What is CT-PC? Counselling, Therapy, Psychological Care

C: Counselling

Counselling will be proposed not in a directive style with stereotype advice on the part of the counsellor, but rather he will endeavour to be "a competent partner on the journey", who accompanies the client through a journey of dialogue and partnership. By this didactic style of learning-process we seek to find a way and reach a solution, to approach and manage the problems, conflicts and difficult decisions as we work together as counsellor and client.

Counselling also means: To accompany with sensitivity. Counselling, when approached in right way, to a great part provides therapeutical accompaniment. It involves intensive participation on the part of the counsellor in the suffering of the client. It has to do with seeing, active listening, giving time for sharing and at the same time being prepared to endure silence, doubts and unanswered questions as well as helplessness, pain and sadness. To accompany is what Carl Rogers, founder of the CCT, (Client Centered Therapy) has called the exercise of empathy, sharing the feelings of the client, that is: I know them myself to some extent and identify with the situation. ("Bearing each other's burdens…")

T: Therapy:

The word therapy sterns from the Greek "therapeuo-therapeia" and means: An attitude of serving, to accompany and help a sick person and bear with him/her. It means to care, to nurse and heal. That is to say, our accompanying and counselling through dialogue is therapeutical. But it also means that within this "therapeutical dialogue" we must use methods of scientifically tested therapeutic schools, i.e. client centered therapy, behaviourism, depth psychology, psychoanalysis, speech therapy, Gestalt psychology, Logotherapie, etc. This combined starting-point is called -integrative combinations therapy model- also a method of psychotherapeutical multiform.

PC: Psychological Care and Pastoral Care

This means: Care taking of people. Care taking of the soul. (Psyche-Therapeuo). Psychological comes from the word soul: Psyche. This is also expressed in the attitude of the counsellor. He relates himself to the client on the bases of compassion, understanding, empathy, patience, comfort and tolerance. The therapy is based on the scriptural principle: "And what you want people do to you, do to them likewise!" (NT. Gospel of Lucas 6:31).

Pastoral Care contains also psychotherapeutical elements. The process of counselling also requires psychological and psychotherapeutical involvement, mechanics and procedures. There are rules and laws of life with all their psychological and social consequences and relationships which must be observed and realised in the process of counselling. Man is a unity of body, soul and spirit. The various areas are not identical, do not exist in total separation from each other, rather they are interrelated. We speak today of psychosomatical, somatospiritual or somatopsychical sicknesses. This is why we cannot spiritualise nor see every problem simply as being merely psychological, spiritual or otherwise physical.

A integral form of therapy means the following:

There are times when we all need a "break" in life, in order to meditate on our problems and burdens in a different atmosphere and environment. Dénia on the Costa Blanca is well known for its sunny and healthy climate, particularly beneficial with winter-depression, heart and circulatory disorders, rheumatic fever and gout; likewise in cases of asthma and allergy. The world-health-organisation of the UNO (WHO) has recommended it! So, our guests and clients will enjoy a wholesome recreation of body and soul in this very region!