Counselling Services

try and verify it by checking with other sources. You could even ask them to help with this process. If something they tell you sounds suspicious, ask them for their source for the information. A skilled and confident worker will be happy to provide it to you. A less skilled worker may tell you that his or her boss told them the answer. OK, you can check that elsewhere and suspend judgement for the time being. An incompetent worker will become cagy and defensive. If you get this sort of response to your queries, it’s probably time to start looking elsewhere for your advice and information.

…tell your feelings to a chair…

In the 1970’s and early 80’s, counselling services dominated the drugs field. People didn’t have much of a clue what to do about drug problems, and so what they tended to do was hire a counsellor. Bad move.

As a consequence, the drugs field was filled with a whole bunch of amateur therapists, who were experimenting with a pile of worse-than-useless stuff like ‘gestalt therapy’ and ‘non-directive counselling’. And so clients were encouraged to think of a chair as their mother, and then tell the chair what they’d really like to say to her. While this might have been interesting for the counsellor, and either fun or a pain in the arse for the client, according to the research, it was largely a waste of time when it came to the treatment of addiction.

Which isn’t to say that counselling doesn’t have a role. There are two models of counselling in particular that are proving to be of some use in the treatment of drug problems and addiction.