What is Transformational Counseling?
The time for formulaic institutional approaches to counseling is gone. We are in times the require highly creative and collaborative approaches to coaching and counseling in order to meet the complex mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges and opportunities of this age.
In ancient times, up through the mid-19th century, counsel meant guidance. This follows the notion of “council” a group of sage elders who could infuse perspective and stewardship into difficult community challenges and changes. This had the effect of connecting novel developments with ancient knowledge. A counselor was a conveyor of age-old wisdom to a particular situation. A counselor’s advice was more akin to practical philosophy, bringing extraordinary vision to the ordinary conditions of the world.
In the late 1800’s, counseling completely lost its moorings, and devolved into a prescriptive specialty and profession. Counseling became not so much a way to help people and illuminate their paths, but to fix them to take their places as cogs in an engineered social machine called “The Industrial Age,” or as I call it, “The Second Dark Ages”.
This image of counseling as a fixer of defective people has stuck with us. When most people hear “counseling,” whether it refers to them or someone else, they immediately conjure images of emotional problems, relationship problems, in short, people who can no longer hack it or people who have fallen “off the beam.” Yet, as you look around at the profound dysfunction of society, the violence, greed, environmental destruction, and so forth, healthy guidance would seem to involve facilitating people intentionally getting off this unsustainable beam and developing a better, vibrant, deep, and fulfilling path for themselves and others.
Transformational counseling embodies just this kind of creative and revolutionary “counsel.” We cannot afford to simply “fit in” with an increasingly dysfunctional and unsustainable society. We cannot simply apply old formulas to an unprecedented age. We need to collaboratively connect our deep inner creativity and fuse that creativity with the wisdom of the past and the challenges of the present.
Here are some of the central tenets of “transformational counseling”:
Ferret out what is right and good with people at their core rather than what is wrong: Every person has something absolutely unique and valuable to offer, something that can be found nowhere else in the universe. That commitment drives transformational counseling, making it about guidance, education, and support on how to identify, develop, and most importantly, give from one’s deeper talents and desires.
Help people co-create their reality rather than kowtow to experts, run away from life, or attempt to control others: Transformational counseling is an inherently collaborative enterprise. No single person has the answer because healthy reality demands that we each contribute our unique best into the creation of a better world. A transformational counselor is a facilitator, philosopher, integrator, and educator, equipping people to be their best and live purposefully and passionately rather than fixing them.
Emphasize passion and enterprise over brokenness and conformity: Yes, if you are passionate about life, you will likely fail on the way to a successful venture (perhaps more than a few times). Experimentation, insight, and resilience are the mainstays to transformational counseling and a well-risked, well-lived, well-loved life. Passion means that your love of learning and desire to see experiments through to fruition will outweigh failure or frustration. A transforming person needs a transformational counseling partner in humor and serendipity to detect the developing skills and character emerging beneath apparent setbacks.
Invite people to show up for themselves as a gateway to stepping up for others: A person with passion and self-worth makes a far better partner than someone with either inflated self-esteem or low self-esteem. So many people reflect their insecurities off the person that is closest to them (and play out those insecurities on the person they supposedly love). These people either look to be rescued, or they put their partners on a pedestal, only to knock them down. Transformational counseling equips couples to work for the best, both in terms of self and Transformational counseling evokes the inherently positive human spirit to process trauma, produce performance, and provide uplift.
Foster a new kind of giving—the proactive, affirmative development and circulation of your own unique genius built on what you are “meant to do.” This differs from reactive, obligatory, or even altruistic ways of exchanging energy based on what you are “supposed to do.” The lens here is that your own spirit works with the well-being of others. Therefore, talent and virtue do not have to be sacrificed on the altar of martyrdom, but the opposite, offered as gifts from the deepest part of one’s being. In addition, transformational counseling helps one learn to receive from others from their authentic gifts, rather than take from others to satisfy some craving or assuage fears of survival.
If this interactive, creative approach resonates with you, take the time to sign up for a free consultation at AskDrZeus.com.
Copyright 2017, Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D., AskDrZeus.com
Tags: transformational coaching transformational counseling