There are several types of psychological counseling

How many types of psychological counseling are there? Under the current classification method generally recognized by the domestic industry, according to different classification dimensions, there are 14 common mainstream service types - but there is really no absolute standard answer to this number. The classification logic of different schools and different institutions is very different. The core is always to match the real needs of visitors.

What we usually come into contact with the most are the categories divided by the number of people served. The most common one is individual consultation. I just received a young girl who just graduated last week. She didn't even dare to go to the interview because she was afraid of the company. She came to my office one afternoon every week and chatted alone for 45 minutes. She complained about her embarrassment during the interview and gradually practiced her social skills. After two months of doing this, she has now received a satisfactory offer. This is the most typical individual consultation. There is also family consultation. A family of three came here before. The child in the second grade of junior high school has been out of school for half a year. The parents accused each other of neglecting the child. The three of them sat in the consultation room and had a quarrel. This kind of consultation cannot only be provided to the child, but the interaction mode of the entire family must be adjusted. I also led a social anxiety group for a year, where 8 to 12 people sat in a circle. Every time we talked about a topic, everyone was suffering from similar problems. On the contrary, it was more relaxed than individual consultation. Many people said things in the group for the first time that they did not dare to say to the people around them.

Many people's misunderstanding about psychological counseling is that "you can only come if you are sick." In fact, if you divide the counseling according to the goals, this misunderstanding can be solved. One visitor who particularly impressed me was a product manager at a major Internet company with an annual salary of one million. He had no emotional problems, but he was struggling with whether to give up his current stable job and transfer to a new business management position. He came three times in a row, and we sorted out his career needs and risk tolerance. Finally, he made up his mind to transfer. Six months later, he specifically sent me a message to say that the new team was running smoothly. This kind of counseling without clear psychological distress, just for making life decisions and self-improvement, is developmental counseling, which accounts for almost one-third of the cases I receive every year. Correspondingly, there is health counseling, which is more familiar to everyone, dealing with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, intimacy disorder and other problems that have affected normal life. There is also a very special kind of crisis intervention. I still have the 24-hour group of the local crisis intervention team on my phone. I was woken up by a phone call at 2 a.m. last winter, saying that a young man was squatting on the bridge and wanted to jump. I chatted with him on the phone for more than two hours and finally persuaded him to come down. This kind of emergency emotional counseling is completely different from the logic of conventional consultation, and it requires a higher response ability of the counselor.

Speaking of which, many people will ask me for their first consultation, is it better to choose online or offline? These are actually two categories divided by service form. I had a client who suffered from severe social anxiety before. He had to write a draft half an hour in advance even when talking to the delivery man. During the first offline consultation, he kept his head down and did not even dare to look at my face. Later, when it was switched to online video consultation, he became more relaxed. Slowly he dared to turn on the camera and express his thoughts. Of course, there are also visitors who like the reality of face-to-face. When they are sad, hand him a tissue and sit quietly with him for a while. This kind of warmth cannot be replaced online. There is no absolute good or bad, it all depends on personal habits. There are also long-term and short-term consultations divided by the length of consultation. This is also a point of great controversy in the industry: I have an old veteran who has been doing psychoanalysis for 20 years, and he is determined not to do short-term consultations within 10 times. He said, "Subconscious changes cannot be that fast. They only treat the symptoms but not the root cause." There is a CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) consultant who has just returned from abroad. He is best at solving specific problems six times, such as fear of dogs and nervousness in speaking. The feedback is very good. Both sides are reasonable. No one is right or wrong. It is just that the people he is suitable for are different.

In fact, these classifications are just like when you order food at a hot pot restaurant, some people divide it according to meat and vegetable dishes, and some people divide it according to the cooking time. It doesn’t matter how you divide it. The core is that you can eat happily and be full. I have been doing counseling for so many years, and I never label "which type you must do" at the beginning. The type of counseling for many cases changes with the progress: for example, at the beginning, it was individual counseling to deal with anxiety. After half a year of doing it, I found that the root cause was the symbiotic relationship with my mother. Later, I took my mother to do family counseling, and the effect was better. It is easy to be tied up by being stuck in categories.

If I really want to give you a practical suggestion, you don’t need to research in advance what type of consultation you want to do. Find a consultant from a regular organization and have an initial interview first. The other person will help you determine the most suitable form. After all, classification is dead and people are alive. Good consultation can help you get out of trouble.