Holistic Counselling

Anxiety in the Western World

According to the renowned neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, and the two decades I have spent working with teenagers lead me to agree with him, the anxiety experienced in the Western world is increasing to such an extent that young people are displaying and expressing a greater desire to believe. When one considers that in the UK alone, in 2016/2017 Childline delivered 22,456 counselling sessions about suicide, with children as young as 10 calling; children needing mental health care have to endure waits of up to 18 months for treatment, putting them at risk of becoming even more ill, according to NHS bosses; suicide is at record level among students in UK universities; 94% of universities have experienced an increase in demand for counselling services in the past five years, with as many as 26% of students using or waiting to use counselling services in some universities; suicide among women in their early twenties is at its highest level in two decades; this desire cannot be overlooked or the need for holistic counselling denied.

Once they have finally managed to access the provision, it seems that a high majority of the people I meet have experienced traditional counselling negatively, either as a short-term relief, a waste of time, or a money-making exercise for those opting for private care. They repeatedly describe feeling restricted in what they could talk about, finding it too rigid, impersonal, textbook like, and generally not suited to their individual needs. It is their view, and I share it, that for the process to be successful, the counsellor has to be able and willing to adapt to the needs and strengths of his clients, not the other way round, as seems to be commonly the case. When asked in an interview published in the newspaper Sud-Ouest on Sunday 19 November 2017, Ce Dieu Psychothérapeute (This Psychotherapist God), whether his patients ever talked to him about God, the neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik courageously acknowledged:

Of course they did. Many used to confide: “During difficult times, God helps me.” Yet there were no works done on the subject. During my training, my journey, nothing had prepared me to answer them. So, I guided them on the paths I was familiar with: family, culture, emotions.

Boris Cyrulnik

[…] I realised that I had only memorised what I was sensitive to, when these patients were talking to me about their encounter with God. And I thought to myself: it is not normal that six or seven billion human beings relate with their God, everyday, with rituals that make our cultures, and that there is no serious psychological thinking on the matter.

Boris Cyrulnik