Exploring Beliefs, Values and Attitudes in Personal Development

In this lecture, counsellor and trainer Emma Chapman will help you understand how to gain an awareness of your internal core beliefs, values and attitudes, and why doing so is essential for personal development in counsellor training.

After listening to Emma’s presentation, you will be able to:

  • describe what beliefs, values and attitudes are – and how they differ from each other
Exploring Beliefs and Values for Personal Development lecture
  • recognise the importance of exploring your own beliefs, values and attitudes for self-awareness and personal development
  • understand how beliefs, values and attitudes develop
  • explore what might make it more difficult for you to gain awareness of your own beliefs, values and attitudes.

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Self-awareness is vital for counsellors, being a prerequisite to working safely and ethically with clients. Moreover, Carl Rogers identified in the person-centred approach to counselling that self-awareness is what enables us to reach self-acceptance and move towards self-actualisation. Yet, with so many of our beliefs and values at the edge of our awareness, how can we become fully aware of these?

Emma provides practical examples to illustrate the importance of having an in-depth awareness and understanding of our beliefs, values and attitudes. To help you in your own process, she looks at how and where we acquire these, with particular focus on family culture, wider culture and individual experiences.

It’s one thing to be able to identify your own beliefs, values and attitudes, but – even once you have made progress on this aspect of self-awareness – do you know how to challenge them?

Emma provides practical suggestions on how you can do this, including places where you can seek feedback from others, and techniques for deepening your own self-reflection. You will also hear about the feelings that can serve as barriers to this process.

After listening to this lecture, you will go away with not only all the knowledge covered in the lecture but also a list of seven references with further reading in this core area of counsellor training and development.

About the Lecture Presenter

Emma Chapman Counsellor CPD lecture

Emma Chapman is a counsellor and trainer working in private counselling practice in Cheshire.  In her Northwich office, she works with adults, young people and couples.

Emma believes that having good mental health is the key to having a fulfilled and happy life.  As a passionate advocate for mental health, Emma also delivers mental health training to a variety of audiences across the North West of England.

Emma is a qualified teacher who came to counselling later on in life after 15 years of working in the public sector and charity roles.  During this time she worked with vulnerable children, adults and families in teaching, family support, safeguarding and pastoral roles.

After so many years working with children and families who often struggled to manage day-to-day life, Emma began to observe that poor mental health and trauma played a huge part in keeping people stuck in damaging patterns of behaviour.

This conclusion led her to further training in mental health, and she started her counsellor training in 2014 at Mid-Cheshire College studying part-time.  In 2018 she completed an MA in Clinical Counselling at Chester University.

Emma has experience working in an NHS IAPT setting but decided to work privately in order to work with her clients more creatively.

After a short spell teaching counselling at a local college, Emma continued to put her teaching skills to use and further develop some training packages for fellow counsellors, educational settings and businesses.

As a mother of two children, Emma struggled with her own mental health after becoming a Mother. In 2019 she had her research into maternal mental health published in the journal of Crisis, Illness and Loss*.  She now specialises in working with mothers experiencing perinatal mental health difficulties in her private practice.

Following some time working at a charity dedicated to the prevention of suicide, it became clear to Emma that there was little therapeutic support for those experiencing suicidal ideation.

In her private practice, she also works with people who are experiencing Suicidal Thoughts and delivers suicide awareness training to counsellors and other organisations across the North West.

'An Exploration of the Ways in Which Feelings of “Maternal Ambivalence” Affect Some Women.'  Emma Chapman, Peter M. Gubi, 2019.

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