An invaluable guide for counsellors and psychotherapists to establish contact with their clients through dialogue and communication techniques. Focussing on experiences of crisis and anxiety, this book offers hands-on strategies, case studies, and sample conversations.

Preface. I. Introduction. 1. Technique or Attitude. 2. Crisis. 3. Anxiety and Primary Feelings. II. Practical Guidelines. 1. It is Less Complicated Than You Think. 2. All Essential Resources for Overcoming a Difficulty are in the Person Having the Difficulty, or in the Field of Interaction Between the People in Dialogue. 3. Good Help is Help Towards Self-Help. All Other Help is Intrusion. 4. When, As the Helper, You Don't Know What to Say or Do, That is What You Should Say or Do. 5. Don't Let Having a Problem Turn Into a Problem in Itself. 6. Boundaries Make Contact. 7. You Cannot Change What You Do Not Accept. 8. The Consolation is That There is No Consolation. 9. The Person in Distress Does Not Need Consolation, but Love. 10. Life is Neither Fair Nor Unfair. 11. Guilt and Power are Two Sides of the Same Coin. 12. Forgiveness Does Not Remove Guilt. It Re-establishes the Relationship in Spite of the Guilt. 13. And and but: The Small Words with the Biggest Effects. 14. Helping Through Dialogue: In Reality it is Possible and Not Too Difficult. III. Examples. 1. The Meaning. 2. Expanding on the Concept of Meaning. 3. Possible Answers When Your Old Ones Don't Lead to the Kind of Contact You Want. 4. Commentary to the 'New' Answers. Bibliography.