Community Counselling

A low cost counselling service in the heart of East London

‘’This is BBC2’’ British Behaviour and Counselling.

I enjoy watching Gina Yasheer for the past year telling how she became a comic. I like it because it shows a generational change and conflict of parent with children when one generation grows in a place different from its parental home. Gina is of Nigerian parentage bought up in London. She begins by quoting a list of roles and there result ‘in Nigeria’ – options are

  •   “1. Doctor,
  1. Lawyer,
  2. Engineer, or, if none of these then
  3. Disgrace to the Family” (audience laughed).

Yashheer studies in London as a teenager and discovers she cant stand the sight of blood and changes her trajectory from the choice of Doctor to ‘’engineer” but then goes into comedy.

Tellingly her mother is concerned what on earth she will tell the family in Nigeria –

“My daughter is a clown”! (audience laughter).

Yasheer however makes a go if it, manages to follow her inner joy and manifest her latent drive and gets to the semi final in a national talent show on tv. Mothers comment however is about tell me when you get to the finals. No acknowledgement of what she has achieved to get this far, just an expectation she will automatically be in the finals as a function of time – in other words the script is written tell me when it has happened. Not the most helpful way to motivate people – saying this is the course events will take: inform me when they occur! This dismisses discounts and denies the sense of self and agency from the inner person and places the outcome of events in a predetermined story dismissing and discounting our efforts in the assumed outcome. It is similar to the parent who ‘motivates’ the child who has got 2 ‘A’ and a ‘B’ by saying where is the third ‘A’?

Often people come to counselling because demands of others to meet their expectations conflict either with what the client feels capable of achieving and more deeply because  our need for healthy attachment to others are being conditionally offered only if we meet their needs. The others aspirations – as career for example – and our our caregivers needs may be different yet we as; so as ‘social’ humans   need attachments usually to our care givers. As social beings we need to see ourselves reflected in the positive effect we have on others. Where the feedback from others is only conditional from us doing what they want there is potential for inner conflict. Especially when that feedback is used in a way to manipulate to condition so we only get positive feedback when we do what the care giver or any authority we are in attachment with want us to do.

Ideally in healthy attachment  the care giver or authority figure lets us grow and enjoy our growth in whatever direction we are inclined to and hence a healthy respect for the self and the care attachment figure is cultivated.  Essentially a counsellor attaches for the duration of a counselling relationship in this way.  The client hence ideally generates more confidence esteem self value self acceptance and all this potentially has ramifications for the structure and quality of the individual and those those whom we are around.

Yasheer’s mum finally comes round to championing her daughter when her daughter wins the talent show. Saying

“ oh yes – she I always knew she was going to be a clown – I got her   the big boots when she was three”  (audience laughs)

Once some form of success is accomplished the mother changes her tune and says she always knew she would turn out this way and she has supported her from the start. A complete set of convenient lies said with blind dishonesty.

Mother and daughter have made up and grown up and appear at the end of the snippet together in mutual self – other awareness smiles knowingness and humour.

Our parents give us a birthing psychosocially into the world for good bad and indifferent. A counsellor can support the adult to support the ‘inner child’ who had bad indifferent or even good parenting so they can update some of their psycho-social engagements with the world. This maybe in terms of career – as Yasheer, or family relationships of work. Or other issues prescient in someone’s current life.  An effective counsellor helps the client to enable them to counsel themselves. It may not all happen one one session or even with one counsellor but effective work something of a seeded new updated outlook which arguably is already within is activated and may come to fruition in a counselling relationship in another counselling, or at some time following a counselling relationship.

Community counselling is a counselling organisation in East London offering quality counselling at a budget rate.

References.

“This is BBC2”

a programme on BBC” which comes on after ordinary programmes have finishes and is like an advertisement for the station. Accessed on 13/04/2019 BBC2.

Mental Health service for expectant mums (Folosho Oshoko)

By April 2019, new and expectant mums will be able to access specialist perinatal mental health community services in every part of the country.

This is from NHS England website. Among other things hormonal changes to Pregnant and post partum mothers can disorientate mothers who may then need hospital care. When we feel cared for our brain gives the message ‘I am safe here now’. Hormones of relaxation are then released as serotonin and dopamine. This reinforces our letting go of stress and worry we are then more open to what relationships and what the environment has to offer.

This is the case in massage therapy and can  equally at some points be what occurs in counselling. Through a relationship with a trained person who attune to clientele. This too allows for new possibilities to be considered and incorporated so there are possibilities to think and feel in a more supportive productive creative empowered way about oneself and ones circumstances.

Community Counselling in At Saint Bartholomews on Barking road Rd East Ham neer the Town Hall is a collection of selected counsellors offering first rate budget rate counselling for the those in the local community or who wish to travel to from further afield.

The offer of Counselling – Folusho Oshoko

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The Offer of Counselling

Many counselling addressed issues involve ‘loss’: bereavement divorce illness, and or related ‘absence’ the resultant consequences anger depression fear and, topically, violence,  forming the material of counselling. One therapist C. Rogers believed humans were basically good but it is the absence of warmth honesty and understanding which lead to issues which then are compounded by issues of living and

leaving to a build of material from people then acting out or acting up.

