This is a video about how NOT to do counselling.

1. Talking too much
2. Prioritising your own curiosity/nosiness
3. Giving advice (without really understanding what’s going on)
4. Giving empty reassurances
5. ‘Colluding’ with the client
6. Being critical
7. Keeping things superficial
8. Blinding the client with theory
9. Being defensive
10. Doing things you’re not properly trained in
11. Encouraging disclosure about traumatic experiences (without proper preparation)
12. Being ‘weird’: a counselling caricature
13. Overly self-disclosing

The video is for trainees in counselling, counselling skills, and psychotherapy about things to try and avoid when you’re working with clients (in fact, they’re things to try and avoid when you’re talking to anybody!).

Of course, we all get things wrong at times, and there’s no perfect counselling; but recognising when we might be getting things wrong—and finding different ways of responding—is an important part of our developmental work.

Most of these vignettes exaggerate to make a point, but they’re all things that real clients have reported experiencing from their therapists.

Trigger warning: this video does show some particularly bad counselling practices. If you’ve had some painful or traumatic experiences in therapy itself, you may not want to watch.

The client, Martha (performed by an actor), is talking about her difficulties with her partner, who she finds ‘flaky’ at times, particularly when he recently dropped out of a friends’ wedding.’

A video of more appropriate ways of counselling with this client, from a contemporary person-centred standpoint, can be found at    • Person Centred Therapy Demonstration:...  

To find out more about my work, including books, training, and blogs on therapy, go to mick-cooper.co.uk -- I promise, my work does get better from here :)