A Ramble About Counseling

I’ve done a fair amount of counseling over the last twenty years. Oddly enough, I’ve never really been a professional counselor. I’ve never really gotten paid for it, and it always seems to happen when I least expect it, in just those right moments. Near as I can tell, it’s my own peculiar “charism”, otherwise known as a spiritual gift. I know it’s not a natural one, because every time I’ve found myself in a counseling situation thinking I was prepared and could handle it, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Those situations still make me twitch when I think about them.

I’ve never been naturally suited to counseling, but it’s never really been much of a choice for me either. It happens in those moments when Grace takes over and says “Sit down, buckle up, shut your mouth, and hold on!” It started when I was in high school, and over the years I’ve learned more and more to keep my proverbial mouth shut, even as I hear words and ideas flowing from my literal mouth that weren’t my own thoughts to begin with; and begin to know, understand, and see things about the person which I couldn’t possibly have known, and often don’t remember after the fact. More often than not, I learn just as much from what comes out of my mouth as the person I’m counseling does, and wish I could remember more of it.

In any counseling situation, I’ve learned more and more to say less and less. Often, the best thing I can do, as those situations have taught me, is to say nothing and just listen as well as I can. I’ve often heard that you need to take the person where they’re at. As I’ve been around and near more professional counselors in the last few years, I’ve made the observation that that is too simplistic of a way to put it.

There are three ways to take someone where they’re at: 1)where the person believes himself to be at, 2)where you, the counselor, believe the person to be at, and 3)where the person is actually at. It complicates it further in that each interaction between two or more people changes each person in either a large or small way so that where they were at prior to speaking to you is different from where they are at when speaking to you which is also different from where they are at after speaking to you. It’s much like trying to measure both the speed and the position of a sub-atomic particle. You can measure the speed accurately, or you can measure the position accurately, but never both because just the fact you are trying to measure it changes the measurement. People are much the same way.

I found the best way to guage a person is to say nothing, give no input, and just let them talk. Let them tell you where they’re at. After they do so, make no judgments about where they think they’re at. Most often, I’ve come to realize, there’s absolutely nothing I can say which can actually make a person see things the way I do. I’ve argued my case before. I’ve tried to persuade. It never works, especially if a person is convinced that they are a certain way and life is a certain way. More often then not, attempts to persuade only cause the person to reinforce their own view of things against the view I am trying to superimpose.

The person you are trying to counsel is never going to be coming from the same place you are at. They may be coming from similar places, they may have had similar experiences. But they are not you. Attempting to approach them with “common sense” almost always fails because common sense is relative to the person who believes it should be common.

In many ways, the person we are now is made up of the experiences we have had from birth, as well as the choices to which those experiences have led. No one, from creation until now, has had the exact same set of experiences. No one has the exact same brain chemistry. No one makes their choices in exactly the same manner.

I often get the sense, as I watch other people giving counsel, that, as they initially begin to listen to the person, they know or believe they know where the person is actually at, even if the person is telling them something completely different from the counselor’s conclusion. While it is true that counselors often get told about a reality which doesn’t exist, it is equally true that such a reality often exists in the person’s mind and is how they are perceiving the world. In such a case, it occurs to me that the perceived reality must be really listened to and taken into serious consideration when given counsel, even if the counselor does not perceive it as reality.

Often, what any one person takes as reality is very different from what another person perceives as reality. This is why we have Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Buddhists, Creationists and Evolutionists, and so on. This is why we have so many differing points of view, because the experiences and choices which we have made and encountered have “programmed” us to perceive reality in different and opposing ways, even if it is the same reality we are perceiving.

All too often, it seems to me, counseling is used as a tool to try and get the other person to see things the way the counselor sees them, because, of course, the counselor sees them in the “right way”. Or, the counselor is the one in his “right mind”. All too often, the counseling session is used to pass judgment on the other person’s perception of reality.

It is true that one person’s perception of reality may lead that person into harming themselves or others. Do we intervene then? Are they really causing harm to themselves or another person? What is the rule to go by in deciding whether or not to intervene, and who’s to say we’re right in doing so? These are all questions, I think, which really need to be contemplated.

Ultimately, the only one who can really change a person’s life is that person himself. Others would argue here that God is the one who changes lives. Again, it is a matter of perception. God goes out of His way to arrange our experiences in such a way to where we will make the choices He favors as healthy ones (as He is the only One qualified to decide what Reality actually is and where a person is actually at). But when it comes right down to it, we still have to make those choices. God can throw everything at a person imaginable, He can rain Grace down on that person in unimaginable torrents, but that person still has to make the choice to go this way or that. God won’t do it for him. Even if He’s capable of forcing him to choose one or the other He won’t do it. It’s that person’s choice to continue to accept his perceived reality, or allow a change in that perceived reality towards what God is telling that person is Reality.

I have become convinced that there is nothing I can say or do with a person which will change their life. Nor should I ever dupe myself into thinking that I can (sadly, I’ve done just that before, it wasn’t pretty). My interaction with them might cause a change in direction, as all interactions must, but the person must make those choices for themselves. It must be their choice whether they decide life is fair or unfair, they’re ugly or pretty, smart or stupid, priceless or worthless, and they will decide that based on their experiences both old and new, long past and recent, including the conversation they hold with me whether I say anything or not.