Counselling or psychotherapy - what's the difference?
Counselling
- Encourages changes in how you think, act and perceive things
- Helps you work on and resolve specific and identifies problems and crises
- Most useful for people who already have an understanding of wellbeing, and who are able to identify the problem(s) they want to resolve.
Psychotherapy
- Helps identify thinking, feeling and behaviour patterns linked to problems and difficulties
- Supports deeper understanding of how psychological, emotional and embodied patterns create or resolve difficulties
- Leads to self-support and better self-management through greater awareness of thoughts, actions, feelings and choices.
Both counsellors and psychotherapists undergo extensive training in their fields.
A
counsellor will offer a more specialised service of communication
that concentrates on providing a structure to the counselling
experience. So treatment for addiction, for instance, will be offered
in progressive stages over a period of time. The counsellor may work with one preferred types of counselling, such as CBT or existential, or they may work integratively using a range of types according to the needs of the client.
A psychotherapist however, will focus on a deeper awareness of emotional issues, and looks at the foundation of the problem, for example at the root causes of the addiction or addictive behaviour. A psychotherapist will be able to use their counselling skills, and may also use other therapeutic techniques and skills such as neuro-linguistic programming, gestalt therapy or hypnotherapy.
A psychotherapist will have training and experience in counselling, but a counsellor will not necessarily have the more in-depth knowledge, training and experience of a psychotherapist.
