A picture paints a thousand words by Gill Webb

You will be familiar with the adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ but I wonder how many of you trust yourselves to let the picture do the talking when working with online clients.

For some time now I have been toying with the idea of using images both paintings and photographs rather than using the language of metaphors to express thoughts and ideas which may be helpful to clients.

With the advent of smartphones it is becoming commonplace for people to take pictures of their experiences and to share them instantly with friends and family with little or no explanation and for the pictures to hold meaning for those receiving them, so I ask myself what stops me from making greater use of them in my work?

During OLT’s General course students are asked to choose a metaphor or image of themselves as an online counsellor and because I choose to include an image to illustrate my written description students have often followed suit and their choice of images have so accurately reflected their written word that it has demonstrated for me time and again how powerful pictures can be in transmitting not only ideas but also feelings.

I have chosen to focus on this theme now because I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2016 and to share with you the Christmas card I have designed for 2015.

Every year we each send and receive many cards and I often wonder how much time is given to reflecting on the images and the words contained in them. I guess all of us know those for whom sending and receiving cards is important and those for whom it is not.

If you have time take a few minutes to look at my card and ask yourself what meaning this picture has for you. Perhaps all you see is a wintery scene with three bells and a Christmas message.

 

For me it holds so much more. The scene is actually the view from my garden and the bell shapes have been cut out from a photo I took of a stained glass window you may recognise if you have visited Ely Cathedral. (I wonder if knowing the background of the picture makes a difference to the way you now look at it) Perhaps you have become a little curious and are wondering what the significance may be.

It has become so easy to lose the spiritual meaning of Christmas. By including the three bells and the stained glass images taken from Ely Cathedral I am able to acknowledge in my own way why this time of year is important to me, whilst at the same time allowing those who receive the card the freedom to read into the greeting what is important for them.

So I will leave you with this thought. Will the recipients notice the graphics or will it be the words that matter, perhaps neither? What may matter to them is that they have been remembered and are being thought about and how life changing that can be!

With heartfelt wishes to you all and to those for whom you care,

Gill Webb

Using writing tasks with clients – Babs McDonald

 

Faced with composing my second blog offering, I immediately decided to write about one of my favourite subjects – writing. For the purpose of this article it will be more specifically about therapeutic writing.  I’ve enjoyed writing all my life. In my twenties I enrolled on a creative writing course but then I didn’t develop my writing any further as life took me in a different direction and subsequently I was distracted by motherhood.

A few decades later, having retrained as a counsellor and then as an online counsellor, my interest in writing returned with a vengeance. In recent years I’ve attended a number of therapeutic writing workshops both online (including the excellent one run by Gill Jones at OLT) and in person. I’ve also read many books on the subject.

I then discovered Lapidus but noticed that many of the Lapidus members appear to be highly trained writers, often having MAs in creative writing or something similar.  As I’m not highly trained in this field, I initially fe
lt nervous about introducing therapeutic writing tasks into my counselling practice, questioning whether I was competent enough. I’m sure there are other counsellors in a similar position to myself, who wonder whether they dare to use therapeutic writing with their clients.

The fact that the clients who are drawn to email counselling, are usually the people who like to communicate using the written word and means they are likely to engage well with writing tasks. With this in mind, I eventually took the tentative step and discovered that I already have much I can use with clients and that generally these clients appreciate the introduction of therapeutic writing tasks.

Trainers will be aware that there are different learning styles and that those who have a ‘verbal’ (linguistic) learning style, prefer using words, both in speech and writing. As counselling is a way of learning about ourselves and growing in our self-awareness, therapeutic writing can be a wonderful tool, especially for people who have a verbal learning style. And text based online counselling is the perfect platform for it.

As Gillie Bolton said: “Just words on a page, put together with love and trust and care, can help us learn things about our lives, memories, thoughts, feelings and fears we didn’t know before, or that we sort of knew and had forgotten, or that we knew only too well and never wanted to think about. Putting them on paper is a beginning of sharing and can make such things easier to share with other people and a burden shared is not only a burden halved, but it brings companionship…” (Words for Wellbeing, 2012 p.34)

Therapeutic writing tasks can include journal writing; poetry written either by the client or by others; using metaphors or visual prompts; mindfulness with writing and there are many other therapeutic writing activities that the online counsellor can use, such as unsent letters.

There isn’t the space in this short article to go into the different activities but there are plenty of books available to get you started. You could start by searching on Amazon and then don’t be afraid to suggest writing tasks to your clients, they will soon tell you if it isn’t for them.

Babs McDonald

OLT Tutor

“To have a Blog or a Website – that is the question” – by Jan Stiff

I have been mulling over this for some months now and feel that I really need to make up my mind about what I require.

I spent some time looking at creating a website a couple of years ago. As ever, Google was very helpful and produced an array of options – from“how to make a website for free”, to paid options. However, reading through what was meant to be essential step by step guides filled me with dread. There was so much that was unknown to me that I decided to “leave things to another time”. I took the easy option and decided that I would create a Blog instead.

It was meant to be an easier option and to some degrees it was but the last steps needed help and support from a good friend and colleague of mine, Mieke at “Mieke’s Marketing for Counsellors”

Since I counsel young people, (both online and face to face), and supervise counsellors who do the same, I decided to create a blog that showed the latest articles and research relating to young people and mental health. This is a subject that I feel passionate about – As I write, the Duchess of Cambridge says the stigma around mental health means that many children do not get the help they badly need.

