Psychological Healing: A Co-constructed Magic

Employees come for counseling with a variety of concerns, from managing work stress to interpersonal relationship, and financial problems to emotion management. whichever concerns employees may have, counselors will provide objective third-party opinion and enable them to look into their concerns with insight and optimism. Ultimately, employees will be empowered to make decisions and make changes based on their own initiatives. In this article, we will share with you our viewpoints of counselling.

Counseling is a Co-constructed Magic

When we are under a desperate state, we will look for a magic to occur to have our problems healed. We expect our unwanted feelings can be disappeared with a flick of the finger. People will wait for the magic to occur until the problems deteriorate to the level that they can no longer stand with. Then, some people will come to seek for counseling and they expect the counselor to be their magician. Most of the time, counseling do provide a magical experience to the persons who seek for assistance. Why? Most of the times, when we are trapped by our problems, we are being caught by our accustomed affective, cognitive, and behavioral patterns. Hence, we can see no hope from our old frame of reference. Counselor assists us to have a fresh and new perspective of our existing problems. Counselor will act as a coach. He or she assists us to review our present situations, to identify our strengths and weaknesses, and reflects to us our “blind spots”. However, it is a reciprocal helping process. We rely on the input from counselor to assist us to tackle our problems on one hand; counselor relies on the openness of ourselves to disclose our secrets to them. If counseling is a magic, then, it is a constructed magic of both the counselor and ourselves.

I don't want to recall my past experiences

To some people, counselor is an archaeologist. He or she will dig up the ancient “treasures” of a person’s emotions, and it creates anxiety and unpleasant emotions. People prefer to forget the past and deny its’ existence. We want to forget our old times because it reminds us our weakness and failure, our fears or hurts. Hence, we prefer to ignore its existence. However, Our past constructs an important part of our present being. Hence, we should not be frighten by it and take it as an excuse to stop ourselves to seek for assistance. We should embrace our past experiences and have them integrated into our present and future life. In fact, the focus of counselling is not about the past, but on the “here and now” context. Counselor will not explore the past unless it is where the blockages rest. To facilitate the individuals to put their perception, values and experience into perspective will then become necessary helping process.

The Giant Step

Counselling is about making changes. Stepping out of our “comfort zone” is never easy. In 1969, with the help of technology, Neil Armstrong stepped out of mankind’s comfort zone by taking the first step on the airless moon. “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” He said. With the assistance of Employee Assistance Program professionals, you can make a giant leap in your own lives.

No more hesitation, pick up the phone and call Employee Development Service today to inquire for employee assistance program.