It is common for visitors to be late. Most people who don't know much about psychological counseling can't help but feel that this time should be postponed. Anyway, the counselor looks so "idle" and spends so much money.
Sometimes, when a visitor is half an hour late for a 50-minute consultation, but is told that there are only 20 minutes left to talk without delay, it is easy to get angry with the consultant. However, when a consultant whose time and energy are rented is eagerly waiting for a visitor who claims to be "stuck in the road" and thinking about his situation, it is impossible to use that time for other purposes. Psychological counseling is an extremely tiring job. In order to ensure the quality of work, professional psychological counselors usually only receive a certain number of visitors regularly and steadily. In this way, the temporary change or absence of visitors will greatly interfere with the work of consultants.
In the process of psychological counseling and psychotherapy, everything that happens may be some kind of impedance, or we can say it is also a psychological defense mechanism, so we always understand these phenomena from the perspective of impedance.
In fact, resistance is a kind of anti-productivity to the process of our psychological counseling, to the counselor, or to the whole counseling process. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, it prevents the counselor from communicating freely with the visitor, from remembering, or from understanding, including the desire for change, which is counterproductive. All these things we call impedance, or further, the so-called impedance is the psychological defense mechanism, which is the concrete manifestation in the process of psychotherapy.
But the key point is that this is subconscious and not intentional. Why do you say that visitors don't hinder them? I think from the subconscious point of view, because a person touches the conflict and can't stand it, too much pain is something in his subconscious, so he will start the defense mechanism. Once the defense mechanism is started in the process of psychological counseling, it is an impedance. In other words, I subjectively want to touch my inner wound, but I'm not ready yet. I have always used various defenses to deal with it, and such defenses will also appear in the consulting relationship. So, this is inevitable. Therefore, from the perspective of psychoanalysis, it is the main treatment content of psychoanalysis to identify the impedance and work on it in the process of psychotherapy.
Impedance is a very common phenomenon in psychological counseling. Therefore, when doing standardized and systematic psychotherapy, we should have basic settings. Only with the setting can we feel or perceive these phenomena sensitively, because the setting means that there is a fixed time every time, and then we will know why we are late and ask for an extension.
Even if we don't immediately make a savage analysis of the "impedance" of visitors' "lateness", it should be noted that consultants are not obliged to pay for the consultation time wasted by visitors themselves. Learning to be responsible for yourself is the first step to growth.
The relationship between psychological counselors and visitors is always just a consulting relationship. However, the consultation setting based on this relationship is always challenged by visitors. If the consultant does not maintain the settings, it will harm the interests of both parties.
As the saying goes, "No rules can make Fiona Fang", sometimes we tell tourists that if you want me to get along with you in the way you want, first of all, I can't. Secondly, if you choose to consult me, you have to "bear" that I am such a consultant. Consulting is a waste of time and money if you want to change consultants instead of yourself.
However, compliance with this provision is a prerequisite for the two sides to continue their consultations. We like to give the most frank explanation: when the consultant suffers from the loss of time, economy and energy because of the constant breakthrough of the visitors, he is bound to feel angry, and once I have a persistent strong negative emotion towards the visitors, it is difficult to provide them with the help they deserve.
Another common phenomenon is that tourists ask for an extension. For example, in the face of a visitor with attachment problems, counselors often detect the anti-communism of the visitor through their overtime consultation, and show a role that needs to be taken care of through helplessness and dependence. Different visitors have different meanings in different situations.
Although some consultants clearly know the impact of delay, they will not strictly follow this setting. Maybe they didn't take into account that if the time exceeds, the responsibility of the consultant will be reduced. Within the specified time, they will feel that this is their responsibility and should concentrate on it. However, beyond the time limit, they will feel that this is their own time. Tourists want to delay, listen or not, so they won't have so high demands on themselves, they will feel uncomfortable and sleepy.
In the face of the visitor's repeated requests for an extension, maybe you can tell him, "I also need to sort out and digest so much information." If I continue, I will feel a little tired and not responsible for you. If it is really necessary, do you want us to make an appointment to clarify this issue? " Or give the visitor a reminder at the end. If he insists on talking, he can deal with his current emotions first, and then let him give a general explanation. Then discuss the following detailed discussion and so on. , is a strategy and method for us to learn from. As long as it is useful for consultation, we can try it, just like solving math problems. Usually it is only a single method in our experience library. When we have more experience, it gradually becomes multi-solution, diverse and flexible.