CH. 1. Intentional Interviewing Flashcards
Interviewing, Coaching, Counseling, and Psychotherapy
INTERVIEWING – the basic process used for gathering data, providing information and advice to clients, and suggesting workable alternatives for resolving concerns.
COACHING – is “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential”
COUNSELING – an intensive and personal process for clients; focused on listening and developing strategies for change and growth.
PSYCHOTHERAPY – focuses on more deep-seated difficulties, which often require more time for resolution. Many of the skills and concepts of interviewing and counseling are also used in psychotherapy.
- Other specialists, such as clinical and counseling psychologists, clinical mental health counselors, and clinical social workers, now provide most psychotherapy.
The Problem with the word “Problem”
PROBLEMS – implies difficulty and the necessity of eliminating or solving the problem.
- Problem may imply deficit. Don’t use this word.
- The way we use these words often defines how clients see themselves.
CONCERNS – Suggests something we all have all the time. The word also suggests that we can deal with it—often from a more positive standpoint. Use “concerns” instead of “problems”.
- Defining concerns as problems or disorders leads to placing the blame and responsibility for resolution almost solely on the individual.
ISSUES – Is another term that can be used instead of problem.
- This further removes the pathology from the person and tends to put the person in a situational context.
- It may be a more empowering word for some clients
CHALLENGES – May be defined as a call to our strengths.
- All of these terms represent an opportunity for change.
- Change, restorying, and action are more possible if we help clients maintain awareness of already existing personal strengths and external resources.
Intentionality, Flexibility, Cultural Intentionality
INTENTIONALITY – refers to the capacity for a Counsellor to remain FLEXIBLE in his response to the changing needs of the client.
- FLEXIBILITY – The ability to move in the moment and change style—is basic to the art form of helping.
CULTURAL INTENTIONALITY – Is acting capability and flexibly deciding from among a range of alternative actions, while being sensitive to cultural differences.
- The culturally intentional individual has more than one action, thought, or behavior to choose from in responding to changing life situations and diverse clients.
- The culturally intentional counselor or therapist remembers a basic rule of helping: If a helping lead or skill doesn’t work—try another approach!
Resilience and Self-Actualization
RESILIENCE and SELF-ACTUALIZATION:
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Clients come to us feeling that they
- are not functioning effectively
- are focused on what’s wrong with them.
- They are stressed, stuck, overwhelmed, and unable to act.
- They may have a _negative self-concept_; be depressed, or be full of anger toward others.
- The focus on the negative is what we combat as we emphasize developing client intentionality, resilience, and self-actualization.
What does intentionality and flexibility mean for you as a counselor or therapist?
- Clients will benefit and become stronger as they feel heard and respected.
- They will become intentionally flexible with new ways to resolve their concerns.
- Resolving specific immediate issues will help them feel empowered and facilitate further action.
RESILIENCE – the ability to “bounce back” and recover – to be competent in self-healing.
- Counseling’s ultimate goal is to teach SELF-HEALING – the capacity to use what is learned in counseling to resolve future issues.
- Resilience is both a short-term and long-term goal of effective counseling and therapy.
- This occurs when clients resolve their issues, handle future difficulties, become more competent, and respect themselves more.
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We help clients become more resilient by:
- Helping client resolve an issue.
- Pointing out to clients that they are demonstrating resilience and ability as this helps facilitate longer-term success.
SELF-ACTUALIZATION – Person’s drive to realize and achieve his MAXIMUM POTENTIAL.
- The TOP of the pyramid in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
- The curative force in psychotherapy—man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities…to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.
- Intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism.
- Self-actualization is growth-motivated rather than deficiency-motivated.
- Self-Actualization is closely related to both cultural intentionality and resilience.
- Rogers and Maslow believed in the ability of individuals to overcome challenges and take charge of their lives – to become self-actualized.
Multiculturalism
MULTICULTURALISM – Many cultures – more specifically, the focus on acceptance of multiple cultures in any given society.
- Also referred to as diversity or cross-cultural issues, is now defined quite broadly.
- We are all multicultural.
