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Stress counselling and stress management has become a new growth industry. Often in counselling or training settings the practitioner only uses one approach, such as non-directive counselling or relaxation training. Alternatively, an eclectic approach involving a confusing mish-mash of techniques is used. Either way, clients receiving stress counselling are not always given the most effective help for their individual problems (see Palmer and Dryden, 1994).

This book has been written to provide practitioners with a technically eclectic and systematic approach to stress counselling and stress management. The approach is technically eclectic as it uses techniques taken from many different psychological theories and systems, without necessarily being concerned with the validity of the theoretical principles that underpin the different approaches from which it takes its techniques. It agrees with London (1964: 33) who …