While psychotherapy involves a significant amount of commitment as it requires time to be able to access greater depths, counselling is more short-term and allows for addressing the need to support a client as a priority.
The client referred to in this instance is totally anonymised and all facts are non-specific so as to avoid any part of their identity being compromised. The agreement with this particular client was to work together for a short period of time due to constraints that were in place.
While psychotherapy involves a significant amount of commitment as it requires time to be able to access greater depths, counselling is more short-term and allows for addressing the need to support a client as a priority. This woman was facing a crisis in her life as a survivor of cancer as well as surviving a betrayal from her partner in ways that are not of interest to us here. She was feeling lost and vulnerable and I was under the impression that she had lost the earth below her feet – she no longer knew who she was.
As we only had a small amount of sessions to work together, I supported her by recognising what she was feeling and it was important to have someone in her life to listen to her. She did an incredible amount of work in only a short period of time (three months) where she realised and owned her feelings, she appreciated herself for the courage involved in surviving cancer and she took some important decisions on how to move on with her life. Overall, this was a huge step and improvement and I was really pleased to see her love for life and starting to taking care of herself first and foremost.
