what they should do. They are looking for a specific answer that might solve their biggest issues, but it’s not that simple. I’ve done this before, too. I’ll ask my husband for advice, he’ll tell me what he thinks I should do, I’m irritated by his response, and then I do what I was probably going to do in the first place. What I try to practice now is asking for help, which looks a little more like me going to him with a specific concern after I’ve already worked through my decision.
Counseling is about a client and counselor working together to find the solutions. Receiving advice would not be very helpful for you, especially not in the long run. Besides, if all you did was listen to what people recommended, then you most likely wouldn’t be on this path seeking counseling.
You would not be in counseling if you JUST wanted advice. You can get advice from family, friends, coworkers…but instead, you are seeking counseling to achieve much more! The people in your life are biased, whether they realize it and act on those biases or not.
So, if you’re not getting advice from counseling, what will you get?
You’ll find guidance, which is different from advice because you are the one making the decisions about your life and goals. I have studied, read, and gained experience about anxiety and stress, which allows me to guide you toward your goals, but YOU are the expert on YOU. You’ll find strength in knowing this.
You’ll get unbiased feedback. Therapy is all about you: your goals, your progress, your life. Therapy is also about reaching your goals, tracking your progress, and changing your life. It’s about having an unbiased person you can trust, someone who wants the best for you, to help reach your goals, and also trust to see through excuses (see below!).
You’ll meet someone who will call you on your crap. Crap = unhealthy patterns in relationships, unhealthy ways of dealing with things, not taking responsibility, avoiding emotions, etc. This statement ties in with the previous bullet point; since I am unbiased, I am able to point out things that other people in your life may not, or they might not address them in a constructive way. A counselor-client relationship should allow for trust, which makes acknowledging the hard stuff a little easier. PS: The beautiful part of the counselor-client dynamic is that sometimes you won’t even notice when you’re “called out” because it’s done in a healthy and constructive way.
You’ll gain power over your life. Walking into a counselor’s office means you get a chance at a clean slate. See yourself through a new lens! Take the time to be intentional with what you want from your therapy.
You’ll discover a place to practice all of the new skills you learn. Even though the true test comes from the other 167 hours in the week that you spend outside the counseling space, it may feel easier to try something new in a one-on-one session.
You'll laugh! You’ll get to feel and express many emotions, and I find that this is a fun byproduct of two humans sitting together. The realness comes out, so does laughter on occasion!
You will let go and embrace life. Whatever you’re holding onto in the beginning, you’ll get to let it go in a healthy way and truly define the life you want to live going forward. You receive guidance, feedback, power, skills, and much more. You get to make a change.