Course in Psychology & Counselling

Course in Psychology & Counselling

What is Counselling?

Counselling is basically a helping relationship in which a counsellor helps the counselee overcome his or her emotional, relationships or adjustment problems. It is nothing but giving hope, empowering and motivating the person to look at this problems not as a dead end  but as a challenge and opportunity. The counsellor’s primary role is to give a patient hearing to the person so listening plays a major role in the counselling process. Many people just need an outlet, or a shoulder to cry on. People love to talk about their issues and want others to listen to them. This counselling course stresses the importance of listening. Listening is therapeutic for the person who is talking. More people speak up and confess better they feel. So a counsellor’s role can be as basic as listening and even this can resolve a lot of issues.

Counselling is not guiding, telling or information giving. Its not even teaching. By doing so the counsellor will end up making the counselee dependent on the counsellor. This is not the objective of counselling. Counselling is helping the person help himself by coming out with ideas and solutions himself or herself. Our counselling centre in Mumbai deal with many such cases of counselling regularly.

Most of the times people who come for counselling at our centre in Mumbai, know the problems they are facing and the underlying reasons for it. They also know the solutions and the steps to be taken to overcome it. They just need someone they value and trust to ratify it and show the trust in them and tell them to go ahead and put the solutions into practice. This is enough most of the times. Rest they are actually capable to handling.  In this counselling course we attempt to explain this more scientifically and rationally using different theories of counselling psychology.

Why counselling Course:

Psychology is one topic which concerns one and all in many ways. It touches every one’s lives. Human mind is filled with various emotions. The experiences of our lives triggers different emotions and we do get carried away at times and end up behaving in ways which may harm us and also harm our relationships. We all need someone more matured and neutral to understand what we are going through and guide us through our testing times. This is where the role of a mentor, coach or a counsellor comes in. This counselling course organised in Mumbai, gives us a very clear understanding of this aspect of human mind and the role counselling plays here. There is no one in this world who does not need a mentor or a counsellor. Counselling is happening everywhere. Parents are counselling their children, teachers are counselling their students, a coach is counselling players, boss is counselling his team, HR department is counselling its employees, doctors are counselling patients, social workers are counselling the victims, lawyers are counselling their clients and so on. So we have roles for career counsellors, marital counsellors, family counsellors, investment counsellors, health counsellors, image counsellors etc. This counselling course seeks to educate one and all who fits in the role of a counsellor. And the fact is that we all are counsellor for someone or the other and at the same time we all have a counsellor in our lives, in the form or parents, teachers, doctors etc. So this counselling course becomes all the more relevant. We conduct counselling courses in Mumbai every two months.

Who can benefit by doing Psychology & Counselling courses?

This counselling course is in fact designed for all. Everyone has a lot to benefit from it. As no human can remain untouched by role of human psychology in their lives. But part from that there are a group of individuals and professionals who can directly benefit out of this counselling course as it impacts their personal and professional life more apparently. The following groups of individuals have attended and taken advantage of our psychology courses in Mumbai.

Teachers: People who are in the teaching profession deal with students and in teaching, counselling plays a big role. Knowingly and unknowingly a teacher is playing the role of a counsellor. Not only a teachers is a counsellor for a student but also his parents. We all know the liking for a subject is directly related with the liking for the teacher. It means we first like the teacher only then we develop the liking for the subject the teachers teaches. So the way the teacher presents the topic, they way the teachers communicates, the way the teachers builds rapport with the students, the way the teacher motivates and corrects. All this overlaps with the role of a counsellor. If a teachers is given a sound training of counselling skills it can do its job much better and it will for sure reflect in the performance of the student. This counselling course adds a lot of value to the teaching profession and helps the teachers learn ways to become more effective.

Soft Skills Trainers: When we say soft skills, we are referring to psychological and behavioural disposition of the person. We differentiate soft skills with hard skills which are also known as technical or functional skills. A person’s soft skills are visible in the way the person behaves, deals with others and deals with relationships and people. Here attitude plays a big role. So when we say we are training people on soft skills, it means we are correcting a person’s attitude and behaviour and helping him learn better ways to deal with people aspect of his life and work. Classroom training or group training in psychology is called group therapy and essentially a soft skills training session is nothing but group therapy. All the soft skills topics like communication skills, change of attitude, stress management, leadership, team working, interpersonal relationship training, negotiation skills, conflict management, emotional intelligence, time management, goal setting, etc are nothing but psychology. In a counselling course most of the soft skills topics find a direct or indirect mention. A soft skills trainer hugely benefits from a counselling course by learning the psychological basis of human behaviour and it help him enrich his course content and also the methodology of training delivery.

Training professionals: Right from theories of learning to domain of learning is derived from concepts of psychology. The basis of training and OD(Organisation Development) is psychology based theories and concepts. Pedagogy is understanding how a child learns and Andragogy is all about adult learning. These concepts are important for a training professional and trainers to design the training instructions. So when try to understand the psychology of learners and match it with the right methodology this psychology course helps in a big way. This counselling course adds a lot of value to a training professional in getting the training design right.