- Similarly, change the color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or physical ability, and your cultural background changes your worldview and behavior.
Multicultural Competence
MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE – Basic understanding of and sensitivity to a client’s uniqueness.
- Is imperative in counseling and psychotherapy.
Resilience
RESILIENCE – the ability to “bounce back” and recover – to be competent in self-healing.
- Counseling’s ultimate goal is to teach SELF-HEALING – the capacity to use what is learned in counseling to resolve future issues.
- Resilience is both a short-term and long-term goal of effective counseling and therapy.
- This occurs when clients resolve their issues, handle future difficulties, become more competent, and respect themselves more.
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We help clients become more resilient by:
- Helping client resolve an issue.
- Pointing out to clients that they are demonstrating resilience and ability as this helps facilitate longer-term success.
Self-Actualization
SELF-ACTUALIZATION – Person’s drive to realize and achieve his MAXIMUM POTENTIAL.
- The TOP of the pyramid in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
- The curative force in psychotherapy—man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities…to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.
- Intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism.
- Self-actualization is growth-motivated rather than deficiency-motivated.
- Self-Actualization is closely related to both cultural intentionality and resilience.
- Rogers and Maslow believed in the ability of individuals to overcome challenges and take charge of their lives – to become self-actualized.
Microskills Hierarchy
MICROSKILLS – are a set of specific skills the counselor uses to effectively interview those seeking help. You master these skills one by one and learn to integrate them into a well-formed session.
- They are the specific communication skills that provide ways for you to reach many types of clients.
- Microskills Identify the behavioral foundations of intentional interviewing and counseling.
- Are the communication skills of the interview.
- Clarify the “how” of all theories of counseling and therapy.
- Provide alternatives to adapt to the developmental and idiosyncratic characteristics of each client.
- These are skills to help clients explore their personal or interpersonal conflicts.
- Skills include focusing, empathic confrontation, interpretation/reframing and reflection of meaning, concrete action strategies (self-disclosure and feedback, logical consequences, and some basics of decision counseling), providing information and direction for the client, emphasizing stress management, psychoeducation, and therapeutic lifestyle changes.
MICROSKILLS’ EVIDENCE BASE – Research findings include the following:
- You can expect results from microskills training.
- PSYCHOEDUCATION – The formal term for including teaching in your interviews.
- Practice is essential
- Multicultural differences are real.
- Different counseling theories have varying patterns of skill usage.
- If you use a specific microskill, then you can expect a client to respond in anticipated ways.
- Neuroscience and brain research now support clinical and research experience with the microskills approach.
MICROSKILLS HIERARCHY – Successive steps of intentional counseling and psychotherapy.
- The skills rest on a base of ethics, multicultural competence, neuroscience, positive psychology, and resilience
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From Attending and Observation to Listening and Influencing
- Once you have mastered attending and observation skills, you will move up the microskills pyramid to the empathetic basic listening skills of questioning, observation, encouraging, paraphrasing, summarizing, and reflecting feelings.
- Once you have basic competence, you will be able to conduct a session using only listening skills.
- The five-stage structure to the pyramid provides an EMPATHIC relationship-story and strength-goals-restory-action framework for integrating microskills into a complete counseling session.
EMPATHIC RSGRA – RELATIONSHIP, STORY and STRENGTH, GOALS, RESTORY, ACTION FRAMEWORK – is a basic framework you can use in all types of interviewing.
- Combined with the basic listening sequence you can complete a full interviewing using only listening skills
- They are basic to what is called decisional counseling.
- The RSGRA Model is based on a classic problem-solving model:
- Defining the problem (story)
- Defining goals (goals)
- Generating alternative solutions and selecting a more effective approach (restory)
- Each stage requires basic listening sequence to accomplish the aims of the stage The basic 5-Stage decisional model is:
- Relationship – Initiating the session. Developing rapport, trust-building, and structuring
- Story and Strengths – Gathering data. Drawing out stories, concerns, problems, or issues
- Goals – Mutual goal setting. What does the client want to happen?
