A Good Counselor Should Be.....

You will hear many counselors talk about caring, compassion, etc. Those should be givens. A good counselor, an effective counselor, seeks solutions for clients. All the empathy in the world does not help any more than your best friend's ear over coffee. A counselor is called a counselor because of the knowledge they have acquired and how that knowledge can help you.

You wouldn't expect an attorney or accountant to simply listen and not suggest answers. Surely, you wouldn't want that from your family physician or a specialist. Demand ideas and the sharing of information from counselors. You deserve it.

A good counselor helps you fix your problems. They don't snap their fingers and make it all better. You need to be open with your counselor and work as a team for solutions. There is no magic wand. There are medications your doctor can prescribe but those make things better, not healed. They deal with symptoms and control things like mood swings, depression, severe anxiety and erratic thoughts, but, they do not heal. They help to heal. They are not the only path to solutions.

If a counselor tells you that you don't need medication, they are shrugging off something that can help you heal faster. The combination of medication and talk therapy is the most effective way to make life with a mental health challenge better. A major part of talk therapy is education. The counselor should make you fully-aware of what the causation of your problem may be and what has been proven to help with it.

Solutions. That's what you need. Education, medication and conversations is where you find those solutions.