Three months into the Counselling Skills Level 2 Course and I am still excited about it. So excited that I’ve decided, while cleaning the stove, that I should revive this old blog (where I am not sure exactly what I was trying to do), and write about this journey towards, hopefully, becoming a decent counsellor. The name still fits, it would still be about personal belongings, the ones we’re all carrying with not much clue about how we got them in the first place and if we should keep them or drop them. There you go, my first poetic attempt at describing this extremely important endeavor I have started last October, suddenly and sort of blindly.
Suddenly, because I had almost given up on enrolling when I got a phone call “If you could come tomorrow for an interview.”. Blindly, because I didn’t stop to think about it anymore.
The first thing you learn in a Counselling course is to listen. You also learn that maybe you did not know how to do it properly before. And that you might not be the natural good listener you used to think you were.
You listen to other people talking, you listen to yourself talking and you listen to your own mind while listening. It is enlightening. And sometimes exhausting. After 3 hours of course, I usually need some rest.
You might also discover that although you do a pretty decent job of listening to your colleagues during skills practice, when you go home, you can easily be insensitive, selfish and not exactly empathic towards people. So, if you do it right, becoming a counsellor will be a series of lessons in humility. But that is really fine, because in time, you become more accepting and more forgiving. Of everyone, yourself included.
Personal Belongings 