1. How many times will consultation be effective?
Perhaps influenced by some media interview hotline programs, many visitors will treat psychological counseling with the mentality of "one-time consultation". In fact, it is rare to solve it with a consultation. Psychological counseling is a systematic and continuous process, just as the emergence of psychological problems is not formed in one day, the solution of psychological problems also needs a process.
Every consultation will have a certain effect. However, the number of consultations needed to solve a problem does not necessarily depend on the severity of psychological problems and the degree of cooperation between consultants and visitors. Generally speaking, at the beginning of consultation, it is the time for consultants and visitors to establish a cooperative relationship, understand the evaluation problems and list the consultation plans. Then start consulting. For general non-psychological life problems, such as employment pressure and interpersonal troubles in the workplace, it may be ten times or dozens of times. For long-term psychological disorders, such as personality disorder or deep treatment that requires psychological counseling to change personality structure, it often takes hundreds of meetings or even years of psychological counseling. This is industry experience. As far as everyone is concerned, the effect and time of consultation need the cooperation of visitors and consultants. Therefore, a truly professional consultant can't and can't promise a "complete solution" many times.
2. Will the first consultation be effective?
For some people, a consultation does have a good effect, but this is a rare case after all. In most cases, the first meeting of consultation is to get information, evaluate the matching degree between consultation and interview, and so on. Just as doctors need a diagnosis before prescribing drugs, counselors also need a process of judging and listing intervention plans. Therefore, the first visit often has no effect or limited effect. Consultants often only put forward some experimental techniques and methods in the first visit to observe the initial effects and reactions of these methods.
3. What effect can be achieved after consultation?
Pain relief or elimination, problem solving is the most intuitive and obvious effect. In addition to the subjective judgments of visitors and counselors, psychological tests can also be used to objectively show the effect of psychological counseling. In addition to seeking solutions to problems, some visitors will realize and solve other problems in their own lives, especially those who have been consulting for a long time. Some visitors learn the methods and skills of self-regulation in the process of consultation, so their interpersonal relationship and social achievements will also be improved.
4. Can I be optimistic about this situation?
Some situations are easy to solve. Such as life and work problems or mild psychological disorders. The cure rate of some problems is limited, such as personality disorder and serious mental illness. But no psychological barrier is the legendary "terminal disease". Psychological counseling and psychotherapy vary from person to person. Specific to personal circumstances, psychological counselors need to conduct 1-4 evaluation interviews. After several times of psychological counseling, most visitors will have their own experience and understanding of counseling and form an estimate of the long-term counseling effect.
5. I feel that the consultation effect is not good. What should I do if I am not satisfied?
First of all, when you are dissatisfied with the consultation at first, you must tell the consultant immediately. The dialogue in the consultation is free. Psychological counselors argue that during the consultation time, you can freely express whatever you think, and your expression will not be judged by morality. A mature psychological counselor will discuss the counseling relationship with you with an open attitude.
When you can discuss it openly, the counselor will discuss with you what happened in the consultation, which may be an opportunity to further promote the consultation.
In addition, when visitors feel that the consultation effect is not good, there may be the following reasons:
(1) The methods and techniques used by consultants are not suitable for your situation. At this time, if the situation is reflected in time, it will help the consultant to adjust the consultation plan and find a more suitable intervention plan;
(2) In some stages of the consultation process, the effect is really negligible. For example, in the evaluation period at the initial stage of consultation, the main task is to evaluate rather than consult;
(3) The counselor misjudged your tolerance. Sometimes the consultant is worried that using changing technology will make you unbearable, so the consultation process is slow. You need to tell the consultant how you feel in time and let him speed up.
(4) Some counseling problems are difficult to make progress, such as refractory depression and serious personality disorder.
(5) Sometimes you feel that the effect is not good because the consulting relationship between you and the counselor is facing problems. At this time, whether you can reflect your dissatisfaction and anger to him and help you both face the crisis of this relationship is particularly important.
When you report the situation to the consultant, generally speaking, the consultant will accept the professional supervision of experts at home and abroad in addition to his own adjustment.
If you are still not satisfied with the counseling effect after a period of adjustment and intervention, you can make a referral/referral to a psychological counselor.
6. Can you guarantee the effect?
Consultants have experienced long-term systematic professional training and maintained lifelong learning; Consultants regularly accept case supervision and discussion hosted by experts at home and abroad; Ask from time to time during the consultation process to find out whether you have received effective help. Consultants ensure the professionalism of the consultation process. At the same time, the consultation effect can be achieved through the cooperation between the two parties. The consultant does not promise the consulting effect. Visitors are the main body of consultation/analysis. It is very important for visitors to trust and invest in consultation. After the real consultation, visitors will have their own personal feelings about the consultation.
7. How to judge whether the consultant is reliable or not?
In the current consulting market, it is really difficult to judge whether consultants are reliable or not. In a word, I personally think we can judge from these aspects:
(1) Does the consultant abide by professional ethics?
Confidentiality, value neutrality, avoiding double relations, etc. Counseling without professional ethics is not safe.
Revealing the privacy of visitors without their authorization (for example, talking about cases in public media), exaggerating the effect of promised consultation (for example, promising to cure all diseases and ensure the consultation effect, etc.). ), as well as using visitors to obtain other benefits other than consulting fees in the consultation process, are all phenomena that do not abide by professional ethics.
