Returning to work before you’re fully recovered from illness can be a disconcerting experience when you discover that the skills you rely upon to do your job seem to have deserted you. So how do you recharge your spiritual reserves as well as your physical and emotional ones?

Sue Wiggins, a PhD student in counselling and psychotherapy, sent along some details about her current research. Can you help her understand what clients find helpful in therapy?

What are the key ingredients in therapy that works in difficult situations? Fact and reason? Or a therapist willing to be with the client in the darkest places where we humans have to admit that we don’t know what the point is, and that we cannot fix it?

One of Carl Rogers’ most important contributions to counselling theory and practice was to give up the idea of having goals, and be open to following whatever direction the client might uncover, wherever it might lead. What about Item 4, then: “It is important to discuss your goals with you. What brought you here? What do you hope to achieve?”

How actively useful are boundaries in the therapeutic relationship? They are obviously a part of the ‘real world’ in which both client and therapists live, organising and managing their money and time. But in some humanistic, relationship-based schools of therapy, they seem to bring out a certain contradiction…

Looking around for some form of helping relationship can be quite overwhelming. There are so many treatments, methods, drugs, so many experts claiming to have the one true way. Has anyone formulated what it is which actually helps a person in need?