Are Counsellors always the voice of reason?

Crow92

I'm wondering about this with relation to a very close friend I have who told me when she was younger (teen) after her mother and father had a messy divorce, (mostly due to the mother using the children as a weapon against the father who is blind and suffers with depression) her mother sent her and her sister to see counsellors, two or three different ones.

Looking back on it now she can see how these "professionals" had given her and her sister a warped and negative view of their father which had caused early on a negative change in their view on him which did diminish later.
My point is that the mother was the one paying these councillors to see her children, she payed for them to be assessed(which she has the resulted letters still) and to be talked to.

Is it unheard of to think that some counsellors would be more in it for the money and obviously try and ensure that the mother got what she wanted (her children to dislike their father) in order to keep the sessions going to get paid more money? The whole idea of why would the mother pay to hear things she didn't want?

I'm just wondering because the idea annoys me as this has affected my friend still looking back on it 5 or 6 years ago and the idea that the best interest of the children involved were not a priority.

So is it common for the counsellors to be in it for the money instead of the patients?

tenchi-fan

Crow92 wrote: »

I'm wondering about this with relation to a very close friend I have who told me when she was younger (teen) after her mother and father had a messy divorce, (mostly due to the mother using the children as a weapon against the father who is blind and suffers with depression) her mother sent her and her sister to see counsellors, two or three different ones.
snip.

It's possible counsellor #1 said something the mother didn't agree with and wasn't used again. Counsellor #2 also disagreed with the mother and wasn't used. And counsellor #3 agreed 100% with the mother.

Counsellors can have different methods and beliefs. You also need to take into account the qualifications of counsellors. There are no shortage of people who will call themselves "counsellors", and no shortage of people who don't mind being paid to tell people what they want to hear.

cuppa

id say yes and no , how do you feel.

JuliusCaesar

tenchi-fan wrote: »

Counsellors can have different methods and beliefs. You also need to take into account the qualifications of counsellors. There are no shortage of people who will call themselves "counsellors", and no shortage of people who don't mind being paid to tell people what they want to hear.

+1. If you look up any listing of counsellors, you'll see that many of them also include "angel healing" and other rubbish among their methods.

sambuka41

Hey op there is also the possibility that your friends opinion of her father was heavily influenced by her mother. After all its 1 hour a week with counsellor and all the rest with family. There maybe less internal conflict for her to place the responsibility of that on a counselor rather than her own mother.

But then again her mother could have gotten a counselor that agreed with her.there seems to be an epidemic of women i know who reached their 40's,separated from their husbands, done some counselling course 1 evening a week and now practice.

Crow92

sambuka41 wrote: »

Hey op there is also the possibility that your friends opinion of her father was heavily influenced by her mother. After all its 1 hour a week with counsellor and all the rest with family. There maybe less internal conflict for her to place the responsibility of that on a counselor rather than her own mother.

Oh well I definately agree that most of the responsability does lay with the mother I wouldn't argue that point, I'm laying all the blame on a counsellor. I was more curious if this was a common thing as I thought the counsellor would be the voice if reason But tenchi-fan probably said it the best for me that maybe it was the first two who didn't agree until her mother found someone who did.

and thanks julius Ceasar. I didn't know anyone could call themselves a counsellor as I'm new to the forum.

Odysseus

Can any define what this "reason" is for starters?

krankykitty

I wonder if the poster meant "objective and neutral" rather than "reason"?

Crow92

krankykitty wrote: »

I wonder if the poster meant "objective and neutral" rather than "reason"?

Yes thank you, that would be more the terminology I was looking for.