Glenn Duthie: Counselling

Koru

Counselling: An overview

Counselling is not always a comfortable experience as often what we need to talk about is difficult and painful. It is my belief that we can work together with curiosity and hope to create a positive vision for the future. This encourages you to articulate your preferred way of living and being rather than just what you are trying to move away from. This means unpacking those unhelpful identity stories we tend to live in order to create alternative preferred stories.

There are many reasons why people talk to counsellors.

  • You may want to break unhealthy behaviours or negative thought patterns that are having a detrimental effect on your quality of life.
  • Help to change patterns of relating that are causing conflict.
  • Often people just need a compassionate ear to help them process life’s disappointments and hurts.
  • There are often specific problems such as anger, addiction issues, grief and loss or depression.
  • Managing family and step-family relationships that create stress and conflict.
  • Processing trauma and managing post-traumatic stress.
  • Sometimes people seek counselling to gaining new perspectives, direction in life or simply to feel listened too and understood.

Counselling: My role

Because counselling is a very personal experience, one size does not fit all. How long counselling takes depends on a variety of factors including the nature of the issues. Most sessions are 1 hour in duration. By the end of our first session together I will be able to give you an indication of how many sessions I would recommend that best suits your needs.

I take confidential notes during each session. These briefly outlining what we have talked about and serve as a prompt for our next session. These notes belong to you. You are more than welcome to have a copy if you wish. While in most instances what is talked about in counselling is confidential, there are some exceptions to this when a person’s safety is at risk. I am happy to discuss the extent and exceptions to confidentiality with you during our first session.