Counseling is a learning-oriented process, which occurs usually in an interactive relationship, with the aim of helping a person learn more about the self, and to use such understanding to enable the person to become an effective member of society.
Counselling is a process by means of which the helper expresses care and concern towards the person with a problem, and facilitates that person’s personal growth and brings about change through self-knowledge.
Counselling is a relationship between a concerned person and a person with a need. This relationship is usually person-to-person, although sometimes it may involve more than two people. It is designed to help people to understand and clarify their views, and learn how to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well-informed choices, and through the resolution of emotional or interpersonal problems. It can be seen from these definitions that counselling can have different meanings.
Counselling is provided under a variety of labels. For example, there are instances where counselling is offered when a relationship is primarily focused on other, non-counselling concerns. A student may use a teacher as a person with whom it is safe to share worries. In such a situation, the teacher uses counselling skills, but does not engage in an actual counselling relationship. The teacher counsels but is not a counsellor.
Aims of Counselling
The aims of counselling are broad. They may depend on the situation and the environment, and on training. The basic aims of counselling include the following:
1. To help students gain an insight into the origins and development of emotional difficulties, leading to an increased capacity to take rational control over feelings and actions.
2. To alter maladjusted behaviour.
3. To assist students to move in the direction of fulfilling their potential, or achieve an integration of conflicting elements within themselves.
4. To provide students with the skills, awareness and knowledge, which will enable them to confront social inadequacy.
In a school, boys and girls face many difficulties and problems which may be expressed in the following ways: withdrawal, unhappiness, annoyance, anger, in ability to meet needs, lack of knowledge, partial or total failure, in ability to realize aspirations, anxiety and hyperactivity.
Added to these is the problem of HIV/AIDS for which a great deal of psychological support may be required for boys and girls, particularly those already infected, or who are orphans as a result of this disease. Young boys and girls are a large segment of the population. It, therefore, makes strategic sense to target them through guidance and counselling.
Counselling is important at this stage, because this is when boys and girls develop positive sexual attitudes and practices. It is when students begin to understand who they are, and how they can contribute to healthy relationships. They start to develop attitudes of respect toward members of the opposite sex, and see how each community member can contribute to development.
Personal and social counselling should also assist in awakening students to educational and vocational opportunities. The image of a girl in most African communities is that of a passive,
submissive person, who remains in the background. Generally these girls have a negative self image and a feeling of inferiority. This is increased by the attitudes of parents, teachers and society. Personal counselling empowers girls, and teaches them to develop positive attitudes towards themselves, and is marked by an ability to acknowledge areas of expertise and to be free to make positive choices.
Fields of Counselling
1. Educational Counselling
A term first coined by Truman Kelley in 1914 (Makinde, 1988), educational counselling is a process of rendering services to pupils who need assistance in making decisions about important aspects of their education, such as the choice of courses and studies, decisions regarding interests and ability, and choices of college and high school. Educational counselling increases a pupil's knowledge of educational opportunities.
2. Personal/Social Counselling
Personal counselling deals with emotional distress and behavioural difficulties, which arise when individuals struggle to deal with developmental stages and tasks. Any aspect of development can be turned into an adjustment problem, and it is inevitable that everyone encounters, at some time, exceptional difficulty in meeting an ordinary challenge. For example:
• Anxiety over a career decision
• Lingering anger over an interpersonal conflict
• Insecurities about getting older
• Depressive feelings when bored with work
• Excessive guilt about a serious mistake
• A lack of assertion and confidence
• Grief over the loss of a loved one
• Disillusionment and loneliness after parents' divorce
3. Vocational Counselling
Vocational counselling is defined as individual contacts with those counselled, in order tofacilitate career development. This definition and category encompasses counselling situations
such as these:
• Helping students become aware of the many occupations to consider
• Interpreting an occupational interest inventory to a student
• Assisting a teenager to decide what to do after school
• Helping a student apply to a college or university
• Role-playing a job interview in preparation for the real thing