A process

Rogers further suggested a counselling relationship is about brining warmth honesty and understanding that people feel valued as humans first and foremost and then have a chance to evaluate to have an opportunity to check what is happening.

A special accepting relationship

Without having ‘time out’ it is difficult to get some distance about our issue. The values we internalise often come from places where there are agendas that we are only accepted on ‘condition that’ we are successful academically, behave to please what our parents family and cultural tradition dictates. What if we cannot fit in with the expectations and demands of school family kith and kin? A counselling relationship provides a platform for people to work out what their own values are which are deeply held within.

An opportunity to work on and re-work ourselves

Once acknowledged and accepted a more balanced assessment can be made of what values we take on as given and how other values we we sympathise fit into our truer sense of self. The very chance to have an opportunity to explore values is helpful in itself. And sometimes if the person is wanting and ready significant changes can come about.

At Home work or on the street

Regardless of changes in policies to address social issues whether it bullying or gender economic differences and interactions in the work place, conflicts in the domestic sphere, or the issues of violence on the street often a period of change of values and  personal readjustment are required.

Re- aligning

A safe honest warm understanding relationship with a counsellor is a base for a readjustment to take place. This is about internalising a new way of looking at personal and social issues one is embedded within. A more comfortable internal existence with oneself in turn facilitates a possible more wholesome relationship to the other: whether this be at home work or on the streets of our cities.

 

 

Young hang up on phone chats to become ‘generation mute’. (Sunday time 5/11/17 Pg 17 – James Gillespie

The ‘young’ are not using the phone as a voice instrument but only ‘text’. The article goes on to give examples of how the generation since we have all gone ‘E’ are ditching talking on the phone in favour of texing. It asks what might be the implications of growing up with this as the modus operandi for adult life; what are the implications for us all if we are not in face to face contact as a preferred – first way of communicating? It can become alien when the requirement to communicate face to face presents itself for example at interviews or when we need to communicate material we find challenging or where perhaps an attachment or relationship has gone array in some way.

Perhaps the epitome of text to text this is the now proverbial restaurant meal where people are communicating to others not in the room by text rather than with those at the table. Might this too have implications for peoples identity and how we can and cannot negotiate in the world? What if we lose our prized phone possession. Can counselling assist here? Could it bring up other loses long buried but not resolved but reactivated albeit not consciously causing maybe phone rage or trauma – the issue may not be ‘the phone’. Talking issues through can create space for to allow for other actions to be considered.

Any loss of that which we value could reactivate earlier losses which were left unresolved. The notion of talking of therapy is to allow us to work through issues gains losses and sometimes making some sense of daily living. Having someone independent of the circumstance trained to listen and reflect allows us to share the chewing over of an issue – so it can be ‘metabolised’ and digested rather being stuck in the throat. We then have more flexibility rather than be stuck with the issue. In the Chinese proverb those trees which bend with the wind are more flexible and are more resilient to challenge and inevitable change; a work colleague, a bullying issue, loss of family member.

Present events sometimes lead to earlier unresolved events which at the time for safety were swept under the carpet. Present issues can be a window to explore not only the issue at hand but earlier issues reactivated by the present issue. On route other issues may come to light supporting more awareness about qualities of our lives. The counsellor by being honest can reflect what is happening to them in the room and this could reflect how others are experiencing us but have not said. Counselling can be an opportunity to get a good reflection of ourselves and so an opportunity to make changes. In therapy we can get both a good view of ourselves and an opportunity to address big or small issues. Addressing the issues can help with quality of living in relation to the past present and for the future. A starting point may be a loss or consequences of an activity sedentary life and obesity texing and face to face human challenges.

Therapy taught me slowly to help myself – Megan Beech (The Guardian 29th December 2015)

Two women talking
‘Counselling helped me to get my voice back, which I now use often and buoyantly, as I perform poems about feminism and my struggles with depression.’ Photograph: Camera Press Ltd/Alamy

After two years of weekly meetings, copious amounts of sullied tissues, hours of talking, silence and contemplation all in the same tiny room overlooking the Thames, I couldn’t quite sense what I was taking away. The rewards of the experience didn’t await me neatly wrapped with a tag addressed to a newly well version of myself. The real gift I received through undertaking counselling was slow in the making. The ability to realise what had been given and received in the work we had undertaken together was similarly slow in revealing itself.

I began therapy, rather unwillingly, halfway through my English literature degree at King’s College London, in the midst of an all-consuming depression. I had entered university confident, clever and keen, eager to learn more about the literature that I loved. Yet I instantly felt that I didn’t fit in. Rather than finding my feet and forging new friendships in an exciting city I was losing sleep, losing my confidence and losing my sense of self.

I was unable to speak to my peers, go to the pub, or carry out any basic social interaction without an intense feeling of fear and anxiety. The effect on my personal life was huge. I retreated and hid between library shelves, buried myself in books and locked myself in my bedroom. My debut poetry book had just been published, but I was declining gigs, terrified that I could no longer perform with my usual exuberance.

