Advanced Counseling Issues & Advanced Counseling Intervention I

It was touching base with self and one another when Mr Tan seated us in a circle and requested each one of us to share about the following:

1. Where am I as a counselor?
2. How did I come into this field?
3. How did I see counseling as I started out?
4. How have my views about counseling changed?
5. How do I presently work as a counselor?

My counseling journey started out with me embarking on the Counseling Psychology diploma at the LEE College. I wanted to understand why people behave the way they do and how I can impact a positive change in people’s behaviour. Over the years at LEE College and ECTA, I have come to grasp the intricacies and dynamics of interventive counseling. This is far from the view I once held of counseling. Interventive counseling requires me to be actively listening, being both humanly and professionally present, tarrying with the client when she enters the seemingly bottomless pit and waits while she bottoms out of it.

The counseling equipping has made me more psychological-minded. It increases my capacity to empathize more, especially towards my significant others. My theoretical orientation is geared towards a CP framework. When the need calls for a walk back to the family of origin, I will employ Redecision Therapy. I have also started using CBT to address distortions in thought pattern. I believe these will be the 3 primary approaches I will introduce in my counseling work.

I am happy where I am today. I think I am a good enough parent, a good enough mediator and a good enough counselor. With God’s help, I expect myself to grow, develop and mutate in terms of effectiveness and potency.

The purpose of the above exercise is to slow us down to be introspective, to reflect and to take stock. Mr Tan reminds us that ‘to advance we need to retreat’ for our souls to catch up. There is a need to look ‘at’ self and ‘within’ self in order to grow deeper.

It also makes comical and psychological sense when he shared that ‘it takes 1 counselor to change a bulb, but the bulb must want to change.’ When I look with client in empathy and look at client professionally, I need to find something lovable and good about him.