(beingthere) how counseling helps consciousness
4. How Counseling Helps Develop Consciousness
by
Stephen BE
Unless you learned them as a child, counseling is the only place we know of where you can acquire the emotional skills needed to effectively deal with the infinite issues in life, and to actively pursue Higher Consciousness. BEing There Enlightenment Systems advocates counseling for everyone.
What is Counseling?
"Counseling", also known as psychotherapy, is the process of learning about yourself, and then using this information to make changes in your life. This is usually a process of directed conversation. The therapist pokes around specific areas of your life looking for signs of pain or disharmony, much like a doctor might poke around your body to find clues of pain or discomfort that point to a source. The therapist can be trained and licensed in any one of a number of different disciplines, including counseling, psychology, social work, psychiatry, religion or nursing.
Counseling consists of a process of exploring situations and their associated emotions. Therefore, counseling clients must first learn how to allow their emotions and how to explore them. This effort brings you a new sense of self-understanding. With this new insight and awareness, you are better prepared to make choices in your behavior that will lead to the consequences you seek.
The counselor serves as a guide for your self-discovery, teaching new emotional skills along the way. With self-discovery, greater insight, new emotional skills, and clearer choices, you will be able to claim a new level of self-responsibility. This results in a resolution to the situation that first prompted counseling, a resolution that is more complex than might have been expected. In addition, you experience a more profound sense of self. This is called personal growth.
An interesting thing occurs when you first experience your ability to grow. Like a child first discovering the benefits of walking, you will be eager to use and perfect the emotional skills you have learned by expanding your discovery into other areas of your life. By identifying common patterns of emotion and behavior, called dynamics, you learn to recognize the issues that underlie all problem situations. You will develop the ability to deal more directly with your issues, instead of having to focus on the problem situations that reflect those issues. This has a widespread effect throughout your life.
Knowing, recognizing, and dealing directly with issues is a more sophisticated level of self-awareness. This allows you to be more effective in all of your relationships and pursuits. It is through this process that you can begin to understand your lessons, which are necessary to develop a new level of consciousness. This, in turn, gives you the skills to deliberately create what you truly want.
The skills you learn in counseling are emotional skills. These are skills that everyone needs to know, but probably does not know. Different levels of emotional skill determine your level of consciousness, when your emotional aspect is the aspect of least development. You can find a short description of the various levels at "1. Why Learn Emotional Skills?"
The only way to learn these skills is from someone who knows them. A counselor should know these emotional skills and therefore be able to teach them to you. Not all counselors do. As you begin to master these skills you will be able to pass them on to your children. As it takes emotionally healthy parents to raise emotionally healthy children, the only way to inject emotional health in the familial linkage is for one link in the family chain to learn the skills of emotional health.
Situations, emotions, emotional skills, self-responsibility, personal growth, dynamics, issues and lessons, lead to new levels of consciousness and significantly greater effectiveness in your life. This entire process is called the pursuit of Higher Consciousness.
Who Needs Counseling?
Counseling is the only venue available to most people where you receive emotional training. If you have never received training about your emotions, then you will benefit greatly from counseling.
People often use counseling to resolve marital and relationship problems, to become better parents, to deal with occupation-related issues, or to clarify what it is they truly want in life. Having been raised with physical, mental, emotional or spiritual abuse always affects adult life in undesirable ways and calls for counseling. Specific behaviors or moods that concern you, or others around you, should be examined in therapy. And major events in life draw forth strong emotions that need to be understood for peace of mind and heart. These are just some of the reasons people need counseling.
The "need" for counseling is not defined by the degree of drama in the situations in your life. It is not about you being inadequate to deal with those situations. It certainly does not mean you are weak.
"Needing" counseling is about acknowledging that life requires constant change, and changing requires learning new skills. The difficult situations in your life are merely the notice that change is due. And counseling is where you go to make that change.
How Long Does Counseling Take?
Since everyone's problems are unique, along with the skills they bring into therapy with them, the sophistication of their self-awareness, and the attempts already made to resolve their conflict, a prediction for how long it will take to adequately deal with your issues cannot be made until these factors are considered.
The most significant factor will be the depth of commitment you have to your personal growth. If your only desire is to resolve an immediate crisis, then a few hours of counseling should suffice. If you are inclined to search more deeply for the causes of certain experiences, so you can prevent them from recurring, then you will need to invest more time. To be able to define your core issues and plumb their depth, so you can experience complete self-awareness in every moment, will require a long-term relationship, first with your counselor, then with a consciousness guide or mentor.
These decisions are part of the counseling process. Emotional education can be equated to mental education in this regard. You decide how much you want to know about yourself, and how broadly you want to apply this self-awareness. More education means greater skill to define what you want and greater ability to create what you want.
A relationship will develop between you and your therapist that will be very significant. To begin to make this relationship pay off for you, you must be willing to allow it the time and effort it needs to work. This is not a relationship where the therapist whisks into the room, diagnoses the problem, and prescribes a remedy. A therapeutic relationship must develop and mature. It requires regular contact. Like any important relationship, this will require periodic re-commitment.
Where to Start?
Learn more about using counseling to assist your growth into Higher Consciousness by reading "How to Shop for a Counselor," coming in the next installment of this Short Course in Personal Growth.
