Online Counsellor and Online Therapist Sarah Luczaj

How Does Therapy Work?

Counselling/therapy (I use the two terms interchangeably, which is common practice in the UK) is different for every person, every time. In my experience the way it works is basically the same in online therapy as it is face to face.

Sometimes therapy is primarily a safe, respectful, confidential space in which you can tell your story, say how things really are for you, work things out privately. Sometimes the relationship with the therapist is the most important thing, a feeling of being heard, understood, supported, or finding ways of working out misunderstandings, being challenged and making new discoveries. Sometimes counselling feels like teamwork, a creative collaboration, a process of generating new plans and solutions, trying things out and experimenting. Usually all three of these elements are present, and the emphasis changes over time.

What is the Aim of Therapy?

To be able to use all the resources we have, and start to live in a way that we feel is basically good, or real, or satisfying to us, whatever range of difficulties life throws our way. To feel that we have choices. Not to be frozen, or strangled by our histories, traumas, problems.

The aim of therapy is for you to find the change, strength or whatever it is that you are looking for. My own aim as a therapist is to facilitate that, to actively strive to understand and relate to you in a respectful and creative way. Often when someone makes an effort to see you and accept you as you are, you start to see yourself in a different light. This actually changes things.

Experience

As well as being a counsellor/therapist, I am a poet and translator, and I spent around eight years in care work.

I offer an inter-cultural perspective; I have been based in Poland since 1997. I worked for five years with women and children in a centre which underwent persecution for its ideology of empowering women. I work face to face in private practice and have been engaged in online therapy since September 2008, with a wide range of clients.

Training

In 1995 I was awarded a Certificate in Counselling Skills, enabling me to use counselling skills in care work. In 1996, I obtained a Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling (vocational qualifications awarded by the CPCAB –- The Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body, UK) entitling me to work as a therapist with a limited range of clients.

After a break to have my first child, I acquired a Postgraduate Diploma in Person Centred Counselling from the University of East Anglia in 2002. Fully supervised clinical contact time during the diploma course was over 100 hours.

I am a member of the BACP and adhere to their ethical code of practice. (For more about ethics, please see Practicalities of Online Counselling.)

The Approach I Use

My Diploma training was rooted in Person Centred Therapy. It means basically that I am primarily interested in you, the person, rather than the “problem”. I am not here to diagnose you, judge you, or give you advice. I am here to be alongside you and help you to find ways forward with all the means at my disposal.

I do not believe that we are intrinsically bad or stupid and in need of fixing, but that we have the resources we need to live “good” lives, in all senses of the word, we just don’t always get the conditions we need to use them, or sometimes even find them!

The approach (founded by Carl Rogers in the 1950s) is based around the idea that there are three vital ingredients in successful therapy, and they are what I use as benchmarks:

Empathy

I put aside my own way of thinking and step inside the client’s world, trying to get a concrete sense of how things are for them, without losing awareness of who I am and what I think, of course!

Unconditional positive regard

Complete respect, whatever your choices or history might be.

Congruence

While I make use of the knowledge and experience at my disposal, I do my best not to put on a front or “play the role” of parent, guru, expert or anything else.

As this approach stresses being a “real person” in the counselling relationship, it is worth stressing the importance of the boundaries which keep us both safe. For example I won’t  disclose things, in the name of being “real and honest”, if that disclosure would be more for my benefit than yours. 

Interests

I practice focusing, a way of getting direct access to a kind of bodily knowing, and Buddhist meditation. My PhD thesis, in progress, links these interests.

I also contribute to the blog at Counselling Resource: Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, and write reviews on books related to counselling and therapy.

In case you are interested, here is a full list of articles by Sarah Luczaj, and a full list of book reviews by Sarah Luczaj.