The Professional Counselor

Apologies for the relative dearth of posts! Not much to write about this couple of days (though Ling has an interesting post she’s working on about Hannah), except that I’ve been attending a five day training program on practical counseling. The course is conducted in town, so on mornings where I’m on course I’ve had to squeeze in with the downtown-heading morning peak hour traffic – something I have not done since 2003. Ah, the memories.

The difficulties of getting to and back from the training venue is nothing to the lessons I’m learning though. The instructor is a senior counselor from Fei Yue Community Services, the offshoot agency from the Chinese Christian Mission. The instruction and sharing of cases and experiences with not just young adults, but also the elderly and marital couples has been really illuminating.

One thing’s also becoming slowly apparent too: the challenge level, pressures, and demands made of professional counselors to discharge their roles as listener, befriender, and problem-solver is scarily high. It’s no wonder that there are professional counselors, therapists and psychologists who lose it completely and commit suicide themselves.

New found admiration for a profession I before this training knew so little about. Teaching is easy by comparison!