Counselling helps you to explore and manage whatever is happening in your life. Maybe you have some worries or concerns that you need to think through, or possibly some difficult decisions to make. Counsellors aim to help you through difficult situations and provide you with an opportunity to move towards a more satisfying and resourceful experience of life.

Counselling may help you with:

- Personal development issues
- Addressing and resolving particular difficulties
- Making decisions
- Coping with crises
- Making sense of complex and possibly conflicting feelings
- Improving relationships with others

The counsellor's role is to facilitate your self-exploration in ways that respect your values, personal resources and capacity for choice within your cultural context.Many of us expect to gain support from friends, colleagues and family members. Sometimes, however, our usual sources of support can be too close, inappropriate, or even part of the problem. At such times trained and experienced counsellors have been shown to be particularly effective in helping, especially in difficult or sensitive situations.

Counselling works best as a partnership. This begins with your counsellor as soon as you make contact. Good counsellors help you to explain what is important to you. He or she will ask questions and, naturally, will listen a great deal to begin with. Your counsellor will often clarify, reflect comments back to you and encourage further exploration so that you both develop an accurate picture of your situation. By looking at a situation from a fresh perspective, we often discover new possibilities.

You will find yourself encouraged to talk, to think and also to listen. Counselling is an interactive, two-way process. You do not have to tell the counsellor everything about you and your life, but you should try to be as open with your counsellor as you know you need to be.

Counsellors not only help you to understand your situation, but to review options for change and to make the best decisions about any subsequent actions. People often find that knowing they have a plan they have considered carefully from all angles improves self-confidence and optimism for the future.

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/advice/counselling/whatcounselling.shtml

- Help deal with difficult situations
- Achieve better personal insights
- Highly self-esteem
- Better understanding of relationships
- Establish and achieve goals
- Clearer sense of direction
- Understanding personal choices
- Personal/marriage relationships
- Career changes

When seeking counseling, often the client will not know what to expect. Below is some gathered information to help clarify who it works.