Therapy Toronto Psychotherapy Definitions

Counselling

Many people associate counseling with the guidance and advice provided by guidance counsellors in the elementary and secondary school system of education.

Such counselling has a large educational component because on ensuring that the client understands how to get on well in life. Its operating assumption is that many difficulties can be avoided by following the paths taken successfully by others.

Critics of this approach say that by assuming people are unable to make good decisions, it creates dependency on an 'expert' solution, and doesn't encourage thinking for oneself.

Coaching at work by a supervisor or manager, and life-coaching have grown out of the counselling tradition. These approaches are not psychotherapeutic because they make such different assumptions about how people make choices and change their lives. They are focused on immediate practical issues rather than on core issues which take longer to alter.

In business settings the term 'coaching' is used to describe the counselling of employees. Some therapists offer counseling as well as therapy, particularly when working on a shorter-term basis with employees using a benefits plan.

However, we as psychotherapists do work from a different set of principles, which make the assumption that every one is capable of a much higher level of self-awareness than we realize.

Also see Short-term Therapy.

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