When a kind and concerned tutor referred me to counselling, I was initially sceptical and reluctant. My fear of speaking to people had become so all-consuming that the thought of being “forced” to talk in a confined space for 50 minutes a week with another human being was beyond contemplation.

The first sessions lived up to my expectations. I was guarded, mute and disengaged from the process out of a fear of what it might reveal. But slowly, like the cranes on the South Bank I watched from the window, I began to build a rapport with my counsellor and grew more willing to talk and engage openly with the process of counselling. The sessions gave me new ways of viewing my life, new coping mechanisms for enduring every socially awkward evening at the pub, but more importantly they gave me a new perspective on what gift-giving and receiving might look like.

Unable to cope with my life as it was and unable to see the way to solve the situation for myself, I had gone into therapy with the wish to just scream “Please fix me!” at the nearest trained therapist. But through the process of counselling I learned that the point of the exercise was not to be given all the answers, but to be offered a safe, contained space in which I could develop and grow, aided by my counsellor.

The benefits I took from the experience were not handed to me by an all-knowing, problem-solving professional while I sat passively receiving them. They were worked for through collaboration and effort, strain and failure. They were the product of a symbiotic relationship, united in the purpose of thinking (and feeling) through the problems I was facing. Counselling gave me my life back, a life I slowly began to want to live again. It also helped me to get my voice back, which I now use often and buoyantly, as I perform poems about feminism and my struggles with depression.

My counsellor had been right. Counselling didn’t “fix” all the problems in my life. There are still days when getting out of bed feels like an impossibility, when talking to strangers feels too scary. Through counselling I learned to accept that the process of thinking and feeling better about myself was a gradual one; one that didn’t have to provide all the answers at once; one not about being given a solution but slowly realising the internal gifts and qualities I already had but had lost within myself.

Realising just how much I had gained from therapy took a long time. I realise it every time I feel incapable of getting out of bed but do anyway. Every time I feel on the edge of things and yet somehow still finish my to-do list for the day. And every single time I stand up in front of a crowd and perform a poem.

The transformative and restorative effect of my time in therapy wasn’t in fact a gift given to me, but one I helped to give myself

Good mother’s don’t overload their Children (The guardian 28 March 2017) by Giles Fraser

Community Counselling : We liked this article below taken from the Guardian newspaper talking about attachment and our powerful relationship with our mother’s and just HOW very powerful it really is!

Mother and children“Philip Larkin may have found the words: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” But his nearish contemporary John Bowlby explained how and why. So what better subject than Bowlby for Mother’s Day weekend? Mothers – or significant carers – can get it wrong in at least two very different ways: they can either be too emotionally absent or too emotionally present. Those mothers who give the impression of not caring or who deprive their children of love and affection tend to create children who grow up into clingy, emotionally needy adults. In contrast, those who emotionally over-rely upon their child, wanting the child to be the adult to their own messy and complex needs, or those who create an overly intense home environment, can create children who grow up into emotionally avoidant adults. This is how problems with what Bowlby called “attachment” come to be transmitted down the generations; how, in Larkin’s narrowly gendered words, “Man hands on misery to man”.

In a series of experiments in the 1970s, Bowlby’s collaborator, Mary Ainsworth, sought to quantify the proportions of those who have problems with attachment. She created an environment called the “strange situation”, where a child is abandoned by his or her mother for various periods. Of those children who took part, 60% – those whose parenting was generally secure – were distressed for a while, but soon comforted. Some 20% of children were extremely distressed, not easily soothed and often exhibited conflicted reactions to the parent’s return, like wanting to hug them and punish them at the same time. And 20% weren’t much bothered by the separation and continued playing with their toys when the parent returned.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the same logic was applied to adult relationships. Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver’s so-called Love Quiz found that 20% are overly anxious that their partner is having an affair or doesn’t really love them; another 20% feel drained by partners wanting to get too close; and 60% seem OK, happily depending on partners and allowing partners to be dependent on them. In other words, the percentages were very similar to Ainsworth’s study.

So maybe only 40% of us are Larkin-style fucked up. Still, there’s a great deal of fucked-upness that can be generated by these 40%. Imagine a relationship between those who have “anxious” and “avoidant” attachment styles. This is not uncommon, as both partners tend to confirm the other’s pre-concieved perception of reality. The pseudo-independence of the emotional runaway confirms the anxious person in their anxiety that others are always about to check out. The gushing neediness of the anxious style triggers the avoidant’s fear that others want to overwhelm them and drain their autonomy – thus they feel smothered and so emotionally withdraw into what Bowlby calls “compulsive self-reliance”, often centred on an over-commitment to work. So the dance of anxiety and avoidance deepens until the relationship gets mired in resentment and goes pop.

So what about good-enough mothers. They care and listen and are emotionally present to their child. But also, they don’t make it the child’s business to deal with all their own complicated adult baggage. They let the child be a child. Those who successfully manage this demanding job description provide their children with the basis for a secure and happy future. But when they get it slightly wrong, they don’t get overwhelmed with blame. They too have their own past. Remember Larkin’s second verse: “But they were fucked up in their turn.””