During this session I was also reminded of how it was when I was first learning about empathic understanding and how I am still working at being more effective in my responding in every intervention with every client. It is an on ging process that represent real challenges and can also be so rewarding.

I always find the difficulty for me in facilitating training session around person-centred conditions is separating out the conditions into discrete components when I am so used to experiencing and providing them as a more cohesive whole.

The course now seems to be entering an exciting phrase where each session hopefully builds on the last and we are beginning to discover the full potential of what we can offer when we bring aspects of the Person-Centred Approach together to the benefit of others we are working with.

The discussion on  the role of a counsellor seemed, as it often does, to be drawn towards various nightmare scenarios a counsellor might encounter – usually termed in the form of a question “What would you do if……” the sentence seeming to be completed by evermore alarming possibilities.

My answer is often the same – essentially, “I don’t know, I have never encountered that” and I imagine I won’t really know until I do, which my experience of client work informs me, will probably be highly unlikely.

This all seems to be part of the bigger process of counselling training seeming to be a fearful and, in some ways, potentially dangerous undertaking. It makes me wonder how we are going to help develop effective practitioners if they are too fearful to risk making, and maintaining, therapeutic relationships with their clients