Finding yourself

By Inga Schjøtt

“We take as our point of departure the life-giving encounter in which counsellors help students con­front their individual doubts, thoughts, or chal­lenges. The structure is one to one – conversation, group counselling, or counselling as communities of togetherness.”

How they articulate their task at Folk High School for Sport in Århus 

There is no doubt that the greatest strength of counselling practice at a folk high school is making use of the sense of togetherness that is particular to such a school.

One of the tasks of counselling at a folk high school is to prepare the ground so that those seeking counselling can arrive at a sense of what a good path through life for them would be and what structurally stands in the way of them finding that path. Counselling should allow people to find and visualise the paths offered by a globalised society where there is a plethora of versions of ‘the good life’ – and then to set out a set of scenarios for action.

At a folk high school, we have a special opportunity to develop a close understanding of the dreams our stu­dents harbour for their lives. Our task as counsellors does not simply centre on their professional careers but aims to encompass the entirety of their lived life. In other words, this is a form of counselling with a high degree of under­standing, empathy, and problem-solving. At the Folk High School for Sport in Århus, we articulate this task as follows:

“We take as our point of departure the life-giving encounter in which counsellors help students con­front their individual doubts, thoughts, or chal­lenges. The structure is one to one – conversation, group counselling, or counselling as communities of togetherness.”

Two approaches to counselling meet each other here. The one we might call ‘traditional counselling’ in which the counsellor’s task concentrates on choices and the laws of the state, and the counsellor thereby becomes an extended arm of reform and constraint.

In addition to that, there is ‘counselling for life’, which is an eclectic approach to the methods of counselling. It is practised at folk high schools on the assumption that the more clarity you get about your own personality and prin­ciples, the more able you are to find your own way. Here, counselling is centred around curiosity and an exploration of the individual’s wishes.

The boarding school life lived at a folk high school allows many facets to be developed in the understanding of our students and a virtually inexhaustible source of dia­logue. There is no doubt that the greatest strength of coun­selling practice at a folk high school is making use of the sense of togetherness that is particular to such a school.

Signe – experiencing togetherness

Signe is 18 and has just started at the Folk High School for Sport in Aarhus. She grew up as a big sister with two younger siblings, a mum, and a dad in a provincial town in Jutland. Signe has always scored high grades, and in her free time, she went from doing gymnastics and dance in a local club to only focusing on training at a fitness centre.

Signe starts at a Higher Technical Examination Pro­gramme in 2017. Before long, she is knocking on the door of the student counsellor, to whom she explains that she feels the transition is really tough and that very high demands are being made of her. She reveals that she spends all her free time doing her homework and that she has no chance to establish a social network. “I don’t understand how the others can go to cafés and go out drinking every weekend and still get top grades. I certainly can’t,” she said.

During that first year, Signe has a number of talks with the counsellor, and it becomes clear during these talks that she has difficulty handling the pressure she puts on herself. “Making presentations in class is tough, because I pressure myself to make everything as good as possible, and that means that I sometimes end up in a ‘black hole’.”

Signe explains that the sense of stress caused by mak­ing a presentation affects her sleep and that she withdraws more and more into herself. Signe’s teachers make it clear that they think she is very bright and that it is probably all about low self-esteem.

In consultation with the school’s counsellor and Signe’s parents, Signe decides to drop out of gymnasium (Danish upper-secondary school) and to focus on strength­ening her joy in life and her self-esteem. “I would like to dance because I am good at it, and I am looking forward to getting new friends.”

At the Folk High School for Sport in Århus, Signe gets a room which she shares with one other person. She is attached to a team with a contact teacher, who also func­tions as her mentor, and she chooses dance and fitness as her two main subjects. Signe tells me that she finds it hard to start in these new surroundings. “I can’t believe that the others want me around.”

Signe has weekly sessions with me, during which we use the activities at the school to allow Signe to reflect on her reactions and her self-image. We get to understand her tendency to put too much pressure on herself and to com­pare herself with others in a way that blocks her ability to allow her life to unfold. “I need to build myself up more and to challenge myself. I would like to learn not to talk only about the things that are difficult – but to actually do something about them.”

Signe also takes part in group counselling. Here she finds that she is not the only one who finds things difficult. “There are lots of other young people who also find things tough – I am not alone. I think I have got better at dealing with my insecurity. I have been given a lot of techniques to help manage my thoughts.”

