to think that 'counselling' in any of its myriad guises is by and large a bloody waste of time?

[moondog]

At best a self-indulgence, at worst positively damaging.

I also add the 'trained' and 'fully trained' description to my long list of dislikes. (Wot, as opposed to an 'untrained' one.)

What or who defines a 'fully trained' counsellor?

Yes quite HM. I think if you DO have the skills to cope with stress and trauma then you are VERY lucky and probably have marvellous parents.

Ow, my jacksy!

Hur hur.

I have plenty to keep me going, don't you fear.

And thank you Sal.It's a very nice feeling. I will consider counselling it its completion leaves a hole in my life that cannot be filled.

actually thinking about it a friend of mine is training as a therapist who can offer CBT (not entirely sure what the qualification is but she's studying for a masters and working with NHS patients as a (supervised) student.

Love her dearly but I would not let her psycho-analyse, counsel or enter into a therapeutic relationship with a budgie, let alone a real live human being who may well be quite vulnerable.

She has many other fine qualities, but an ability to sort out someone else's head is NOT one of them. Am astonished that she is a. on a recognised course with a reputable university and b. being allowed out to practise on real people.

Let it all out Moondog

(And I've known my friend for 20 years so this is not a snap judgment.)

One that can be accredited professionally to practice, moondog,who has completed a full diploma with 100 hours of supervised counselling with an agency to a professional standard, with,er, tapes and stuff like an exam. As opposed to one that can't. It's all about the letters, innit?,

Would echo all that, edam. I have a tendency to want to tell people smutty jokes and recommend a dirty weekend in the Lake District...hence I don't do it any more

Re 100 hours of suspervised counselling. But do you have to be any good?

Yes, MP, of course all of our children will be super self-reliant and in no need whatsoever of any kind of counselling due to having slightly crap parents.
So basically, in 20 years time there'll be no need for the kind of naval-gazing, my-life-is-so-full-yet-so-empty counselling because the next generation will be so well adjusted. That's that sorted then.

ooh, you sound like the sort of counsellor I might actually enjoy seeing, BoF!

Have just remembered that I did have counselling once years ago. V. embarrassing, bloody woman did indeed have dangly earrings and hippy clothes. And smell faintly of patchouli (and weed). But... have to admit it really really really helped me to get rid of a burden that I was sick of carrying. And to this day, I can deal with my father most of the time without getting worked up, while my sister who didn't have any counselling still gets hurt.

They don't give you a placement without evidence of your understanding and theory etc, and you've done dummy stuff first on tape etc. But it's not foolproof.

Moondog the BACP define accreditation rather than what is 'trained', or 'fully trained'. I think it would be generally acceptable to say someone is 'trained' who has completed and passed a recognised diploma for example.

You say you don't mean people with mental health problems but in your OP refer to counselling 'in any of its myriad guises', so YABU. It's like you're saying anyone who isn't properly depressed should just pull their socks up and remind themselves there's always someone worse off? Rubbish. Unsympathetic and unhelpful.

I work for a counselling service where over half the posts are being cut due to basically the Conservative county council thinking something along the same lines you do. To them counselling is a 'luxury'. We see young people in crisis and dire need and they are going to slip through the net in the future.

I don't think this view lots of you seem to have of counselling as 'navel-gazing' is accurate at all. But then I'm just a middle-class earring-wearing namby-pamby pseudo-science practitioner so what do I know?

I think its not so easy to define mentally ill really.

I have benefited hugely from therapy based around transactional analysis. I have self harmed and massive emotional insight issues and through therapy with the right person I have come on in leaps and bounds. But I never had a 'mental illness' I had mental health issues and I think lots of people do throughout their lives tbh.

It was certainly not navel gazing or self indulgent it was dealing with things that has a profound impact on my life and finding a way to change things for myself.

Equally my mega stressed friend benefited from six weeks of talking to someone who would listen and sympathise, nothing complicated but it allowed her to pour out her worries without fear of putting too much stress on her friends or family.

I'm not against psychotherapy or counselling. Far from it in fact.

I know that not everyone has the necesary emotional coping skills for life and yes good therapy properly done can help with this. But all but the most badly damaged have some skills in dealing with life. What we also forget is that most people (and yes it helps if you have had a halfway decent childhood)actually have an immense capacity for coping with loss and distress and even the most awful and traumatic events.

My dislike is of the way that counselling is recommended as a cure-all for all and any problems, is that our ability as individuals and as a society to tolerate and to sort out emotional problems is being eroded by the overuse of 'have some counselling'.

Take bereavement. Human beings have dealt with bereavement quite OK thank you before counselling came along to help us with it. Lots of us are lucky enough not to ahve had many people die on us so far.

Have to agree with you there.

It's the idea that it's the answer to everything which I thhink is wrong- not that it can't be very useful.

Sorry didn't finish that.

....But whereas we may once have learnt how to grieve and go thru that process by watching others close to us do it supported by family/community, how do we learn about these things if the answer is now to 'go for counselling'.
i might not be expressing this very articulatey, bit of a late hour for me, but my point is about counselling, rather than increasing the amount of emotional know-how amongst people/society in general, actaully makes it something less accessible that you need 'trained professionals' for, rather than soemthing we should all be clued up in.

Have human beings really dealt quite OK thank you before counselling came along? I'm thinking of my best friend and my cousins who each lost a parent at a very young age. In both cases it was in the early 80's and counselling wasn't offered/ available. These children were unable to 'deal with' their grief, or that of their parents and it has scarred them for life. I'm not saying counselling would have taken the pain of bereavement away but it may have helped them articulate how they were feeling instead of spending their childhood in a mess of painful feelings they didn't understand.

I'm finding this thread quite upsetting especially the bit where people are questioning counselling after bereavement. I really needed it after the loss of both my daughter and husband.

I found that I couldn't talk to people close to me as they couldn't cope with my emotions but I still needed to talk.

Are you suggesting I shouldn't have done, are you suggesting I was too self absorbed.

I've had quite an emotional response to this thread and it's not something that happens often. Where should I have gone for support?

"I tell you what though, there are a great many issues that could be cleared up by a bit of exercise, good food, hard work, altruisitc acts and laying off the booze"

I'm with others who picked up on this statement of yours - yes, all these things can be really good to keep you on an even keel but if you can't get to a place where you can do all this stuff (and modern life makes it very easy for us not to), then counselling/therapy or whatever you want to call it can be very useful in getting you there.

I have read studies that show that exercise can be as useful as ADs - but if you are in a depressed state without encouragement, ADs are an easier way to start.

Self-indulgent? Not really I'd say if it helps you function better in the world. Taking this attitude, one could say that taking "me time" to do exercise is also self-indulgent.

Counsellors as the new priests? Well perhaps, in that the priest was someone to talk to.

A lot of people on here recommend relationship counselling because they have first hand experience of it helping them to communicate -certainly not self-indulgent if it helps avoid the fallout of a divorce.

Damaging? Yes, certainly can be and not only because you've ended up with a charlatan but also because you might have put all your hopes into counselling as the final resort to make you better, and if it doesn't, then you might feel that there is no way out.

Quite, dutchmanswife. It is daft to dismiss it out of hand. But it can't fix everything, or even help everyone. And it is sometimes inappropriately recommended on here especially.

Also, Llama, people say the same of many aspects of being a parent. When we all used to live on top of each other, there was an expert on bfeeding/ colic up the street and our family/ community were on hand to help out.
Whilst I agree it's a shame we've lost some of those things life isn't like that any more so we shouldn't have bf counsellors? Or surestart?