Counseling
is any relationship in which one person is helping another person to better
understand and solve some problem. Friends and relatives provide a type
of counseling, as do clergy, academic advisors, teachers, and many others.
Counselors have a broad range of experience in developing "helping
relationships" and working with many different situations.
In counseling, we look for what we find good in ourselves. The good can
be used as a model for the things we would like to change.
Counseling is a change (growth: healing) process in which people (individuals,
groups, couples, and families) are helped to:
• Express themselves (catharsis) in a safe, supportive, collaborative,
non-judgmental climate;
• Identify, sort-out, clarify their problem laden "stories"
(deepened awareness of past & present story and alternative future
stories)
• Identify non-helpful patterns (e.g. "crisis" pattern);
• Learn, where appropriate, more helpful coping skills (e.g. "assertive
skills")
• Identify and achieve goals that are important to them.
For those with a humanistic bent, the ultimate goal for counseling is
to help people to recognize and accept their own internal worth, i.e.,
to integrate their learned habits of thinking about themselves (their
internal messages and images) and their learned behaviors (feelings, physical
responses, & actions) to be congruent with who they really are in
their essence (beautiful, loving people).
In this section we have discussed in detail different aspects of counseling,
like Pre test, Post test, Ongoing, Nutritional, counseling for women and
child and specific issue pertaining to specific High Risk groups and issues
of continuing unsafe sex behaviour