What is co-counselling and how can it help me?   

 

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What is Co-counselling?

Co-counselling is reciprocal peer counselling.  It is reciprocal because participants take turns to be in the role of client and counsellor. It is peer because all co-counsellors have the same status.  It is counselling because you talk through or work on the things you want to change in your life with the attention and help of a counsellor.

It operates within a network of people who have satisfactorily completed the basic Fundamentals training course.  Each person chooses for themselves how much they want to do as an equal partner in pairs or in groups.  An important feature of co-counselling is that it is free - you exchange time and skills.

 How does it work?

Theories about why and how co-counselling works are perhaps not as important as the fact that it does work!

When you are in an environment (physically and emotionally) where you feel safe, valued and cared for, sooner or later you will in some way start to let out your emotions.  When this happens you will find that you feel better and usually start to discover things about yourself.  There is nothing very new or startling about this: many people (and even some large companies) are seeing the practical benefits of this type of personal development.  Co-counselling is a particularly effective self-help form of growth work.

Co-counsellors believe that we all have the potential to live more fully, to cooperate and find a balance between our own and others interests.  However, painful experiences in the past have conditioned us to respond in particular set ways.  These 'patterns' of behaviour restrict our choices so that when we meet new situations we are not free to respond in the most appropriate way.

You gain access to more of your potential by learning to explore and then release suppressed feelings which make you behave in 'patterned' ways.  The release or catharsis is known in co-counselling as 'discharge', and it has positive and beneficial effects.

Discharge is more than just thinking through and talking about issues: it involves emotional and physical processes.  Co-counselling recognises that we cannot separate what goes on in our minds and our bodies.

We also find that adults as well as children grow through being loved and appreciated rather than through criticism.  We practice valuing our own strengths and qualities.  This helps us to become free of the ways in which we have been taught to put ourselves down.

Co-counselling is safe yet powerful.  Its safety comes from each person being in charge of themselves, knowing the skills and choosing what they want to do.  When we talk of people taking risks, the sort of dangers are that they might find out something uncomfortable about themselves - or they might end up totally changing their lives! However, each person decides for themselves what changes they want to make.  Co-counselling enables us to be clearer about our choices and decisions.

Who is it for?

Co-counselling is a powerful tool for personal development, and it is effective for people who are functioning reasonably well by society's standards - you don't have to he ill to be better!

It's right for you if:

You may not be ready for co-counselling if:

What will I gain?

After successfully completing the basic training course, you will receive a list of co-counselling contacts throughout the UK.  You can arrange sessions with any other co-counsellors who are available.  You may opt to join or help form a local group: you will have the skills to share as and when you choose.  You will also have access to the international network of co-counsellors and to co-counselling workshops throughout this and other countries.

 How do I learn?

The basic training is a 40-hour course in the fundamentals of co-counselling.  No two courses will be exactly the same, but they are similar enough to allow you to work with any other trained co-counsellor anywhere in the world.

The course offers a safe, supportive yet challenging environment, working much of the time in a circle sitting on floor cushions.  The reason cushions are used is the greater freedom of movement they permit: chairs keep us stuck in one position, and within ourselves.  Co-counselling is about becoming unstuck!

As part of setting up the environment the group will adopt a set of working or ground rules.  Of prime importance are strict rules of confidentiality.  Other rules cover listening to other people and not expressing opinions about them, speaking for ourselves and commitment to the course.  You take responsibility for your own learning.

Learning co-counselling is mainly about learning how to be the client.  In the process you learn counselling skills and techniques and you use them yourself to work on your own material and to support your partner when you are in the role of counsellor. In Co-counselling international, the client is always in charge.  Our counselling skill is rooted in our experience as client.

As a client, you learn to work with your feelings rather than talk about or suppress them.  You learn how to discard old and worn out 'shoulds' and 'oughts'.  You can explore unhelpful behaviour patterns, often by dealing with current issues rather than digging for material.

As counsellor the basic skill is the ability to give clear, caring and non-judgemental 'free attention'.  The training also introduces you to a tool kit of observational skills, suggestions and interventions which can be offered to your client.  Interventions are made mainly as reminders or encouragement to keep the client focused in ways of working that they already know.

The Background

Co-counselling skills and theory are drawn from tried and tested methods in humanistic psychology developed over the last 30 years.  The original process was developed by Harvey Jackins and is known as Re-evaluation Counselling. Harvey Jackins still leads a worldwide organisation called Re-evaluation Counselling Communities (RCC).

In the early 70s, John Heron, founder of what is now the Human Potential Resource Group at the University of Surrey, was one of the first Re-evaluation Counselling trainers in this country.  Together with some other people in the USA, he began to feel that co-counselling with its basis of equality did not work well in a hierarchical organisation.  They set up Co-counselling International (CCI) as a peer network: a logical extension of the basic co-counselling relationship.  CCI is made up of networks of individuals and groups, some with hundreds of members eg London, and others which are quite small.

Even with its minimal structure, members of CCI do a lot of organising and there are numerous weekend or longer regional, national and international gatherings open to all members of CCI.  CCI is active in, for example, Holland, USA, Eire, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe.

Will it train me to be a counsellor?

Co-counselling does not train you to take responsibility for another person's work, only your own.  It is a set of tools designed for reciprocal use by peers/equals (ie not where one person is counsellor all the time).  In one-way counselling the client need not have any skills or awareness.

Co-counselling can give useful expertise and enable you to give much better one-way support, but it offers no formal qualifications or credentials.  It can help you to respond to emotions in a relaxed and positive way, and is a valuable training and confidential support system for those who care for, help or teach others.