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Counselling Videos as Learning Resources Defining, describing and illustrating counselling systems, using video and text
In the modern world, individuals and couples experience emotional, behavioural and relationship problems, and often cannot turn to a member of an extended family for support; nor to their priest or villiage head. They can turn to a medical doctor, but often that is very expensive, or not available, or scarce and tightly rationed. Therefore, too often, they have to figure out how to solve their problems alone. This is where the modern inventions of counselling, theapy and coaching can be very helpful.
I use the terms counselling, coaching and psychotherapy interchangeably, to mean processes of helping my clients to develop a greater capacity to manage their thoughts, feelings, behaviours and action plans. If you want a more formal definition, then here is Richard Nelson-Jones on the subject:
"Attempts to distinguish counselling from therapy include observations that therapy deals more with mental disorders than counselling, that therapy is longer-term and deeper, and that therapy is predominantly associated with medical settings. However, matters are not this clear-cut. Many counsellors work in medical settings, have clients with recognized mental disorders and do longer-term work that is sometimes of a psychodynamic nature. "Syme (2000) rightly suggests that there is huge overlap between counselling and therapy. As an illustration of perceived overlap, the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia promultates 'A definition of counselling and psychotherapy' as a single statement. (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 1997). Both counselling and therapy are psychological processes that use the same theoretical models. Each stresses the need to value the client as a person, to listen carefully and sympathetically to what they have to say, and to foster the capacity for self-help and personal responsibility". Pages 4-5, Essential Counselling and Therapy Skills: The skilled client model. Richard Nelson-Jones, London, Sage Publications, 2002. I hope you find this definition helpful. If you want to know the kinds of services I offer myself, here is a link, but please feel free to skip to the next paragraph: In the remainder of this section I will introduce a number of ideas about counselling and psychotherapy, using video clips. My intention is to give you a rough idea of what it is like to be counselled by counselors from several different disciplines, including the cognitive behavioural, the psycho-dynamic (or emotive) approach, the narrative approach, Gestalt and TA, and so on. You will get a sense of some of the differences of emphasis, and the areas of overlap, in these various schools of counselling and therapy.
~~~ Reality therapy as a form of counseling: "Reality therapists try to instil hope in clients early on by letting them know that, duirng therapy, they will learn to make better choices and, in doing so, gain better control over their lives. Clients are also infomed that they have to work hard to achieve and maintain this control". ~~~ If you are already familiar with counselling and therapy, then please skip the 'introduction to counselling' video that follows, and go to the video intro to Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT). If you would like an introduction to the subject of counselling, and to Dr Byrne's own Cognitive Emotive Narrative Counselling, then please see the video clips and links that follow immediately. To view a vido clip, please Click > once on the on-scren arrow: This definition of counselling and therapy is further elaborated in the links that follow: The system of counselling that I use is called Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT), and I have produced a brief and general video introduction to this system, which follows. Click > once: Again, if you want further clarification about Cognitive Emotive Narrative Counselling/Therapy (CENT), then please read the following brief paper on that subject: ~~~ So, I have now defined counselling, and presented a brief introduction to CENT, which is an integration of ideas and techniques from CBT, REBT, TA, Object Relations, and Narrative Therapy. However, before I present you with any more of my own video clips about Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT), I want to break that down into components that are easier to understand. So first I will present a video clip which features a National Health Service (NHS) client who had Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for depression when her husband died. Her testimonial should give you some good insights into what people get from cognitive type therapies: ~~~ The CBT approach to counselling came out of the field of Behaviour Therapy, which sees the client as being shaped or determined by their environment. "The Behavioural model is a very deterministic one. The individual may think that s/he is free to decide on a particular course of action, but in fact s/he is just behaving as s/he has been trained to. What s/he ‘chooses' to do at any particular point in time is a direct result of past environmental experiences which have themselves occurred in a fairly haphazard sort of way. So the individual is just the product of his past experiences". CENT counselling does not accept this. We see the ‘individual ego' as a social construct, arising out of the interaction of the physical individual (with innate qualities) and the cultural environment (of mother, father, etc). Page 62: Brigid Proctor, Counselling Shop: An introduction to the Theories and Techniques of Ten Approaches to Counselling. (15). ~~~ Next I want to present a statement from an NHS (National Health Service) expert in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), talking about the benefits to be gained from this kind of counselling and therapy: ~~~ The CBT approach to counselling