In earlier times, the elderly and wise people of the family or society held this position of the Counselor and helped to resolve all the matters within the matrix of family. The relationships were closer and sharing was more. With the disintegration of the close knit framework of the joint families and breakup of the structure, the elderly family counselors have lost their long held importance now a days. The people have become more independent and lonelier as well than ever before.
The connect with others around has become more professional and with bare minimum intervention in each other’s life. And the need to be heard, venting out emotions and finally being counseled has turned out to be higher than ever before.
Therefore, the need for Professional Counselors in India has risen significantly in the recent past. Because, ‘All we need is someone who listens to us without any judgement’. Sometimes, we just need to be heard and this also has become challenging in the present times. Whether it is the trust issue to open our heart out to someone, family disintegration or something else that stops us from saying what we really want to share.
Here comes the role of a Counselor who is there to listen, understand and most importantly empathize without being judgmental and providing all the professional support keeping the Counseling Ethics as paramount, from consent to maintaining Confidentiality and paving way in making sure of the progress of the individual for which the counseling is sought. A counselor’s job is not to provide a readymade solution to the problem of the client but to create the awareness and skill in the client to create a solution on his/her own. This builds the capacity to deal with not only one concern brought to the counselor but also other matters that may happen in future. It establishes Life Skills in an individual.