HR Professional: HR plays an important role in designing the right intervention for employee recruitment and selection, employee development, employee engagement, increasing employee morale and motivation, employee training, performance management and training. Almost all the concepts and interventions revolves around psychology of employee. Performance counselling, coaching, mentoring and training have direct relations with psychology and counselling. The various tool of selection including psychometric assessments are examples of direct application of concepts of this psychology and counselling course. HR professionals have a lot of take aways from this course in not only learning basics of counselling skills but also in learning different types of assessment options. Ways of dealing with different types of employee and helping them in improving their performance at work by addressing their personal and interpersonal conflicts can be learnt in this counselling course. HR professionals must enrol and learn from such psychology courses to deal with their challenges at work.

Management Students – HR : Management students who are specialising in HR must prepare themselves mentally and emotionally to deal with the people management aspect of their jobs. They study subjects like OB(Organisational Behavior), OD(Organisation Development), Behavioral Dynamics, Training & Development, Competency Mapping etc. Apart from other technical subjects. These subjects derive their concepts from Psychology. Infact we can say these topics are pure psychology and nothing else. So doing a counselling course makes a lot of sense to them. It will give them a broader outlook and help them in understanding these concept of these subjects better. This psychology course is more relevant for them as many of the students doing MBA with HR come from a non-psychology or from technical backgrounds e.g. many are from commerce, science or engineering backgrounds.

Psychology Students:  Psychology is taught from junior college onwards in colleges along with other arts subjects. Often students are confused between many other electives in arts stream. The confusion is due to lack of knowledge and awareness about the subject. If during junior college itself students are explained about the subject of psychology and its various disciplines, history of psychology, future of psychology in terms of career options, scope of psychology, specialisations of subjects of psychology, how it is practiced etc., it will be easy for the students to take a decision. It is always better to get an overview of the subject of psychology before taking a final decision. This is where this counselling course helps. We want to help aspiring students understand their aptitude and interest for the subject of psychology. In this psychology course students interested in learning psychology will be exposed to all the major topics of psychology by way of interactions, activities and exercises, role plays etc. This course will clear all the doubts and myths related to the subject of psychology and help them take right career decisions related to its study.

Doctors: Doctors see patients of all kinds. Usually a doctor’s job is to assure the patients that they can be cured. Any treatment is effective if it is supported by proper counselling. Not only the patients but also its relatives who need more counselling. The treatment is not only by administering drugs but by giving the patient hope and faith in the treatment to make it work. Many a times even few positive words coming from the doctor is enough for the patient and his/her relatives to be comfortable and becoming hopeful. Those doctors who are good in talking and communicating are more popular do a good business. In fact because of lack of awareness many mental health patients also approach general practiceners. Its not uncommon to see people taking children with academic and behavioural difficulties to medical doctors rather than counsellors. So doctors must be trained only in counselling but also they should be educated about mental disorders so that they know the symptoms and direct the patients to the right professionals. In homeopathic practice this counselling and psychology course is all the more relevant as homeopathic doctors work on the psychodynamics of their patients. There is lot of listening and counselling involved in their practice. So overall medical practiceners have a lot of take away from this counselling programme.

Social workers: Social workers deal with social issues and people. They spend a lot of time in understanding social issues and try to help the affected individuals. They do what we may call in psychology,  “group therapy” knowingly and unknowingly. The victims often need counselling and these people are the first one to be at their aid. So a basic course in counselling is must for social workers. Many of the social issues and problems are due to attitudinal and behavioural problems in masses. This psychology course helps in understanding the underlying causes of the same and also suggests remedial course of action. Thus making a psychology course relevant for social workers.

Career Counsellors: Career counselling involves two steps, first to know the person’s interest and aptitude towards a certain subject or job and then to explain the various options available to the person coming for counselling. Often the person coming for career guidance is confused, scared and uncertain about his studies, job or career. His confidence and self esteem is low. His faith in his abilities is also minimal. This is the reason he comes for counselling. So for a career counsellor not only knowledge of different careers is needed but also a maturity to understand people’s behaviour. He or she must be trained in counselling process to empower the person to take up careers of his choice and interest. Psychologists are better at this job because they can help the person know his aptitude and interests. Since parents, family members, teachers also help individual choose the right careers, a basic training in counselling can make them better counsellors in at least guiding correctly. We do career guidance and counselling for students and professionals at our career counselling centre in Mumbai.

Sports Coaches: Often the difference between winners and losers is his or her attitude. Physical abilities have a role to play but if the right attitude is missing, no one can win the game. Every game is also played mentally. A coach not only teaches the finer tricks of the game but also gives them lessons of attitude, discipline, consistency, resilience and fighting spirit. A coach is a great motivator. Making the sportsman believe in himself and focus on winning is what he teaches. These are the traits of a counsellor. Sports psychology is an important subject which is receiving a lot of attention. So a course in psychology and counselling can add a lot of value in coaching and mentoring a sportsman.