"Can I swear in here?" - Yes, be yourself!

People often pause when starting to talk passionately in a counselling session to consider censoring themselves and I am here to tell you - you don't need to!!

Perhaps because your counsellor seems so professional you might feel compelled to be prim and proper with them, but counselling sessions are all about you, so if you want to swear you can!

It is important when working with your counsellor you feel you can be yourself. Your counsellor is not there to judge you or tell you how to think, feel or act. They just want to help you to work towards your goals, whether that is to change how you are feeling or to understand your own actions. To do that they need to get to know you. The real you, not the nice shiny you that you use at work or with strangers.

Whenever someone asks for permission to speak freely, I see a fear of doing the wrong thing or a need to please. We all want to be liked to some degree and it can be hard not to want your counsellor to like you, so maybe you do or say things to try and please them. For example you might think you are telling your counsellor what they want to hear when you say you tried that breathing exercise (even though you totally didn't) - trust me that isn't really what they want to hear though! They want you to be honest and tell them if things haven't worked for you, or you didn't get around to journaling this week. That way your counsellor can work with you to find something that does work or to understand what got in the way of trying whatever activities you'd agreed.

The same is true when being honest about taking a step back, or doing something you might think is a bit taboo. Your counsellor isn't going to kick you out for admitting you started smoking again or cheated on your spouse. They will just want to know how you feel about those actions and what having done that means for you.

I'm not saying you will love admitting that you didn't do the homework - we all grew up being told to "be good" and "work hard" at some point. What I am saying is you don't get an A* (or these days a 9) in having counselling. The only outcome from having counselling is how you are feeling, so the old teacher favourite "it's your own time your wasting!" is probably the most true here.

So get the most out of your time in counselling and be yourself! You can swear, you can talk about your sex life, you can tell them that you think meditation is weird! Be honest if something doesn't make sense or you didn't like an activity! Your counsellor and your future self will thank you for it as you'll get to where you want to be quicker.