has a lot to offer. It has its limitations, but it has also contributed much to the field of counselling in recent years. "Cognitive-behavioural concepts and methods have made an enormous contribution to the field of counselling. Evidence of the energy and creativity of researchers and practitioners in this area can be gained by inspection of the ever-increasing literature on the topic. ... Cognitive-behavioural approaches appeal to many counsellors and clients because they are straightforward and practical, and emphasize action..." Dr John McLeod, An Introduction to Counselling, 2003, page 141. (32) ~~~ Now I would like to show you a counselling role play session, based on Cognitive Therapy, with a young man who is unhappy with his life: All systems of CBT were inspired by the original form of cognitive behaviour counselling, which was Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), developed by Dr Albert Ellis, in New York City, in the period 1953-1962, and continually updated since that time, up to his death in 2007. ~~~ "Cognitive therapy was initially developed in the early 1960s by Dr Aaron Beck of the University of Pennsylvania. The theory postulates that during clients' cognitive development they learn incorrect habits of processing and interpreting information. Cognitive therapists attempt to unravel clients' distortions and help them to learn different and more realistic ways of processing and reality-testing information". ~~~ As a final illustration of the CBT approach to counselling, here is a CBT role play from the Australian Institute of Professional Counselling (AIPC): ~~~ "Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT is not a purely intellectual approach to counseling, but strongly emphasizes the interplay of feeling, behaviour and cognition (or thought)". ~~~ There are no really good videos of role plays using Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) - which is a shame. However, here is a video clip in which Dr Jeffrey Guterman presents a one minute excerpt from a telephone counselling session he had with Dr Albert Ellis, the creator of REBT, back in the early 1980s. Jeffry is on the telephone to the Institute for RET in New York City. It nicely illustrates something about the ABC model of REBT: Further down this page, I have posted a video clip in which I demonstrate that REBT does not have to be delivered in hard-nosed, non-empathic ways, which has sometimes happened in the past. REBT can be, and should be, as sensitive and caring as the most person-centred system of counselling and psychotherapy. The basic difference between general CBT and REBT is that, in CBT the counsellor will be looking to identify your 'automatic thoughts ' - especially over-generalizations, ignoring positives, and producing exaggerations - while in REBT the counsellor looks for what are called 'irrational beliefs', which include demanding the unattainable, exaggerating the degree of badness of your situation, assuming you can not tolerate your problems, and condemning and damning yourself, other people, and the world. To find out more about REBT, try the 'What is REBT?' page. ~~~ So much for the cognitive approach. Now I want to show you a role play session illustrating a more emotive counselling approach - the psycho-dynamic counselling model - in which the counsellor looks for the roots of current problems in the childhood of the client: ~~~ The psychodynamic approach to counselling emphasizes the way the past experiences of the client distort their present, through the operations of the non-conscious part of their mind: "People find themselves in relationships or in situations, even in relation to themselves, which are unproductive but somehow compulsive, leaving them in pain, (or) tense, (and) confused. They simply can't understand it. And their failure in understanding has to do with the fact that the motivation behind (their relationships, actions and attitudes) is often unknown; they are (in fact) unconscious feelings, experiences, and intentions which were relegated to the unconscious because they were painful at the time (when they originally occurred). They remain there, shut off from modification or reality-testing by later experience. Brigid proctor (1978) Counselling Shop: An introduction to the theories and techniques of ten approaches to counseling. London: Burnett Books. Page 25. (31) ~~~ Most systems of counselling and psychotherapy involve the counsellor in asking probing questions. (The exception is the Rogerian system of person-centred counselling, which avoids using leading questions). The reason for probing questions is to allow the therapist to build up a diagnostic picture of the client's problem(s). However, when this kind of questioning is done unskillfully - and sometimes when it is not - the client may respond with irritability. Here is a psycho-dynamic consideration of this issue, which answers the question 'Why put yourself through psychotherapy, given this probing question irritation?: "Since the probing aspect of psychotherapy is so often disliked, why should anyone want to put themselves through encounters of this sort? "One of the reasons is that it is a dull sort of relief indeed to be shut off from one's inner life, which is what is achieved by the excessive use of defenses (against probing questions). It is a greater relief to be able to open up even though doing so is not easy. That is why Aeschylus ... spoke of the 'discipline of suffering' as a 'mercy of the gods'. Psychotherapy at its best can help enlarge the mind, and illuminate its contents. Nor does it all have to be trial by suffering. It is not always recognized that psychotherapy and psychoanalysis aim to increase common sense and a grasp of reality, as well as opening one up to the nuances of emotional and imaginative life. There is an intrinsic pleasure in coming to know what is going on inside oneself and in others, and to grasp more fully many aspects of life, both the practical and the emotional. Moreover