ABSTRACT
Counselling is about self-help; an active, collaborative process designed to enable a person to explore unresolved issues in a secure environment and to better understand why they may be causing them difficulties. It can be bewildering trying to work out how one can have arrived at a particular and perhaps stubborn way of looking at things, particularly if the consequences are clearly unproductive. Various emotional factors, or events people perceive as significant, influence what they store in their minds and what they delete from memory. Equally there may be occasions where a crucial moment gets lost but the aftermath remains. A single incident of being bullied at school, perhaps long forgotten, can lead to an unconscious need to please as a form of self-protection which extends into adult life. Counselling is about change; changing from ways of thinking and acting that are not working for a person.