Signe tells me that she finds it liberating to focus on something other than her books and making choices about her education. In her dance classes, she finds it much eas­ier to perform dance than to make presentations in front of the class at gymnasium. “The challenge at school was that I didn’t trust my own abilities enough, even though I was told by the teachers that I was good. In the dance class, we train and perform together and we use compari­sons to help each other.”

Signe experiences a sense of togetherness with young people who have the same interests as she has. She is forced to talk to many different people, and she acquires an understanding of how other people think and act. The weekly team meetings make her feel secure and allow her to show ‘her true self’ and to have the courage to talk about her difficulties.

How do we ensure the existential and philosophical quality of our dialogue?

Signe found that attentiveness, mirroring herself in oth­ers, and experiencing a breadth of viewpoints contributed to altering her sense of self, strengthening her feelings of belonging, and giving her the strength to act on her own life course. Asking questions is meaningful. To wonder can lead to seeing alternative paths and, if necessary, to adopting a new self.

The role of counsellor as facilitator means maintain­ing an ethical balance, which is made clear by the five eth­ical principles of the United Council for Associations for Education and Business Counsellors: respect, co-equality, independence, openness, and trust between the individual and the group.

A method I used in my meetings with Signe was philosophical counselling. Here, existential issues such as love, loneliness, and togetherness become the focus of our meetings, whether one-to-one or as a group. Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, Professor of Philosophical Practice, describes five features in the use of philosophical dialogue in his book At stå i det åbne (Standing in the Open) (2008):

1. By listening, to get a sense of the ‘guest’s’ biographi­cal situation and unique experience of life.
2. To discover aspects of common humanity and philosophical relevance in what is said and experienced.
3. To carry out a philosophical exploration of the issue/impression.
4. To explore the philosophical issue as an expression of the ‘guest’s’ own life.
5. To develop a personal response to the issue.

I encounter many students who, like Signe, have difficulty coping with the pressure exerted on them by the world around them and by themselves. With these students, philosophical counselling can be a good method for look­ing into what they really want out of life. It is based on a way of working whereby young people can freely explore their own life stories in a way that allows them to visualise and qualify an authentic choice. It trains their awareness of being in the here and now and allows space for spontaneous and sovereign life utterances about life in a fellowship of wonder where they can lay aside being controlled by need.

Counselling with a critical approach to developments in society

In his book Alienation and Acceleration (2014), the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa provides a description of the conditions governing humankind’s existence in a modern high-speed society. Rosa articulates the experience that many young people such as Signe have today, where the sense of unprecedented high pressure and lack of time mean that people are caught in a regime of acceleration, where it is hard to find any meaning in life.

As subjects, we can determine that we will resist this acceleration of life’s tempo and dismiss the notion that “standing still is the same as slipping out of the picture”. The folk high school can be a place where deceleration can take place, where there is room for contemplation and for reflection about what gives life quality and what form of social structure we might desire. A space in which people can become aware of alternatives by adopting a critical point of view directed both towards attitudes adopted by the individual and towards the wider social context.

At the heart of the folk high schools’ way of working lies the idea that our capacity for living grows with our sense of meaning. The route to this runs through togeth­erness. Curiosity is the key to opening up the world, a springboard for new thoughts and experiences, which can generate the courage to grasp the opportunities that we find on our way. I have a belief, confirmed by my expe­rience, in the importance of not inhibiting this process – of constantly thirsting for something new.

We have to be able to exert an influence on our stu­dents and to send them on their way more firmly anchored in their own self-understanding. We must not give in and allow edification to be reduced to yet another element in the range of performance requirements demanded by soci­ety’s discourse. The risk of the way our society is currently developing is that people will cease to have concern for the welfare of others, or that they will not notice the con­flicts that arise through cultivating nothing but oneself. As a bastion against society, the folk high school should use the space for freedom of thinking given to it by society to cultivate and propagate our existential need to be there for each other, and promote a critical attitude towards the conditions under which we live.

Each of us has free will and can choose our own path, so the requirement for lifelong learning will come through the acceptance and ownership of the individual. For, as the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Baumann says, “--- life cannot be anything but a work of art, if it is a human life”.