The Counselling for Non-Counsellors Course is a course that teaches some basic counselling and nuturing skills for use in life with partners, kids, family, friends, colleagues, team mates, etc. It is for those who have a desire to gain the useful skills and/or enhance their existing skills to help others when they are emotional, stressed or suffering or who need some nurturing, but who do not want to spend a lot of money and time getting trained as a counsellor. There is no other pre-requisite for this workshop.

It will be presented by Dr Donna Brandes and myself. The aim of the course is to teach the fundamentals of counselling, improve communication skills and learn some practical counselling and nurturing skills. An added bonus is that attendees will get the opportunity to do some personal work with themselves and will learn some techniques on this course can also be easily self-applied.

Course Date and Times

Click here for more details about the content of this workshop.

It will be held over eight Tuesday evenings and starts on Tuesday, the 13th of May 2008 (7 PM to 9 PM).

If you would like to attend, call Donna Brandes on (08) 9339 1574  OR  click here to send Donna an email.

The cost is $375.

Venue: The Subiaco StillPoint Health & Wellness Centre, 15 York Street, Subiaco. This venue is directly opposite the Ronald MacDonald House and very close to the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, near the Hamilton Street end of York Street. The West Leederville train station is the nearest station and is easy walking distance to York Street (heading south from the station along Coghlan Street) and then left into York Street.

How This Course Come About

One of my reasons for collaborating with Dr Donna Brandes to run this course was my repeated observation that many of the people who I taught to do the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) are very enthusiastic about it but some are limited by their lack of basic counselling skills. These are the fundamental concepts and skills concerning counselling and how to conduct a session (formally or informally over coffee) - regardless of what particular technique is being used.

This fundamental knowledge and these basic skills help to create an environment in which effective techniques can be used successfully and within which the person feels safe enough to communicate about and work on the issues that he/she wants to address.

These skills help to develop the confidence to help others, to establish rapport with the person you are working with, to gain and maintain his/her co-operation and participation, and to be able to stay on the topic being worked on (and not wander all over the place) to ensure that some results are achieved. Communication skills are, of course, extremely important and play a central role. Many people have already developed some of these skills but enhancing or complementing them can make a big difference.

Consequently, I had been planning a "Basic Counselling Course" for some time but I discovered that Dr Donna Brandes was already teaching a similar course at UWA. It was a 4 night course called “Counselling for Non-counsellors”. It was for people who wanted to develop some counselling skills for use with friends, family, children, partners, etc. without the long training needed to become a professional counsellor. We compared notes and found a synergy which now neatly combines the two workshops into a eight evening course.

In April 2006, I started running the Relationship Skills Workshop. One of the nine important skills needed to maintain, enhance and heal relationships is Nurturing Skills. I was planning to run a separate workshop on "Practical Nurturing Skills" but found that it comfortably fitted in with this workshop. So, this Counselling for Non-counsellors Course workshop also includes learning and experiencing a set of exceptionally useful nurturing skills. It includes a brief introduction to EFT (just enough to do the basic EFT technique with someone) but EFT is only one of a number of nurturing skills to be learnt. They blend together well. The next Vital Relationship Skills Workshop will commence on Monday evening, the 31st of March 2008.

Originally (2006), this workshop was called the "You as a Counsellor Workshop" but is now called the "Counselling for Non-counsellors Course" which is more descriptive.

Let me or Donna know if you’d like to attend. It’ll be lots of fun and very useful!

Peter Graham
(08) 9381 4112

Click on www.integrative-clearing.com.au to go to Peter's home page.

NOTICE: This course is not intended as a replacement for professional health care or advice and those who have serious emotional issues or who have mental problems should be referred to a skilled and experienced therapist or counsellor.

Last updated: 9th of February 2008.