Counselling

Many survivors have found that when they are ready to speak to someone, counselling has helped them sort out their feelings and deal with the effects of the sexual violence. However, counselling is not right for everyone, and it is crucially important that counselling is only started when the survivor feels ready for it.

The nature of counselling

The overall aim of counselling is to provide an opportunity for the client to work towards living in a more satisfying and resourceful way. The term counselling includes work with individuals, pairs, or groups of people, often but not always referred to as ‘clients’. The objectives of particular counselling relationships will vary according to the client’s needs. Counselling may be concerned with developmental issues, addressing and resolving specific problems, making decisions, coping with crisis, developing personal insight and knowledge, working through feelings of inner conflict, or improving relationships with others. The counsellor’s role is to facilitate the client’s work in ways which respect the client’s values, personal resources and capacity for self-determination.

What does effective counselling feel like?

When you work with a good counsellor you should feel understood and supported. You should feel warmth between you and your counsellor and that should happen early in the therapy process. Counselling is not always comfortable, but you know you are with a good counsellor when you develop more and more skills to heal yourself as time goes on. You become able to recognise your own patterns and to feel and interpret your own emotions. Even if at first you feel dependent, you should eventually become more independent.

Starting counselling can be quite challenging. You are confiding in someone, and beginning to deal with difficult feelings and memories which perhaps you couldn't face before. Some people find that when they start counselling, things get worse before they get better. Discuss this with your counsellor in the first session if you are afraid this might happen.

If you feel there is a problem

If you do not feel respected, valued or understood, or if your experience is being trivialised or distorted, that is a sign that you are in bad therapy or that there is a bad fit between you and the counsellor. If you get upset or angry with your counsellor, talk about it in your session. Afterwards you should feel you have been heard and understood. However, if your counsellor discounts your feelings or responds defensively you are not getting the respect you need. You should look elsewhere.

If you do encounter a counsellor who was not professional or whom you didn't make progress with, do not be disheartened – many have found that with a different counsellor, things improved.

Counsellors' professional duties

Code of ethics: Counselling is a non-exploitative activity. Its basic values are integrity, impartiality and respect. Counsellors should take the same degree of care to work ethically, whether counselling is paid or voluntary.

Clear contracts: The terms on which counselling is being offered should be made clear to clients before counselling commences. Subsequent revisions of these terms should be agreed in advance of any changes.

Client Safety: Counsellors should take all reasonable steps to ensure that the client suffers neither physical nor psychological harm during counselling. Counsellors do not normally give advice.

Client Autonomy: Counsellors are responsible for working in ways which promote the client’s control over their own life and respects the client’s ability to make decisions and change in the light of their own beliefs and values. Counsellors are responsible for setting and monitoring boundaries between the counselling relationship and any other kind of relationship and making this explicit to the client. Counsellors must not exploit their clients financially, sexually, emotionally or in any other way.

The British Association for Counselling has issued a Code of Ethics and Practice for counsellors. All members are required to abide by the code. The association has a complaints procedure that can lead to expulsion of members who breach this code.

Full copies of this code can be obtained from the British Association for Counselling:

http://www.bacp.co.uk/ethical_framework/

Finding a Counsellor

In the Contacts section there are various local organisations which offer counselling. Some bigger employers offer a counselling service to their staff, and both universities in Cambridge have a counselling service for their staff and students.

To find an individual counsellor, try using the search function on the BACP site above, or the more user-friendly Counselling Directory.  On this search page http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/adv-search.html you can specify that you'd like face-to-face counselling, where they need to be, and that they must be trained in trauma issues.  Then you can read what each counsellor says about themselves, what their approach is, and what training they've had.  Most of these are only available to people who can pay, although some have sliding scales of price according to your income.  They do tend to have shorter, or non-existent, waiting lists.