This is an information screen for people who are interested in learning Co-counselling. It gives an outline of what you can expect to learn during a Fundamentals of Co-counselling training.

The aim of the training is to enable you to have a co-counselling session in which you take turns in the roles of both counsellor and client.

In a co-counselling session

• they decide how much time they have
• they divide the time equally
• they agree who will go first as client

The Client

• identifies some aspect of their life that merits attention
• plunges into working on it using co-counselling techniques and with the support of the counsellor
• gathers the insights that arise
• plans how to put what they have learned into practice in their life.

Finally:

• client and counsellor reverse roles

To enable you to become an effective co-counsellor you will learn first to become a skilled client, someone with a repertoire of practical techniques that you can use to:

• understand yourself and others better.
• explore, manage and resolve difficult feeling and emotions.
• find support in working out difficult choices, dilemmas, or problems.
• celebrate strengths and correct deficiencies.
• and to take charge of this process yourself.

The repertoire of techniques that enable you to become a skilled client include:

• attention switching scanning
• listening skills role play
• exaggeration/intensification literal description contradiction
• action planning

Don't expect to know what these mean at the moment, you will find that with practice. they are easily learnable skills.

Secondly, you will learn how to be a skilled counsellor. The counsellor role is based on listening and helping the client to use their co-counselling knowledge and experience effectively. As counsellor you will help the client find their own way, discover their own solutions, or make their own choices. The counsellor listens, encourages, supports and reminds the client of techniques or ways of approaching the session topic that they may be neglecting.

In co-counselling the client is in charge of the co-counselling session. The topic, aims and intentions and how the session is conducted are entirely the choice of the client. The counsellor is there to support the client in whatever the client decides to do, the counsellor does not give advice, instructions, opinions, or interpretations.

The depth and value of co-counselling depends in the first place on this shared repertoire of skills, it also depends on a shared knowledge of human development and what you can do about it that makes a difference. To help you gain the maximum benefit from your sessions co-counselling offers reliable, practical knowledge of human psychology.

You will learn:

• about the basic human potentials for love, understanding and choice.
• how the key features of your up-bringing affect your present life.
• how to celebrate and consolidate your strengths.
• how to rectify deficiencies of skill, knowledge and experience.
• how to interrupt, contradict, discard, or recover, from disabling patterns of behaviour.
• how to discharge painful distress emotions.
• how to take more charge of your life.

The co-counselling training is usually enjoyable, satisfying and often deeply moving. It will be held in a safe, supportive environment, there will be a relaxed pace, ample time for practice, exercises and questions and lots of laughter. The content of your co-counselling sessions will be strictly confldential.

Some things that co-counsellors value highly:

• Celebration.
• Feeling and emotion.
• Relating to each others as peers.
• Reciprocity, equal giving and receiving.
• Contracting, making clear, explicit arrangements with each other.

In the the thirty years since it first began to be developed, Co-counselling has provided a rich, rewarding (and free) source of knowledge, insight and delight to many thousands of people wordwide. Co-counselling is one of the key-stones of the Humanistic Psychology tradition which is becoming integrated into many areas of public and private life in the West. I look forward to welcoming you into this tradition and the international co-counselling community.