Chapter 3 - Attending, Listening and Observation Skills

Question 1

ATTENDING SKILLS

Answer 1

observe client’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors as one
way of understanding what clients are experiencing, and
displaying effective nonverbal behaviors to clients during
counseling sessions.

Question 2

Two major aspects of attending (Egan, 1994)

Answer 2

Psychological attending & physical attending

Question 3

PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTENDING

Answer 3

• Put yourself in the client’s shoes
• Understand the feelings and attitudes that clients have or might have had by being in tune with both verbal and nonverbal messages.
• Sensitive to client feelings and experiences, consists of both perceiving and processing various client messages.
• For example, many clients communicate their emotions only in nonverbal (not involving words - body language).

Question 4

PHYSICAL ATTENDING

Answer 4

• Body language
• Good physical attending can calm nervous clients. Clients might, for instance, feel anxious or unsure about what will happen during the session. Nonverbal communication is continuous as opposed to in consistent verbal communication. (Egan, 1994)
• Empathy, respect, and involvement

Question 5

Attending Behavior (same with the Helping Model by Egan 1994)

Answer 5

S.O.L.E.R

S - Sit square
O - Open posture
L - Lean forward
E - Eye contact
R - Relax and stay calm

Question 6

5 Types of Attending Behaviors

Answer 6

1) Eye-contact
- Eyes are used to monitor speech, provide feedback, signal to understand and regulate turn-taking (Harper, Wiens & Matarazzo, 1978)

2) Facial expressions
- Control your facial expressions. Be serious and smiles when you need to.

3) Proxemics
- How people use space in interactions.
- E.T Hall (1968) described four distance zones for middle-class Americans :
i) intimate (0-18inches)
ii) personal (1.5-4.0 ft)
iii) social (4-12ft)
iv) public (12ft and more)

4) Paralanguage
- the non-lexical component of communication by speech, for example, intonation, pitch, speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gestures, and facial expressions.

• The way in which things are said that seems to reflect emotions.

Involves:
– non-language sounds (yells, sighing, laughing, crying)
– non-words (er, ah, ehem)
– vocal style (pitch, intensity and range of voice)
– speech disturbances (incomplete sentences, slips of the tongue, stutters)

5) Kinesics (bodily movement)
- The relationship of bodily movements.
* E.g. : arm movements, leg movements, head nods.

i) Emblem - substitute for words
e.g. wave as a universal greeting

ii) Illustrator – Movements that complement verbal communication
e.g. we might show the size of a fish with our hands

iii) Regulator - Monitor the conversation flow
e.g: head nods, postural shifts)

iv) Adaptor - Habitual acts that are often outside

Question 7

LISTENING SKILLS

Answer 7

• Listening involves trying to hear and understand what clients are communicating.
• Listening carefully not only to what clients say overtly but to what they really mean, that is, putting the verbal and non-verbal messages together and hearing what the client is feeling.

Question 8

LISTENING SKILLS (CONT’)

Answer 8

Focusing on all aspects of a client’s expression.
-Resist distractions.
-Listen to the client’s tone of voice.
-Listen for cues to the client’s feelings.
-Listen for generalizations, deletions, and distortions.
-Listen for common cognitive and emotional themes.
-Listen to the pattern of words or content.

Question 9

Listening for Content

Answer 9

• Paraphrase
• easiest of the listening responses for beginning helpers to learn
• rephrasing all or a selected portion of the client’s previous communication

E.g.:
Client: This has been a really rough year for me.
You: Apparently this year in particular has been really challenging for you in several ways.

Using paraphrases to listen effectively to clients has several purposes:
- Communicating your understanding of the client’s situation.
- Encouraging client elaboration of the previous client message.
- Helping the client to focus.

Question 10

Listening for Affect

Answer 10

• Reflection of feelings
• primary listening skill used to convey basic empathy to clients
• used to attend to the affective portion or the emotional tone of the client’s communication. A reflection of
  feelings is similar to a paraphrase, but it has an added emotional component that is missing in the paraphrase
• a mirroring of the feeling or emotion present in the client’s message
• Client needs to learn to trust his or her feelings; it is experiencing and expressing the sadness rather than the blocking or numbing out of it that is healing (Brammer, Abrego, & Shostrom, 1993).
• The reflection of feelings response also helps clients name and validate their emotions within a safe context. This
  response also helps clients feel understood, especially at an important emotional level.

Question 11

Summarization of Content response
* rephrasing of at least two or more different content or cognitive messages expressed by the client

Answer 11

Situation 1:
Client: I’ve been pretty tired for the last few months. I just don’t seem to have my usual energy. I am sleeping okay, but by early afternoon, I just run out of steam. Maybe it’s because so much has happened around me lately—my partner just lost his job and my dog died about a year ago.

Helper: Wow—it seems like a lot of pretty significant things have been happening in your life and you have noticed these affecting your energy level.

Question 12

OBSERVATION SKILLS

Answer 12

• More than 85% communication is non-verbal
• Observing client’s and counsellor’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour is a critical dimension in an interview
• Emotional tone is often conveyed through non-verbal which may overrule what you are saying to your client
• Helps counsellor to how the client likely is responding
• Do not overanalyze
• Be careful to observe individual and cultural differences
• Watch for small behaviour like a casual nose wipe.