This is my Life

How our past affects our present and our future:  Wellbeing talks to Carine Biessels MBACP, about her work as a Biographical Counsellor

Biographical Counselling is a holistic stream of counselling based on the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner (Anthroposophy) and the latest researches in counselling and psychotherapy. Biographical Counselling is accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

The more I work as a counsellor, the more I come to the understanding that our life is more like our friend than our enemy.

The ‘classic' approach in counselling and psychotherapy comes out of the experience that difficult events that happened to us in the past can still affect us daily unconsciously. In this way they can cost us a lot of energy, give us low moods or disturb our health. Like boulders in a stream, they have changed our life in such a subtle way that we might not even have noticed it, and in such a way really can disturb the stream of our vitality and motivation for life. Often these ‘boulders' find a way to ask for our attention. Like a continuous feeling of ‘something is not right', low mood or loss of enthusiasm in life for example. Working in counselling or psychotherapy can then be very fruitful, sometimes by working through undigested experiences and giving them a place in our life, sometimes by finding and setting new boundaries, by acknowledging ourselves, our needs and that what is important to us.

In biographical counselling we work just like that, but we do not only work with our past, the experiences we have been through, but also with our future and how we experience our life, right here, right now, today. It is a counselling method that works with the whole of our life, coming closer to who we are and what our life is about for us.

To be in union and peace with our life can be a momentary state of well being. It can give the ultimate experience of being happy and healthy; a feeling of being satisfied, that we are who we are, and that this is all we need to be.
We are in tune with ourselves in our heart and reach with our own small individual life into the stream of the whole daily world. Everything seems to have its place and we feel we belong here on earth, together with our many brothers and sisters in life. Even in extreme situations, in our biography, in the experiences we have in our life, there is often a key, a seed of potential that connects to our eternal self, to who we are and why we are here on earth today. The people that we meet, the situations and events we go through, shape the course of our life. They influence us, in helpful and unhelpful ways and often they face us with a part of ourselves that we do not yet really know. Sometimes, in a difficult experience we can find an enormous inspiration to do something in our life many years later. If I had not been in a crisis nine years ago for example, I would probably not be a biographical counsellor today.

To find peace with our life can be quite a difficult challenge, if not impossible. There are always things in our life which have been so hard or so beautiful that we do not know where to place them inside us. Looking at my life, very often I feel like saying: ‘This is my life?'

It can be so different than what we initially aimed it to be like. And if we would have the power to change it, what would we do?

Biographical counselling can also be a wonderful experience when we work in groups. By working with themes in small groups, through dialogue and simple creative exercises we discover a rich variety and similarity in the personal stories and experiences of each other. It is a personal as well as a social experience in a safe and non-judgmental environment. Carine Biessels is a Biographical Counsellor based at Equilibrium in Lewes.

In January a ten week course on Monday afternoons will take place called ‘This is my life'. The course is part of the new fulltime ‘It's my life' course at Emerson College in East Sussex. For bookings and more information go to www.biographicalcounsellingwork.co.uk or email carine @counsellor.com