©2005, 2001 BEing There Enlightenment Systems, Inc.
by
Stephen BE
Unless you learned them as a child, counseling is the only place we know of where you can acquire the emotional skills needed to effectively deal with the infinite issues in life, and to actively pursue Higher Consciousness. BEing There Enlightenment Systems advocates counseling for everyone.
What is Counseling?
"Counseling", also known as psychotherapy, is the process of learning about yourself, and then using this information to make changes in your life. This is usually a process of directed conversation. The therapist pokes around specific areas of your life looking for signs of pain or disharmony, much like a doctor might poke around your body to find clues of pain or discomfort that point to a source. The therapist can be trained and licensed in any one of a number of different disciplines, including counseling, psychology, social work, psychiatry, religion or nursing.
Counseling consists of a process of exploring situations and their associated emotions. Therefore, counseling clients must first learn how to allow their emotions and how to explore them. This effort brings you a new sense of self-understanding. With this new insight and awareness, you are better prepared to make choices in your behavior that will lead to the consequences you seek.
The counselor serves as a guide for your self-discovery, teaching new emotional skills along the way. With self-discovery, greater insight, new emotional skills, and clearer choices, you will be able to claim a new level of self-responsibility. This results in a resolution to the situation that first prompted counseling, a resolution that is more complex than might have been expected. In addition, you experience a more profound sense of self. This is called personal growth.
An interesting thing occurs when you first experience your ability to grow. Like a child first discovering the benefits of walking, you will be eager to use and perfect the emotional skills you have learned by expanding your discovery into other areas of your life. By identifying common patterns of emotion and behavior, called dynamics, you learn to recognize the issues that underlie all problem situations. You will develop the ability to deal more directly with your issues, instead of having to focus on the problem situations that reflect those issues. This has a widespread effect throughout your life.
Knowing, recognizing, and dealing directly with issues is a more sophisticated level of self-awareness. This allows you to be more effective in all of your relationships and pursuits. It is through this process that you can begin to understand your lessons, which are necessary to develop a new level of consciousness. This, in turn, gives you the skills to deliberately create what you truly want.
The skills you learn in counseling are emotional skills. These are skills that everyone needs to know, but probably does not know. Different levels of emotional skill determine your level of consciousness, when your emotional aspect is the aspect of least development. You can find a short description of the various levels at "1. Why Learn Emotional Skills?"
The only way to learn these skills is from someone who knows them. A counselor should know these emotional skills and therefore be able to teach them to you. Not all counselors do. As you begin to master these skills you will be able to pass them on to your children. As it takes emotionally healthy parents to raise emotionally healthy children, the only way to inject emotional health in the familial linkage is for one link in the family chain to learn the skills of emotional health.
Situations, emotions, emotional skills, self-responsibility, personal growth, dynamics, issues and lessons, lead to new levels of consciousness and significantly greater effectiveness in your life. This entire process is called the pursuit of Higher Consciousness.
Who Needs Counseling?
Counseling is the only venue available to most people where you receive emotional training. If you have never received training about your emotions, then you will benefit greatly from counseling.
People often use counseling to resolve marital and relationship problems, to become better parents, to deal with occupation-related issues, or to clarify what it is they truly want in life. Having been raised with physical, mental, emotional or spiritual abuse always affects adult life in undesirable ways and calls for counseling. Specific behaviors or moods that concern you, or others around you, should be examined in therapy. And major events in life draw forth strong emotions that need to be understood for peace of mind and heart. These are just some of the reasons people need counseling.
The "need" for counseling is not defined by the degree of drama in the situations in your life. It is not about you being inadequate to deal with those situations. It certainly does not mean you are weak.
"Needing" counseling is about acknowledging that life requires constant change, and changing requires learning new skills. The difficult situations in your life are merely the notice that change is due. And counseling is where you go to make that change.
How Long Does Counseling Take?
Since everyone's problems are unique, along with the skills they bring into therapy with them, the sophistication of their self-awareness, and the attempts already made to resolve their conflict, a prediction for how long it will take to adequately deal with your issues cannot be made until these factors are considered.
The most significant factor will be the depth of commitment you have to your personal growth. If your only desire is to resolve an immediate crisis, then a few hours of counseling should suffice. If you are inclined to search more deeply for the causes of certain experiences, so you can prevent them from recurring, then you will need to invest more time. To be able to define your core issues and plumb their depth, so you can experience complete self-awareness in every moment, will require a long-term relationship, first with your counselor, then with a consciousness guide or mentor.
These decisions are part of the counseling process. Emotional education can be equated to mental education in this regard. You decide how much you want to know about yourself, and how broadly you want to apply this self-awareness. More education means greater skill to define what you want and greater ability to create what you want.
A relationship will develop between you and your therapist that will be very significant. To begin to make this relationship pay off for you, you must be willing to allow it the time and effort it needs to work. This is not a relationship where the therapist whisks into the room, diagnoses the problem, and prescribes a remedy. A therapeutic relationship must develop and mature. It requires regular contact. Like any important relationship, this will require periodic re-commitment.
Where to Start?
Learn more about using counseling to assist your growth into Higher Consciousness by reading "How to Shop for a Counselor," coming in the next installment of this Short Course in Personal Growth.
©2005, 2001 BEing There Enlightenment Systems, Inc.
posted by Borrowed Wisdom at 11:05 PM
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