Co- counseling tips

Some things that you don't do in the counselor role

• try to comfort the person and stop them from discharging --- trying to cheer them up is
not helpful

• suggesting solutions to any problems they bring up is not helpful the idea is that they
will have fresh thoughts about what to do after the session if they discharge enough
during the session number three do you don't

• talk about your own problems or experiences

• it is OK to laugh a little or cry a little him along with them, but you never discharge
louder or more vociferously than the client does. 

What do you do are doing a session?

The goal is for the person you are counseling to discharge with your kind thoughtful attention
on them,

Discharge means:
• crying
• laughing
• talking in an animated way that is not repetitive,
• yawning
• shaking.

What helps people discharge?

• Notice what they say that seems to bring up feelings and repeat it back to them.

• Look at them with kind caring eyes (maybe squeeze their hand or put your hand on their
shoulder or something).

(This is the tricky one that people take years of co-counseling classes to get good at)
• Say a phrase or sentence that brings the feelings by contradicting them. This is called
giving a direction. It is often positive even though it's goal is not to cheer them up or get them
to stop feeling they're upset feelings. For example if someone is feeling that it's hopeless a
direction might be "try saying I see a tiny bit of hope".  Maybe the counselor can say the
direction or can encourage the client to repeat it -- you can tell if it's working if the person
starts to discharge.

One insight of co-counseling is "short understatements": that it often works better to say a
tiny little contradiction instead of a big sweeping one. So for example it might not work to say
"everything's gonna be all right" but it is more likely to work to say "maybe one little thing will
go right." You watch what makes them discharge and do more of that and stop doing what
doesn't seem to work. So there are no formulas.

The greatest personal growth benefit will come from working on early memories. That insight
is that today's troubles in the patterns we act out in our lives our stem from our early hurts
when we were babies and children. So the most personal growth meaning the most fresh
thinking and emotional slack will come from discharging on the earliest memories much more
than on what's troubling today.

One good technique is when someone is expressing a problem or an emotion like a fear or
anger or sadness is to ask them when was the first time you remember feeling bad or what or
asking what does that remind you of?
The standard structure of a counseling session

• Divide the time and decide who is going first (turns might be 25 minutes each so there's
time for hellos and goodbyes.) One person is the client and the other is the counselor for that
duration of time. Then you switch.

Often the client starts by saying “Goods and News.” It is important not to dive into whatever
is upsetting right away The purpose of this and at the present time questions at the end is to
maintain a balance of attention between pleasant things in the present with whatever is
upsetting. So counselor can remind the person by saying so what's good and new and the
client can answer with anything big or small (even the weather could be a positive piece of
news -- anything that's recent and positive.)

If the person is counseling is about something very upsetting then you need to spend longer
saying Goods and News to make sure there's a good balance of attention and similarly at the
end longer spend more time “getting their attention out” with present time tasks.

The bulk of the time in the middle is for the client to bring up whatever they want to counsel
on, maybe starting with something small going to something bigger. Most of the time the
counselor just listens and gives undivided warm attention to whatever the client says.

It’s fine for the counselor to say nothing at all. Sometimes the person being counseled knows
what to say in order to discharge with no suggestions. But if you, as the counselor notice that
something they say that seems to bring up feelings then you can repeat it back to them, or
suggest directions -- it's fine to say things as long as you’re not going into conversation mode
or fix-it mode.

You can say empathetic things like “oh I know” or ” that sounds really hard” as long as it
doesn't shut the person down. Basically there are no rules there is no formula -- you say
whatever helps the person discharge.

If they are stuck and just talking, not discharging, and can't seem to bring up the feelings, you
can ask more directive questions like “Is there anything upsetting about that situation?” or
“what from your past does that remind you of?”

The counselor is in charge of watching the time the client does not have to think about that.
(You can give a warning a few minutes before the time is up.)

The last stage is present time. Present time can be what ever takes the person's attention
away from the counseling material.

• looking around the room and saying what you see, hear etc.
• little challenges such as count backwards from 100 by threes
• what are you looking forward to in the immediate future
• games and jokes

Do it until the person really seems free of the emotions and things in the counseling material.

Co-counseling is different from just getting support from your friends (which of course is good)
or other kinds of therapy.

The theory is that when we are young we all get hurt in various ways and we develop patterns
(or habits) There's a natural way of healing as children which is to discharge with someone
paying attention to us. Discharging all by ourselves doesn't work, there has to be someone
paying attention. Many people were told not to discharge it's bad behavior: “stop that crying".
So are natural healing gets interrupted and we develop patterns which are coping mechanisms
the turn into a personality quirks or difficulties. So for example someone who does the
discharge childhood fears may grow up to be very cautious and risk-averse. And someone who
doesn't discharge anger might end up aggressive or might suppress anger and keep it inside
and refuse to express it. That's why we are all so neurotic! But we can start healing our
patterns at any time. How are natural intelligence and flexibility are blocked by these patterns
but by discharging with attention we can dissolve them. This really works. We have seen it in
ourselves and many others. (Gail has gotten over a ton of stuff around performing by co-
counseling.) The goal is to get over your childhood stuff and how it still affects you.

Everybody's patterns specific to them. The word for the specific trigger from the past is a re-
stimulation.
People can be reminded of (re-stimulated by) something from the past in the present and that's
why people act irrationally. For example, someone brought up into small crowded apartment
may be claustrophobic or, on the contrary might only feel comfortable in tiny spaces.

So when you're starting and your casting around in your mind for what you counsel about
that's always a good thing to look for something where you know that you're not acting
rationally or you know that your feelings aren't fitting the present situation.

So what ever the client says in the counseling session is confidential, first of course from
other people. You never ever pass anything on or even imply it. But in addition, you don't bring
it up outside of a counseling session with the client. Even in your own session you don't refer
to the other persons counseling material. There is an important reason for these restrictions.
They enable the client to say exaggerated and untrue things that bring up their feelings into
counseling that they would never ever say in regular conversation. For example it can help
someone discharge on anger at say their coworker to say "I hate him I'm going to kill him I am
quitting that job." when in fact they do not hate them they are not violent they are not quitting
etc. It's just that the exaggerated version brings up the discharge. In fact that's one of the
most helpful things about co-counseling is getting out of your system extreme version is going
through your head so that you don't act on them and you don't say them in regular
conversation. So not only does the counselor not bring it up with the person that they also
don't carry in their heads this version of the person and they don't think necessarily that what
the person saying is the real true feelings it's just what happened in that session. So you
remember what the person said and what made them discharge for one purpose only which is
for the next time your counseling them.