it can also be a revelation to recognise the impact of our inner worlds, our psychic reality, upon our thinking, attitudes and perceptions of ourselves, since it is as influential, or even more influential, than the effects of actual childhood events. "Thus in all psychotherapy, although we need to take fully into account historical facts, or the facts of an individual's day-to-day circumstances, it is important to recognize that we have a world within us which powerfully affects how we operate and how we perceive things". Page 169 of 'Talking Cure: Mind and method of the Tavistock Clinic'. David Taylor (editor). Duckworth: 1999. A recent issue of Scientific American contains evidence that psycho-dynamic counseling is highly effective for a range of issues, and that participants in the research not only improved as a result of the counselling, but continued to improve on their own, many months after the counselling sessions ended. ~~~ All systems of counselling and therapy are broadly equivalent in terms of the outcomes achieved by clients: "There is no shortage of evidence of the significance of common factors across models of therapeutic practice, and among these the quality of the therapeutic relationship is emphasized as central to therapeutic success. (Counselling and therapy) depend first and foremost on ‘being-in-relation', not on technical experts with toolbags of techniques for diagnosing and treating specific problems..." Strawbridge and Woolfe, 2003, Counselling Psychology in Context, page 15. (28) ~~~ The psychodynamic approach to counselling and psychotherapy is also misunderstood because of public prejudices against Freud and his theory of psychosexual stages of development. If you want to experience a review of the modern Freudian theory in an academic context, then take a look at this debate at the University of Richmond: You could also take a look at one of my Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy papers - my CENT Paper No.9, - which integrates Freud and the cognitive-behavioural models of the mind, in a way that helps counsellors and therapists to improve their understanding of the mind of the counselling client. ~~~ We have looked at examples of cognitive and emotive approaches to counselling and psychotherapy, and now we will take a look at a role play demonstrating what Narrative Therapy is like, as a process of counselling:
For counselling and psychotherapy students: If you are a counselling student, then it is important to note that there are three preexisting approaches to narrative counselling and therapy, as described by McLeod (2003), pages 227-238[1]. These are: the psychodynamic approach; the cognitive/constructivist approach; and the social constructionist approach. (1) The psychodynamic approachto the use of narratives in counseling and therapy focuses on the ways that the client’s stories can reveal habitual ways of relating; and the counsellor can thus use those stories to help the client to ‘re-author’ their lives: (Strupp and Binder, 1984[2]; Luborsky and Crits-Christoph, 1990)[3]. The main emphasis in the psychodynamic approach to narrative use in counselling and psychotherapy is in helping to identify the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT). This CCRT then provides the basic agenda for their work of counselling. (2) The cognitive/constructivist approach to the use of narratives in counselling and therapy focuses on two strategies: (A) Identifying stories that conflict with each other, which provides the possibility of using ‘cognitive dissonance’ to help with the challenge of rewriting and integrating conflicted schemas (or frames, scripts, stories) in the client’s long-term memory[4]; and:(B) The use of metaphor. For example: my use of the images of being a ‘little mouse’ and then ‘a big moral cat’, in my Story of Origins. Metaphors can be depowering and empowering, and the therapist can help the client to develop more empowering metaphors for their problem roles, themes, or characters in their most difficult stories[5]. (3) The social constructionist approach to narrative therapy and counseling is based on the idea that we are social beings born into a story-telling culture; that we are surrounded by stories, myths, legends; that these stories preceded our existence, and we take on some of the story roles and themes into which we are thrown at birth. The main contributors to the development of this tradition were White and Epston, a couple of Australasian family therapists: (White and Epston, 1990)[6]. Since people are seen as occupying a family- or community-generated narrative or story, the solution is to ‘externalize’ this story, and get the client to see it as not part of them, so they can step away from the roles specified in the story; or they can re-author their story in various ways. Like CENT therapy, this form of therapy uses both spoken dialogue and written narratives to help the client to unearth their dominant narratives and to change them. CENT counseling and therapy does not fit comfortably within any of the three narrative traditions outlined above. Neither was CENT directly inspired by the creators of any of those three traditions. Nevertheless, we can easily see that CENTinvolves an integration of traditions (1) and (3) – the psychodynamic and the social constructionist. But CENTis much more than that; and is a completely unique approach to narrative use in psychotherapy and counseling, in that we utilize the psychodynamic approach, the cognitive approach, and the social constructionist approach – plus Transactional Analysis and moral philosophy - to inform our understanding of human development and individual functioning in the world. In Chapters 9 and 10, we will explore how the CENT model of the social nature of the individual is constructed.” Extract from Chapter 7 of ‘Therapy After Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha’, by Dr Jim Byrne, in press. [1] McLeod, J. (2003) An Introduction to Counselling.