(2) Is there a professional setting (time setting and charging setting)?
Consultation without setting is not professional consultation and can't really help visitors. The setting of time charge is the framework and tool of consultation. Such as monthly consultation, anytime consultation, free consultation, etc. , are not formal consultations.
(3) Has the consultant accepted personal experience for a certain period of time (generally speaking, it is long)?
Personal experience refers to the psychological consultation (or recliner analysis) of senior consultants as visitors.
(4) Does the consultant accept professional supervision?
Supervision refers to the consultant paying senior consultants or peer consultants to guide and discuss the difficulties encountered in their consultation.
(5) Has the consultant received systematic, regular and reliable professional training, and maintained a lifelong learning attitude and regular professional training?
Trained as a consultant, having a consultant certificate is only a legal threshold. Personally, I think it takes at least five years of solid theoretical study, technical study, reading discussion, personal experience and other systematic professional growth to really do a good job in consultation.
(6) Are counselors full-time psychologists?
Consulting is a professional job. It takes a long time and a lot of energy to engage in psychological work for professional promotion, and it is difficult to get a part-time job in leisure time. At present, there are about one million people who have obtained the second-and third-grade certificates of psychological counselors in China, and only a few are really qualified for counseling. Counselor's license is only the entry threshold. Those who are really qualified for professional psychological counseling are basically engaged in psychological work or personal practice.
? This is the standard to judge whether a consultant is reliable, and it is also my professional requirement for myself.
? Insisting on reliability means that the consultant himself needs to pay a lot of time, energy, money and other costs for professional growth, and it also means that the consultation provided to visitors is professional.
8. Does the age of the consultant matter?
The professional development of psychological counseling in China is not long. Physiological age is different from professional age, and professional age is more valuable than physiological age. Psychological counseling is not the teaching of life experience, community work, preaching or one-off medical consultation. It is a professional systematic work that uses psychological counseling theory and skills to face the hearts of visitors, and the most important thing is professional ability.
9. Can my husband divorce without consulting me?
Although sometimes some couples will finally make up through family therapy, this is not the purpose of psychological counseling. Generally speaking, the goal of marriage counseling will be to help both of you clearly see the essence of marital conflict and what the solution is. If you are sure that the relationship between your has come to an end, it may help you get a "healthy divorce". Of course, if you finally find yourself still in love, it may be the "second time".
10. Can counseling make me forget something?
Although there will be some short-term forgetfulness during hypnosis and EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing), it is actually a "side effect" of psychological counseling. What a counselor does is to help you face painful memories and improve your tolerance. Recognizing the impact and significance of painful events will help you grow up and mature your personality.
1 1. Have you ever been in a situation like mine before?
Similar problems may have been encountered before, and at the same time, due to great differences between individuals, such as living environment, family education, experience, etc., these factors determine that similar problems may have different reasons, and similar problems need to be handled with different technologies or methods. In addition, if I have never encountered your problem, I will seek case supervision and discussion from experts at home and abroad to ensure professional consultation.
12. Is it effective for me to help my friends and relatives consult?
When helping relatives and friends to consult, we can provide some intervention knowledge or emotional relief skills by knowing the general situation of each other and things, which has a certain change effect, but the effect is very limited because we can't know each other's real thoughts and emotional experiences. If there is a real effect, it is recommended that customers consult in person, and the consultant will evaluate the visitors in all aspects and then conduct targeted consultation.
13. Why do you try to avoid contact with people outside the consultation after the consultation begins?
There are clear requirements for the professional ethics of consultants. We should try our best to avoid the double relationship with visitors, ensure the simplicity of consulting relationship, avoid non-objective judgment caused by the existence of other intimate relationships, and avoid affecting the interests of visitors other than consulting fees. Therefore, visitors and counselors cannot be both friends and counselors. Usually, the contact information provided by the consultant is only used to make an appointment for consultation time, and the consultation content is discussed during the consultation time.
14. How to start the consultation? Do you need to make any preparations?
For most visitors, the preparation before counseling is mainly to summon up courage and decide to start psychological counseling. You may need to have some basic knowledge about the setting of psychological counseling, such as reading this article in detail.
15. Why are the first three or four consultations the first interview? What's the use?
The first three or four counseling sessions, professionally called "initial interviews", are used to understand the counseling demands of the clients, evaluate their personality functions and confusion types, establish counseling trust, collect background information, help the clients understand the working methods of psychological counseling, and establish a preliminary follow-up counseling program. After the preliminary interview, enter the formal consultation stage. Responsible consultants need to complete the initial interview systematically and comprehensively, instead of showing the effect of "clever calculation" in one consultation.
16. How will the negotiation end?
When visitors have a clear understanding of their initial counseling demands, the original pain is no longer entangled or does not affect real life, and they feel the growth of personality and the enhancement of inner strength, they can consider whether to enter the final stage of counseling. Counselors will spend several consultation hours discussing the end of consultation with visitors, reviewing and summarizing, and trying to do well.
17. What should I pay attention to after the consultation?
A very important therapeutic factor in psychological counseling is counseling relationship. With the progress of counseling, there may be some emotional relief or improvement of symptoms. When you consider ending the consultation, you need to take time to discuss, review and summarize the consultation process, discuss whether and how to end it, and sometimes you may find something deeper. Most people have some problems that need to be analyzed in the separation relationship. If you miss the final consultation process, you may miss the opportunity to find and solve these problems.