Can there be any doubt that the most difficult part of learning to be a counsellor (a life-long task) is the challenge to become self-aware?
What makes it so hard?
I can think of several reasons. There are always some things about ourselves that are “too hard” to know because we really don’t want to know them. Perhaps this is because there is some discrepancy between how we want to see ourselves (or how we want to be seen), and this other ‘disturbing’ part of myself that is best ignored.
Or perhaps people have indicated that they see something about us that we don’t see, or see only vaguely, and we are left feeling over-exposed. There might be some belief somewhere that people won’t like me if they really knew me.
Maybe we have some awareness of demons lurking down below, and we’re afraid that if we open the door to them we will be thrown into turmoil, or find ourselves in a mess that we don’t know how to get out of.
Or maybe it’s just that it takes time and effort over a long period and it’s easier to turn our attention to things more readily comprehended.
Or again, perhaps the experience of developing our self-awareness is a task that seems all too remote from the practical business of helping others. We want to concentrate on our skills, and then ‘get on with it’.
At Lifeline, we don’t want to take the least step to diminish the place of self-awareness development either in our initial training or in our ongoing training and supervision. That’s because without this emphasis we will become a danger both to our callers and clients, and also to ourselves.
Let’s have a closer look at the risks. I reckon I can put myself up there with the best in terms of sincerity and desire to help, yet at the same time I am aware of just how easy it is to conceal from myself some ulterior motives. My willingness to help can mask my need for status and prestige. I can become attached to the power that assisting others brings me. By now my helping is starting to become a helping myself, at the expense of the other. In some disguised fashion I am morphing into a taker rather than a receiver or a giver.
Another perspective on the risks. Callers and clients often unconsciously evoke from us the very behaviour that harmed them in the first place, way back. Without self-awareness, I will get unconsciously hooked into offering what is unconsciously sought, with the result that the person in need misses yet another occasion for growth and change.
Without self-awareness, my kitbag of helping resources will be impoverished. Even if I regard myself as being well equipped, it may well be that all I really have in my bag is a hammer and a nail-punch. That being the case, it stands to reason that people will still feel treated like a nail, when likely they are made of softer and more vulnerable materials.
And then, what about myself? What about my real needs (not, I mean, my need for power, prestige, possession)? I refer more to my need for support, the need for rest, for attending to the grief that arises from working with others’ broken lives? What happens to me, the caregiver, when I don’t even know that I am running out of steam and motivation? Or out of compassion?
Counselling is a complex process and there’s a danger in over simplifying. But to court that danger, I would like to suggest that one important view of the counselling process is to help our clients/callers to tolerate their feelings, feelings that up to now have been too frightening, or too overwhelming to allow. You guessed it! If I can’t recognise and tolerate the feelings in myself, there’s little chance I can assist another to do it.
Counselling without self-awareness is an empty promise. With self-awareness it is the hope of new beginnings.