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Door of Hope Counseling Resource
Center,Inc.
A Counselor's Introductory Letter to a Potential Client
To my Client,
It may be helpful to tell you how I see the job of a counselor. My job is to facilitate your spiritual and psychological well-being, by helping you to solve the problem or dilemma that may have made you feel stuck or demoralized.
The first thing you need to know is that the goal of the counselor is to help you help yourself. As a counselor my greatest pleasure and reward is to see you go back to the business of life more confident of your ability to take care of your problems, trusting in the goodness and power of God as well as your God-given judgement and intuition. Counseling should be helpful and efficient, and thus, as brief and as technologies or scientific findings. They are your spiritual, mental and physical abilities. The therapist is not the healer. You are, as you open yourself to the working of God in your life. The counselor's job is to help activate and facilitate your God-given healing mechanism and inner wisdom. I believe you have dignity as a person made in the image of God and that He loves you so very much.
The counselor should never doubt that your pains and problems are real. The act of seeking the help of a counselor or a psychiatrist may make you feel as if you are crazy or a hypochondriac. You are not! The counselor will learn about you by listening very carefully to everything you say and asking questions to find out what got you stuck. Why are your warning signals flashing! Most important, the counselor will search with you for ways to get you unstuck and to facilitate the necessary shift or change.
The combination of your available psychological knowledge, the wisdom of your body-mind, and the working of God in your life is a powerful team and knows what to do. Muster your resources- spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical, and social. You are not alone. Many sources of help are available to you. Do not panic or give up. Your most powerful tools are your faith in God and your will to live. Your coming to see a counselor is an expression of your will to live and your willingness to do whatever you need to do to recover and regain your self-mastery. Don't ask yourself to do anything unless you know that you are capable of it and that it will facilitate the necessary changes. At all times you will be in charge of the change and of the healing process. The counselor should not trick you or make you do things that may humiliate or harm you or allow you to lose control.
Although the counselor will be available and by your side whenever and as long as necessary, your job is to make the counselor obsolete as soon as possible. End the counseling as soon as you feel the problem is solved or- more likely and more precisely- that you can manage it on your own.
You are here because you want to stop the pain and regain hope. This will be the time to put into fullest use whatever capacity is left in you to enjoy and laugh. Talk with your counselor about joys as much as sorrows, about solutions as much as problems. Counseling is not a place only to complain and blame. You may have come for counseling because you feel helpless and like a victim; do not make counseling a place to do more of the same things that made you feel badly. Counseling is a place to change, take charge, regain hope, and solve problems.
No doubt you have some negative feelings right now and you should express them openly. But watch out! Negative feelings can ignite your entire mind like a fire in a windy, dry summer. When negative thoughts occupy the mind, they can block out other perceptions, prospects, and pleasures.
Forgiveness is a gift you need to give not only to others but to yourself. Everyone makes plenty of mistakes and everyone needs to be forgiven in order to move on. Nothing clutters the soul more than remorse, resentment, recrimination. Guilt and blame are the best bet for not changing. The easiest way to deepen a grievance is to cling to it. The surest way to intensify a problem is to blame yourself. Change and action come more easily out of non-judgemental understanding and self-love than out of criticizing and undermining yourself.