When a relationship ends through divorce or separation, it is a time of grief, stress, anxiety and uncertainty for everyone involved, including children and young people.
Counselling can be the therapeutic process that helps them through this journey, helping them to accept the changes but also to ensure that their feelings are accepted and validated.
How to Help – Being a Counsellor
Counselling is a growing profession. The increasing openness and transparency surrounding mental health issues have helped people to understand that to gain help is not a sign of weakness, but courage and strength.
It can be a cathartic, eye-opening process, sharing your fears and hopes with someone who doesn’t judged, but helps you to understand the ‘where, why and how’ of your feelings.
For those with a counselling diploma, they will understand the finer points of the counselling process. They may also choose to focus on key area, such as working with clients with grief or working with children and young people.
Counselling, Children and Divorce – Why It Matters
It is important that everyone affected by the end of a relationship has the chance wot work through their grief, their disappointment and their concerns. It may also be that children feel a sense of relief, looking forward to a new beginning but often, before they reach that point, there are many obstacles to overcome.
Counselling helps children to understand…
… they are still loved
Divorce happens when two people no longer love each other and that spells the end for a relationship. Even when parents part of good terms, for the child, they may feel that one or both parents’ love for them has ended too.
Counselling allows the family, and the child in particular to understand that the love from their parents is not diminishing nor its intensity changing. But they will now parent in a different way than the child is used to.
… the reality of the situation
As parents, we want to protect our children from anything and everything that may cause them harm, fear or unpleasantness.
And that means shielding them from the divorce so that they are not hurt or damaged. There is a problem with this – sugar-coating reality is as detrimental to children as allowing them to witness every argument.
Counselling helps to provide the balance that children need to understand the reality of the situation as it affects them.
It shows them why you and your now former partner need to talk to professionals like Windsor Family law solicitors and why you wouldn’t be living together anymore.
How you feel also plays a big role, and any animosity, anger and broken home situations can male things worse. Consulting with a family lawyer can be an excellent step in the right direction, providing another layer of protection alongside a good counsellor.
… the sadness of the situation
Communication is key when something as monumental as a divorce happens. But it is painful and that means adults and children will shield their pain and themselves by ‘shutting down’ communication channels.
That can mean not listening to what is actually being said. It can mean not articulating your feelings. For children, not telling people how they feel can be because they don’t understand what these feelings are.
Children, depending on their age, will often struggle to label their feelings. They don’t know it is grief, but they do understand it is a sadness that is consumes them every minute of the day. It may also consume their dreams too.
Counsellors help children to identify these feelings and, more importantly, communicate them.
… tell people what they want to happen
Some children will say they want mummy and daddy back together. If this is the case, the counsellor will help the child to understand that this is not the reality of the situation.
When the child accepts this, the counselling process can help the child to communicate what they would like to happen or not happen.
It is a scary and unusual time when parents are no longer together. Who will they live with? How will they cope without dad or mum? Will mum be OK when the they are not home and at dad’s house and vice versa? Will they have to move home? What happens to the dog, and the cat etc.? Will they have a step-mum or step-dad? What about new brothers and sisters?
These are all big questions and ones that children have to process as part of the divorce. They have other questions too and these questions need to be answered as best as they can be, at the time they are asked.
Divorce and Separation Need Not be Damaging
Divorce is a monumental life-changing process for everyone involved. But with counselling, the channels of communication can stay open.
Adults and children can express their grief and disappointment alongside their love for one another. Divorce doesn’t have to be damaging but it relies on a proactive approach from everyone involved. The counsellor can help this process without judging.
NCC Home Learning offer a range of counselling diplomas, as well as psychology related courses that anyone interested in the field of counselling with find useful.
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