'We never had counselling in my day'

Recently in the Archers, Peggy expressed the view that we all coped without counselling during the war, at a time when things were tougher than they are now.

This is a serious point. We do, as a species, cope better when things are tougher. The churches seemed to get fuller during the Iraq invasion last
year, and at the Oxford Christian Institute for Counselling there was a brief lull in the people applying for counselling. Conversely, it is accepted that Christmas is a time of depression for many people.

I cringe when I hear, after a major disaster, that 'counsellors are standing by'. At OCIC we do not specialise in post-trauma counselling, but we do see people who have suffered from abuse or violence: we recognise the dilemma that the sufferer is helped by telling the story of what has happened, yet faces the risk that in re-telling it, it can feel like re-living it. The counsellor has to be especially sensitive at such a time to the needs of the client.

But most people come to OCIC for counselling with a different kind of despair, which may indeed be more prevalent in the weak and piping times of peace. Our prosperous, high pressure, competitive, secular society is a hostile environment. We can find it difficult not to measure ourselves by the standards of success in this world, and then we seem to beat ourselves up (another kind of abuse) when we fail by those worldly standards.

The role of a counsellor is (contrary to the Peggy Archer view) to help the sufferer to take responsibility for themselves and for their own changing health not to offer a spurious comfort. We are trained thoroughly in one or other theoretical framework, but neither the client nor usually the counsellor is aware of it during the counselling session: there is no psychobabble. The client becomes aware of being in a safe place where it is ok to say things they might find difficult to say even to their dearest friend. We never judge a person, whatever they bring to us, but counselling is sometimes challenging because we may help a person to confront themselves for the first time.

For the counsellor who is a Christian, Christ is at the centre of this process of change. My own experience is that the healing seems to come not from me, still less from any technique or theory, but from within the client. That is the miracle, and it is our wonderful privilege to be allowed to work in this way.

Giles Charrington is director of OCIC, the Oxford Christian Institute for Counselling, at First Floor, 119/121 London Road, Headington Oxford. 01865 308889 counselling@ocic.org.uk