My blog also including pages that provided a personal profile and further information about myself and my online counselling and online supervision work. I started my blog in April 2014 and have enjoyed keeping it updated.

However, there have been times when I would like to refer a professional or parent or even a young person to a place online where they could find explanations of counselling young people online, the roles of particular services that young people might be referred to, links to relevant websites, books, articles and links to downloadable exercises that might be helpful in between sessions. In essence I feel the need for a friendly, warm website that would help to normalise the counselling process for young people as well as somewhere that parents/carers and schools could visit. Unless I am providing anonymous online counselling, I am also very aware of the importance of creating a dialogue with parents / carers and schools as a way to prevent any feelings of separation from the young person and the counselling process.

So I think I have finally made a decision! I do need to create a website that stands alone from my blog. I know that my “skill” for reading through instructions without understanding a word will not help the process so I have decided to ask Mieke for her professional help and support and to prevent any possible neurological melt down. Watch this space!

New kid on the blog…

Earlier this year I went to the annual meeting of OLT directors and tutors in Bristol for the very first time. I was just about to start as a new tutor for the Online Counselling Diploma. At the meeting we were all asked if we would like to contribute to the OLT blog and it was suggested that we could each take a month. Of course I agreed, at the same time wondering what on earth I could possibly write about that would be of interest. I signed up for ‘August’, feeling somewhat like a Calendar girl but thankfully without the photos.

So here we are – this is it, August – my month. Part 1 of the Diploma is over and not only have the students been learning but so have I. Each student brings his or her own particular interest and knowledge to the group. So whatever the discussion topic when we come together for our weekly online meeting, be it about working safely, different platforms, ethical considerations, the online relationship or cultural diversity, we are all learning.

At the last meeting of term our online group were logging in from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia and the UK. It felt so exciting to be connecting in this way.

Like many people, I am intrigued about how we are perceived when we are using only text online. Personally, I would like to appear friendly, approachable, with a sense of humour and yet professional. But how well do I achieve this? How well does anyone achieve the image they would like to portray? Is it possible to be completely congruent online? Does humour come across in the way it was intended, as funny rather than sarcastic or silly? How can we manage to get it just right? Is our usual persona more acceptable when we are face-to-face? Or do we need to tone it down when online? So many questions that we can’t always answer.

People can appear to be quite different online to how they are in real life. Shy people might come across as confident and open, perhaps because they are ‘unseen’. The ‘disinhibition effect’ (John Suler, http://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html) may play a part in this. A normally anxious person could appear to be calm and controlled. Or alternatively, as terse and possibly aggressive, depending upon how they express themselves.

By having training in working online and meeting with others online, it gives students a chance to practice these relational skills in a safe environment. By the end of the Diploma and the 24 1½-hour meetings, each student will have gained some insight into what feels acceptable and what traits perhaps should be avoided. An interesting topic I think, and one that merits discussion and more research.

Babs McDonald, OLT tutor

 

the various duties of an OLT director

This week I spent an interesting day in London, being one of the counsellors and supervisors for a series of vignettes which will be used to illustrate issues and dilemmas in the 4^th edition of Tim Bond’sStandards and Ethics for Counselling in Action (due to be published by Sage next Spring).

In the book there will be links to the online vignettes, which is a really exciting idea. Obviously it was a bit nerve wracking doing the filming, hoping that I didn’t make any absolutely dreadful interventions, and that we covered the issues which Tim needs to illustrate the dilemmas and issues. However, once I got over that, I really enjoyed the day. It was fascinating to watch how the needs of the film crew and those of the profession were balanced, so that the final result will hopefully be seamless and useful!

Those of you who know me will be amused that my first lot of earrings caused problems – surprisingly not because they ‘dangled’ too much, but because the noise from them moving was picked up by the sound tracking! I wore more discreet ones for the other scenes.

We filmed between 10 and 15 minutes for each scenario, but it will eventually be just a few minutes. It was frustrating to be about to give a response which seemed to encapsulate what we were about, when the filming was cut, but of course the idea is not to actually do a whole session. There was a ‘proper’ actor for some of the scenes, and another counsellor too. They were both great to work with.

What with the changes of clothes for each scenario, the extremely helpful and professional film crew, and Tim’s input, it felt as if I had hit the high life for a short time! I bet when I eventually see the vignettes, I will think ‘They cut my best lines’……. But that’s probably true for Maggie Smith too, one of my favourite actors! Seriously, it was a great experience and if you ever get a chance to do the same, grab it both hands. I am so grateful to Tim and Sage for inviting me to be involved. It made me reflect on my work and think again about a number of important issues.

By Anne Stokes OLT director

What is to come

OCTIA 2014 is behind us again. It was so great to see such a turn out of online counsellors both in the room in Bristol and in the chat room. One of our tutors Anne Stokes talked about online supervision.

The day before OCTIA we usually come together with all the OLT tutors to meet in person. And to discuss new plans for the new year.

Some of the key points for the coming year are: adding more workshops to those we offer already. And to do much more with the blog. Other things are still in the pipeline and will be shared here when we have worked on them some more.

 

 

Back to the blog. We have talked to all the tutors and they have all agreed to share their knowledge with you on this blog. Every month we will feature a different tutor. They will write about a topic that they have picked themselves. So over the months we will build a database with experience that we have within the group.

Those are the new ideas in a nutshell. If you have any ideas for new workshops yourself please do share them with us and we will see what we can do.

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