Welcome to the Counselling Blog!

It's always hard to tell whether a TV programme touching on therapy is going to be interesting or extremely superficial but, from the interview Pamela Stephenson gave on Womans Hour today, this could be one worth watching -

"Well-known actress and writer Pamela Stephenson (star of 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'), Pamela is now a successful and hugely respected therapist – Dr Pamela Connolly – with a private practice in Los Angeles. She draws upon her professional training when interviewing the five A-list celebrities: watch them open up in front of the cameras as never before, revealing their truest, rawest and most vulnerable sides."

It's on More4 every evening between 2nd - 4th April at 11pm and you can find out more by clicking here.

I know that a number or people have had difficulties in locating counselling videos in the library catalogue. The trick is to ignore the multimedia search - which seems to be having problems of its own - and to put "counselling and video" into the general search engine. That "and" is very important - it'll get you some 25 titles instead of 6!

Another video now available in DVD format -
Talking about Counselling



what’s it like to be a counsellor?

How do you get your first clients? What are the differences between private work and agency work? How do you decide how much to charge? How do you find a good supervisor? How do you know that you’ve found one? What happens if you have difficulties with one? What do you do if your client is too distresed to engage in an assessment procedure? What about burn-out and self care? Contracts and boundaries? Seeing clients in their own homes?Meeting clients in social settings? Endings?

Three counsellors with many thousands of counselling hours behind them - and one student at the start of her career - talk about their work, their dilemmas and their experiences.

Running Time approximately 82 minutes

Just looking at a schematic of Dante's Inferno and there, close by the Frozen Lake of River Cocytus, and located directly between "Thieves" and "Sowers of Discord", what do I find but "Fraudulent Counsellors" - and this is before regulation comes into force. Pretty scary stuff....

If you're interested in counselling  - and, given that you're reading this blog, the chances are that you are - then you might well be interested in our new short courses programme - everything from telephone counselling to CBT to Loss and Grief.

The latest of our videos to be offered in DVD format in the library is "Good Practice/Bad Practice - Counselling Skills in the workplace"



This programme illustrates good and bad practice in action. It gives you an opportunity to look at two alternative responses to the same client material. We see a key worker discussing a work issue with his manager in an unscripted role play. In the first of these the manager does not use counselling or communication skills, in the second one she does. There is an opportunity for you to make your own analysis of what happens and the sessions are striped with a time-code to help you in this process. You’ll then see the sessions again with a commentary which points out the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches.

Running Time 48 minutes

Usually a number of our students get placements with Student Counselling Services at Cardiff University - but this year they've had very few applications. If you're still looking for a placement you might well find it worth approaching them. You can find contact details on the Placements Blog.

Following on from the discussion earlier in this blog, we're starting to make DVD versions of all our videos. This will take some time and, in the first instance, we'll be concentrating on the most popular titles. The first of these, Dave Mearns in Conversation -



- is now available in the library. We've got two other Dave Mearns videos in the Library which you may well find worth watching. One is of a keynote speech he gave at our Counselling Students' Conference several years ago, and the other is of a three hour workshop that he also gave here - that's a particularly good one and you're strongly encouraged to have a look at it some time.

This is a bit of a spurious one really. Years ago I used to write for Sound on Sound, a hi-tech music magazine, reviewing synths, samplers and various other odds and ends. At one point, working under the premise that “all musicians eat curries” – an undeniable fact – the editor started publishing curry recipes in the magazine. It was quite a popular feature. Working from a similar kind of logic – in this case that “all counsellors eat” – I’m going to start posting a “Recipe of the Month”. I’m a vegetarian, so there won’t be too many meat dishes here. Actually, from my experience of various BACP events I’d say that more counsellors are vegetarians than the norm anyway – a pretty wild claim, of course, but here’s the first recipe.

Pastitsio



1 Onion
Clove Garlic
1 Tb Olive oil
Half oz butter
1.5 oz red lentils
Can tomatoes
Parmesan Cheese
1 Pint Vecon (or some other vegetable stock)
quarter tsp cinamon
quarter tsp Oregano
S & P
4 oz Pasta twists
4 oz Mushrooms
1 Tb Tom Pure
For the Sauce
half oz butter
half oz flour
quarter pint milk
1 egg
2 oz cheese

Method

Saute the finely chopped onion and garlic in the oil and butter for a few minutes. Add the lentils and stock and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes, pure, cinamon, oregano, salt and pepper and continue until the lentils are soft and most of the liquid has evaporated. You might need to add a bit more stock if the lentils haven’t softened. Meanwhile cook the pasta until firm – about 8 minutes – and slice mushrooms and saute lightly and put to one side.

To make the sauce - melt butter, stir in the flour, cook for 1 minute add milk, stir until thickened, remove from heat, cool, add egg, s&p, grated cheese. I often just throw in the lot in one go and beat in a mild frenzy – that seems to work pretty well.

When you’ve done all that grease a high sided oven dish and build up layers of pasta, tomato/lentil mixture, mushrooms (2 layers of each) sprinkling parmesan as you go. Pour the cheese sauce over the top and sprinkle more parmesan.

Put into a preheated oven 30 mins Gas 6/200
This serves 2 people with big appetites, but will stretch to 3.