Third edition. Buckingham: Open University Press. [2]Strupp, H.H. and Binder, J.L. (1984) Psychotherapy
in a New Key: A guide to time-limited dynamic psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. [3]Luborsky, L. and Crits-Christoph, P. (eds)
(1990) Understanding Transference: the CCRT method. New
York: Basic Books. [4]Russell, R.L. and van den Brock, P. (1992) Changing narrative schemas in psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy, 29: 344-354. [5]Gonçalves, O.F. (1995) Hermeneutics,
constructivism and cognitive-behavioural therapies: from the object to the project. In: R.A. Neimeyer and M.J. Mahoney
(eds) Constructivism in psychotherapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ~~~ Obviously, there are lots of overlaps between these systems of counseling and psychotherapy, and some obvious differences. These role plays are a little stilted, since they are not genuine counselling sessions; but they should give you some sense of what would be involved in coming to see me, or another counsellor/therapist, and working on your issues. Before I move on to Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT), I want you see a demonstration of a form of counselling called Gestalt Therapy, developed by Dr Fritz Perls. Again this is a role play, and not a real session, but it conveys the essence of how a Gestalt counsellor would work: I have used Gestalt Therapy in my own life more than once. See, for example, the relevant section of CENT Paper No.10: The Story of Relationship. Another component of CENT counselling and therapy came from Transactional Analysis (TA), which was created by Dr Eric Berne in the post-war period in the mid-twentieth century. Here's a little video clip of Mary Goulding MSW being interviewed about just what TA counsellors do in their sessions with counseling clients: ~~~ Cognitive Emotive Counselling and Therapy (CENT) and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)Now you have a better idea of what is meant by cognitive counselling; cognitive behavioural therapy; psycho-dynamic (or emotive) counselling; Gestalt therapy; Transactional Analysis (TA), and narrative counselling and therapy; you are in a much better position to cope with my presentations on Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). My next video clip, which follows below, describes some of the counselling models used in CENT. It begins with the ABC model from REBT, and shows how the counsellor 'debates and disputes' some of the client's unhelpful beliefs and gets them to change them to more rational beliefs. It then moves on to the EFR model of CENT counselling and therapy. The E is the Event or Experience that the client has had, about which they are disturbed. The F is the Frame through which they are viewing and interpreting the E. And the R is the Response, or the Result of the E times the F; the emotional and behavioural response. The F in the EFR model differs significantly from the B in the ABC model in that much of the material that makes up the Frame through which the client interpreted the Event is non-conscious! Finally, I briefly introduce the Five Windows Model, and provide some detail on the first three 'windows'. This will be taken further in the second video clip in this series:
What follows is Part 2 of the video series on Counselling Models used in CENT therapy. This clip is designed to demonstrate the first three 'frames' of the Five Windows Model in some detail, as applied to emotional upsets, and I use the teaching illustration of problems arising out of the economic stresses of redundancy or business decline: Next, in Part 3 of the Models Used in CENT counselling, I explore the use of Windows 4 and 5 to reduce emotional upsets about the same problems as before, arising out of the economic stress of job redundancy or business decline/failure. Please take a look and see how you can apply this system to your own emotional, behavioural and/or relationship problems:
And since CENT originally came out of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), you might also want to consult the following web-page: Some people think that REBT counselling and therapy is too insensitive to the client's needs, and I think that it is important to clarify this issue. Therefore, I made the following video to show that I consider empathy towards the counselling client to be one of the most important principles of good, effective counselling and therapy. This video models how to respond empathetically to a distressing problem presented by a client. Here's the video on The Role of Empathy in REBT:
To see Part 2 of this video series
on the ABCs of REBT, please go here: ~~~If you like the content of this site, please share it with your favourite social networking
group (e.g. at Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, etc). ~~~ Call me today If you have an emotional, behavioural or relationship problem, and you have not been able to resolve it on your own, please call me on the phone so we can see how well we would work together. To find out more about me and my service, and how I couldhelp you, phone me on: Telephone: 01422 843 629 (inside the UK) Telephone: 44 1422 843 629 (outside the UK) Or email me to discuss your needs, at: jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com If you don’t feel like phoning me immediately, or using email, you could take a look at one of the video clips on this site, in which I define what counseling is, and talk about my own system of counseling and therapy, and also describe some of the counselling models that I use. That will give you some kind of sense of who I am and what it might be like to have counselling, coaching or therapy sessions with me. Watching the videos would not be as good as a telephone conversation, but it might be enough. To set up an appointment, call me today on: Telephone: 01422 843 629(inside the UK) Telephone: 44 1422 843 629 (outside the UK) Or email me at: jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com Or download an information pack: Information pack for Face to Face clients
Jim Byrne |
Hello and welcome. I'm Doctor Jim Byrne, and I'm a Doctor of Counselling. I make significant amounts of information
about counselling and therapy systems available, free of charge, over the internet. 
"Therapy is derived from the Greek word 'therapeia' meaning healing. Attempts to differentiate between counselling
and psychotherapy are never wholly successful. Because counselling and therapy represent diverse rather than uniform
knowledge and activities, it is more accurate to think of counselling approaches and psychological therapies.
Best wishes to you in your life.| Counselling & Therapy all over the world | Counselling Training courses | Counselling publications, books and articles on CENT | About Dr Jim Byrne | Site Map | Links and Resources Page |
