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DO COUNSELLORS GIVE ADVICE?

© Bronwen Schoombie

No! No! Scream all those trained in counseling. But then again, one wonders about the "respect" aspect. If therapy requires one to respect a client, and a client comes looking for advice, in fact, asks for it... then surely it is up to me to provide it?

OK. Let us start at the beginning. Take yourself back to a situation where you were struggling with an issue – child rearing is a very common one. Purchasing a major (but common) item – like a house or car is another. It is on your mind, so you talk about it – and suddenly you have a million people telling you how to go about it. Everyone has advice. All the advice sounds like good advice, but a lot of it is contradictory. And you become even more confused and out of control.

The second scenario is slightly different. You need advice regarding a personal matter. You want to know if you should leave your husband, marry your girlfriend, or some other, equally life changing occurrence. You come to the psychologist for advice – perfectly expecting to follow his / her advice.

The first situation, is, to my mind, totally disempowering. The aim of therapy, of course, is to empower the person who is seeking advice. Be careful of fitting in with the general social type of discourse the person is already experiencing. Your therapy / counseling situation should be different to what the client is used to. In addition, you as therapist probably do not know the client well enough to offer them solutions – they need to find a unique one which will fit very well with them. If you want to offer advice, perhaps you could consider offering about five or six alternatives, and spending the session discussing the merits of each one. In this way, you are offering advice, but the decision as to which path to follow remains in the hands of the client.

With respect to the second scenario discussed, the client is offering a very seductive question, and one which is difficult to resist. However, as a therapist, you need to remember that you only know so much about the client and their particular problem, and only the client knows what can or will work for them. In fact they probably have an answer hidden deep inside of them already. Your job is to help them discover what it is they really want and need to do. Remember that if you suggest a breakup and the person follows your advice without being completely ready for it, and then something dreadful happens (their ex-partner's mother dies, they contract a serious illness etc.) your client may blame themselves for the misfortune. In such a case you might sit with a more serious and difficult problem to solve than was first presented to you – and all the more so because they did not completely own the solution.

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