- Restory – Working. Exploring alternatives, confronting client incongruities and conflict – i.e. creating a new story.
- Action – Terminating. Generalizing and acting on new stories.
- These stages do not always need to be completed in that order
- The empathic relationship–story and strength–goals–restory–action framework provides an overall system for you to use and serves as a checklist for all your meetings with clients.
The Microskills Hierarchy: The Listening and Action Skills of the Helping Process
- At the top of the microskills pyramid, you will integrate skills to develop your own style of counseling and therapy, and transcendence.
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TRANSCENDENCE – refers to your capacity to go beyond yourself and successfully apply your newly mastered skills to help others.
- As you gain expertise, you will learn that each client has a totally unique response to you and your natural style.
- Many clients will work well with you; some will require that you adapt to their style.
- Having many alternatives ready to help your varying clientele is desirable.
THE MICROSKILLS TEACHING AND LEARNING FRAMEWORK – 6 STEPS:
- INTRODUCTION – Focus on a single skill or strategy and identify it as a vital part of the helping process.
- AWARENESS, KNOWLEDGE, AND SKILLS – Read about the single skill or strategy and/or hear a lecture on the main points of effective usage from your instructor. Cognitive understanding is vital for skill development. However, understanding is not competence, nor does it show that you can actually engage in an effective interview, counseling, or therapy.
- OBSERVATION – View the skill in operation via a transcript and process analysis—or better yet, watch a live demonstration or view a videotaped presentation.
- MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS – Review different applications of the skills, variations according to diversity and other cultural dimensions, and additional ways in which the skill or strategy can be used.
- ACTION: KEY POINTS AND PRACTICE – e main issues of the chapter are summarized. Ideally, use video or audio recording for skill practice; however, role-play practice with observers and feedback sheets is also effective. Seek immediate feedback from your practice session. Use the Feedback Sheets. How did those who watched the session describe your interaction?
- PORTFOLIO OF COMPETENCIES AND PERSONAL REFLECTION – Here you develop a summary of your interviewing, counseling, and psychotherapy abilities. Questions will ask you to summarize the meaning of the chapter for practice now and in the future.
Neuroscience and Brain Plasticity
BRAIN PLASTICITY – the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping
- Conversation changes the brain through the development of new neural networks.
- This is an example of brain plasticity and neurogenesis (growth and strength of neurons).
NEUROSCIENCE and NEUROBIOLOGY: Implications of Cutting-Edge Science for the Future of Counseling and Psychotherapy.
- We cannot separate the body from the mind.
- Recent developments in brain science are changing the way we look at people and the influence of the environment on individuals.
- The brain is constantly developing new neural networks. This is an example of brain plasticity and neurogenesis.
- Effective counseling and therapy can cause the development of useful new neurons and neural connections in the brain.
“Neuroplasticity can result in the wholesale remodeling of neural networks . . . a brain can rewire itself”
- Counselors must increase their knowledge of neuroscience to communicate effectively with other mental health and medical professionals.
The Brain and Stress
THE BRAIN AND STRESS – Some 80% of medical issues involve the brain and stress. You will find that, in one way or another, the vast majority of your work in counseling and psychotherapy includes stress as an underlying issue.
- Neuroscience and the study of the brain will become more critical in the future years.
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) plans to institute a brain-based approach to counseling and therapy within the next 10 to 20 years,
- This NIMH approach integrates neuroscience and neurobiology with medicine, counseling and therapy, developmental psychology, multicultural issues, and multiple sciences.
- Knowledge of neuroscience and the brain enables you to be a more skilled practitioner.
- Neuroscience will improve your practice.
Stress Management is key
- In most forms of counseling and psychotherapy practice, stress is considered an underlying issue.
- Stress management and therapeutic lifestyle changes are effective routes toward both mental and physical health and are necessary regardless of personal counseling style or preferred theoretical approach.
- Helping clients to manage stressful life events is critical in client intervention and treatment.
Strategies to help clients better cope with stress and manage stressful issues include:
- Listening to the client’s stories, establishing an empathic relationship, understanding the client’s world, and focusing on wellness and strengths.
