COUNSELING PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy of Counseling Papers

Philosophy of Counseling Papers

Introduction

There is always more than one way to do things in a right way, which is the definite thing I have learnt about counseling. Each and every person looking for a counselor for help, respond differently to helping approaches from others. Every person in this world possess different unique experience or life than others, same is the case with counselors; that is why every counselor adopt different approach to help his or her clients. Emotions like pain, sadness, love, affection etc. are feelings people face at some stage in their life. However, some people are hesitant to share their problems with counselors, while other takes their heart out while sharing their problems. (Dahl, 1982) Everyone feel so differently than other in many ways and that is why everybody used different approach to solve their problem. These dissimilarities in belief let counselors to offer something unique to help seeker.

Everybody believes in different philosophies, some people might agree with my approach other may not have the same opinion. That is why, in this realm, there is always a room for divergence. (Bolcher, 1966)

My Counseling Philosophy

I believe in certain actions that jointly constitute my philosophy of counseling, which I will be discussing in this paper. Those include faith and hope, focusing on future, action orientation, helping people, goals setting, building relationship between helper and help seeker and finally Biblical truth.

My philosophy for counseling is rooted in the reality of optimism, and the optimism in me nourished my association more with God, as I am the witness of miracles, God has performed in my life and how such miracles bring changes in the life of other people. This is the optimism that attracted me towards the positive psychology, and the book The Skilled Helper I read. Egan (2002) defined this phenomenon of positive psychology as to help the seeker of help to identify the potential s/he has got in him, and how to utilize it. (Egan, 2002)

To see people talking about mental illness is very much common as compare to the people who talk about healthy mind. Much of the time people spend is talking about what is wrong, however people who discuss right things in their life are very little in number. If positive psychology would be keep in mind, it is believed that everyone has problems, and religious books like Bible and other agree on this. (Nouwen, 1979) Will I let the negative part of my life to take over the positive spirit in my life? This is the question that acknowledges Nouwen's approach.

Faith and Hope

I strongly believe in faith. In Hebrews 11:1 faith has been defined as, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Having belief in possibilities is faith, especially when it was considered for future. Believing in future is not easy and require much faith, because tomorrow never comes. But hope can be build by laying down the foundation that tomorrow ...