Some people look at counseling as a medical model: "I'm sick and I need to get treated/cured by someone who has been to school and has answers that I don't."
I don't subscribe to this.
Others look at counseling as an education/teaching model: "The therapist teaches me things I don't know, the way I know stuff when I leave a math class that I didn't know when I walked in."
This is a little better, but still not on the mark IMHO.
I prefer the coach model: "I know where I want to be, but I need someone's help to see what I'm doing that's keeping me from where I want to be."
To me the coach model is SO much more useful and representative of what therapy is. It puts you on a par with the professional whom you hire to help you hone some skills. Golfers take lessons from a pro all their lives, so do other athletes, dancers, and musicians.
No one thinks there's anything wrong with a professional dancer who attends a class every week of her life. They just assume she is practicing, getting help polishing her skills, getting feedback from an outsider. There's no stigma attached to being coached.
Not that there's NO medical element or no educational element, but mostly it's a question of helping you do something you do know how to do but just can't seem to do on a regular basis.
Carl Rogers, the great psychologist, said that in therapy, "a person talks to himself through the medium of another mind."
