Whenever a person asks for help with some issue in his/her life, a safe answer suggested is to get counseling. The trouble with your marriage? Get counseling. Are kids acting up? Send them for counseling. Has a flight get canceled? Try some counseling!
It is assumed that every counseling is good. But why would that be? By counseling, most people mean interacting with another person, and receiving feedback in the form of interpretation, clarification, or advice. How would a person feel about the idea that if his kids are acting up, he should send them to a stranger and have the stranger give them advice?
There is no shortage of bad advice but is it assumed that advice is OK, as long as someone is calling it counseling? One could say that there is the assumption that a counselor has had proper training, and the advice would be better than the random one that is received from a stranger.
There is one thing about counseling that does guarantee a certain degree of safety– any recommendation to undergo counseling is usually ignored! But in all seriousness, the people who are referred for counseling are often vulnerable, and so the issue of blindly sending them for advice from strangers does deserve some consideration.
There are different types of counseling. The counseling done by advanced-degree practitioners like psychiatrists and psychologists is referred to as therapy rather than counseling. Therapy can be further broken down into different types, and some conditions are more responsive to one type of therapy than another. Supportive therapy is the appropriate approach for a person undergoing trauma and expressive therapy would be the choice for a person who wants to develop better insight into how his/her mind works.
What is Supportive vs. Expressive Therapy?
Supportive therapy aims at strengthening the person’s defense mechanisms, as those defenses are what keep a person sane during times of stress. Expressive therapy aims at questioning assumptions, digging up repressed content, and challenging long-held impressions of relationships. If a person is already under a great deal of stress and undertakes frequent sessions of expressive therapy, he is at risk of getting his condition worsened.
During addiction, the addict is very stressed out due to which patients experience contradictions after getting into therapy. The using addict is so full of BS that psychodynamic therapy is generally a waste of time.
A psychiatrist might see addiction in a way that runs counter to the view of a doctor. Psychiatrists often see addiction as a symptom of something; doctors on the other hand see addiction as a primary disorder that may be the cause of psychiatric symptoms or illness.
The doctor worries that the addict in therapy will start to find reasons for what he is doing whereas, the point is to just stop doing it. Addiction treatment is challenging and it takes a person who can distinguish the real person and the BS person, and use the BS person’s own words back on him to try to break through the cocky front. This is the work of a good addiction counselor. There are plenty of counselors who think they are treating addiction by providing education and support, but the great counselors are the ones who are addicts themselves, who hate addiction, and who come to work ready to rumble every day.
So if you are going through any kind of addiction, make sure that you get yourself into a good treatment where you get proper therapy sessions. Our centre is one of the best rehabilitation centres in New Delhi. Contact us now to get yourself enrolled.