Hitting one of life’s challenging crossroads or crisis points can be terrifying, especially if your choice has unknown, unintended, and far-reaching consequences. It’s even more distressing if you don’t have anyone to turn to who you can trust or whose objective opinions you value.
You may feel a sense of loss, isolation, or trapped. You’re at a loss for what to do or how to solve the problems. The walls are closing in. You’re sinking deeper and deeper into an emotional whirlpool—an existential crisis.
You heard that counselling can help. However, you have not visited a professional mental health counsellor before, so you’re unsure what to expect.
What is Counselling Anyway?
According to the American Counseling Association, counselling is, “a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals.”
The keywords are “professional” rather than “amateur”, “untrained” or “armchair quarterback”; and “empower” instead of “judge”, “criticize” or “give lame advice”, which can further complicate matters or worse, just plain wrong.
In counselling, you and our counsellors work as a team. We work together to identify practical, attainable goals and potential remedies for issues that cause emotional turmoil. We strive to improve communication and coping skills; strengthen self-esteem; and promote behavioural change and optimal mental health.
Counselling is for the Brave
In a culture like ours, where the tradition of self-reliance and stoicism in the face of adversity is drilled into our psyche, we endanger the deepest, dearest, and most dynamic aspects of our own being.
Inadvertently, society discourages us from openly discussing our struggles for fear of appearing weak. Oblivious to the fact that confronting our fears and life’s ups and downs requires genuine courage. Nonetheless, life’s challenges can sometimes be exceedingly demanding to the extent of overwhelming our capacity to cope. It’s at such times that consulting a counsellor can be particularly beneficial.
It’s hard to understand how you’re feeling, or you don’t even know. That’s why sometimes people seek counselling.
Metta World Peace
Seeing a counsellor for mental health issues is analogous to seeing a medical doctor for physical ailments. It makes no sense to feel apologetic or awkward, in any rational way, for you to visit a doctor. Consultation with a mental health counsellor follows the same logic. In both cases, you are taking proactive steps to address your issues.
We must recognise that mental health and well-being are long-established prerequisites for living a purposeful and fulfilling life.
We must ditch the social disapproval and outdated stigma associated with mental health issues.
We must appreciate that receiving mental health counselling is not a luxury in our fiercely competitive world but rather a necessity.
The significance of mental health cannot be overstated. In fact, the Health Promotion Board was founded in 2001 to promote mental health in Singapore. Similarly, the Ministry of Therapy was established with the explicit goal of promoting mental health in Singapore and around the world.
Life-Changing Benefits Counselling Offers You
People seek counselling for a variety of reasons. Counselling is a powerful tool for resolving individual, couple, and family issues. It can help you regardless of whether your problems are psychological, emotional, behavioural, or spiritual in nature.
Counselling helps you:
- Deal with difficult emotions and problems in a safe and supportive environment.
- Understand yourself better and overcome personal obstacles that may be holding you back from achieving your goals in life.
- Develop greater self-awareness and understanding of your behaviour and emotions.
- Improve your communication skills and provide you with the necessary means you require to express yourself and handle conflict constructively, allowing you to build stronger relationships.
- Boost your assertiveness, self-esteem, and self-confidence.
- Manage stress and set healthy boundaries.
- Lower anxiety, depressive moods, or the adverse effects of past trauma.
- Comes to terms with past experiences and promotes factors of resilience.
- Accepts the things you can’t change and work towards achievable changes.
Importantly, our counsellors accept you as you are, without judgement or prejudice.
During the counselling process, you will be guided to identify and discuss your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that contribute to and perpetuate problematic issues.
Following that, you will be guided in formulating workable solutions that align with your current strengths and capabilities. This is necessarily an iterative process. Your thinking styles, behavioural patterns, problem-solving abilities, and other personal characteristics will be stretched and strengthened on a regular basis, allowing you to gain self-mastery over time.
Now that you’re aware of the benefits of counselling, if you’re struggling with a personal issue that could benefit from the support of a qualified mental health counsellor, contact us immediately. We are here to help.
