We are mental health professionals but counsellors (whether Christian Counsellors or Secular Counsellors) are not consultants. Generally, counselling goals aim to facilitate long term changes on the person; whereas consultants aim to provide solutions for particular projects. Like if the client is troubled by anxiety, counselling and therapy will aim to deal with the source of this anxiety rather than just finding ways to eliminate it.
This brings us to the analogy of teaching people to catch fishes rather than giving them fishes directly. The difference of the two is that teaching people how to catch fishes equips them to deal with life for the long term. As simply giving people a fish (or an advice) will just delay the succeeding hunger to come.
Advice giving is goes towards the opposite direction from what counselling aims to do.
In the video, here are the Biblical bases for the core aims of counselling:
On Talk Therapy
“Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit,
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Job 7:11
In counselling, it is the client’s time to be themselves and to express themselves fully.
Listening in Counselling
He who answers before listening— that is his folly and his shame.
Proverbs 18:13
Clients are supposed to be speaking more than the counsellors in counselling. If not, then it becomes a lecture and we have gone further away from achieving the goals of counselling. This is tied up to the duty of the counsellor to empathize with the clients – this will be discussed in the section below.
Edify One Another
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
The main aim is of course to edify our clients. To gear them towards Jesus Christ and through Him, have their lives empowered. The process of counselling is to accomplish this through the internal changes of client not through forcing them with lectures and sermons on how they should think and act.
Below are 3 reasons presented in the video on why counsellors don’t give advice:
Reason 1: Advice creates dependence
Exploring a never ending slew of what ifs and what next? This is not the goal of counselling. An advice will equip you for one specific situation but will not lead to a general growth/learning of the person.
Reason 2: Advice traps the counsellor into responsibility
There are no guarantees in social science. And if we cannot guarantee a successful outcome, counsellors have no right to tell the client on what to do with their lives. As counsellors can be thanked for a good outcome of counselling, counsellors should also be responsible for negative outcomes, especially if they influenced the clients towards it.
Reason 3: Advice takes away empathy and disconnects
Empathy. Be with people. CONNECT
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Romans 12:15
We don’t tell a sad person to smile and be happy.
People come to counselling for connection and advice giving cuts the connection between 2 human beings. Even more than that, advice giving declares to the client that we are smarter and more capable than them (which we are not). Most of the time, advice are obvious, they are condescending, and they are usually wrong. What the clients need for the time being is a listening ear and a human person who will simply be with them for the moment.
This next section is to address the alternatives to advice giving.
Alternatives to Advice: So what do we do in Counselling?
Self-Disclosure (Counsellor Disclosure)
Psycho-Education (Information Sharing)
Exploring Logical Consequences
Providing Directives