Counseling Techniques Flashcards
As if
This is a form of encouraging and motivating clients to be the way they desire to be, “acting as it” the transition has already occurred.
Active imagination
One identifies an entity, through a dream or other scene, and activates attention to the figure through meditation. The client is invited to enter the scene and dialogue with the entity, usually one that has qualities opposite the ego, thereby accessing rejected elements and availing them to the conscious mind. This may be done in writing, art, sculpting, dance, or other medium.
Active listening
Requires that the listener fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said.
Activity Scheduling
Useful in treating depression; done in a chart using short word descriptions, arranged easiest to hardest, includes both necessary and enjoyable tasks. The is client is to follow the planned activities and documents any activities that were not pre-planned each week, rating the activities according to level of pleasure, until the client has resumed their normal schedule.
Advocacy
The therapist will engage necessary supports or assist the client when stuck points cannot be overcome and present as a hindrance to the central work, including advocacy regarding unfair or outdated policies.
Analysis and assessment
This technique is about exploration of the family constellation (sociogram of the individuals at home during the client’s formative years) and early recollections and is not about interpretations to the client.
Analysis of Resistance and Defenses
Interpreting how the patient avoids or manages pain. Pointing out any behaviors the patient uses to resist exploring specific issues of therapy in general (i.e. silence, lateness, deflecting) assit the patient in gaining insight about these isses
Analysis of Transferemce
- Client’s personal hx projections onto the therapist
- Client differentiates their unconscious from the collective
- The therapist’s reality is differentiated from the superimposed images
- The achievement of greater knowledge and insight within the self having worked through the transference and into an authentic relationship with the therapist
Art
Art is tied directly to the unconscious and brings out tangible of emotions to the surface, and also allows the client to become more self aware in a non-threatening medium. May be used alone of with other techniques
Assertiveness and social skills training
Involves teaching specific skills and tools to enable the client to act and interact with greater success. The mechanism for this is often modeling, role-playing, and behavioral rehearsal
Assertiveness Training - Feminist
This technique provides specific training and insight to raise women’s awareness of their interpersonal rights, assist in transcending stereotyped sex roles, and alter negative belief systems to change daily patterns, actions and interactions
Aversion Therapy
A technique where the client is exposed to a stimulus while also being exposed to some type of discomfort. The objective is to pair the stimulus with the unpleasant sensation resulting in the stopping of the undesirable behavior
Behavioral Experiments
The client experiments with experiencing, reflecting, observing, planning, testing thoughts, and discovery to target specific thoughts or behaviors under consideration for change or challenge
Behavioral Extinction
A therapy technique where the client’s rewards are removed to stop an undesirable behavior
Behavioral Observation
Involves objectifying a specific behavior and observing the behavior in the client’s natural environment. This is most common in institutionalized settings, where the clinician is present and can count or objectively observe and analyze data
Behavioral rehearsal and role-playing
The imagines a target situation, and the therapist guides the client thought a step by step process of successfully coping with the situation. The client then practices the steps in a mental rehearsal in a variety of ways
Bibliotherapy
The therapist assigns any number of self-help books to enhance the specific issue being addressed to immerse the client in information and to aid the client in re-education
Bibiliotherapy - Feminist
Cslr encourages reading on gender inequality, how sexism is promoted, topical issues, power differentials between the sexes, assertiveness, coping skills, and more. Reading empowers the client and allows the client to make informed choices.
Biofeedback
The client is given feedback about what brain waves, sympathetic nervous system are doing to engage a relaxation response by the client through providing feedback to the client through visual or auditory means.
Blow-up technique
Have the client imagine the worst case scenario of what he/or she fears occurring, then blow the event out of the proportion until the client cannot help but find amusement in it
Body Awareness (Bodywork)
Raising awareness of where in the body feelings are associated through breathing techniques or reflecting inconsistencies between verbal reports and body language
Catastrophe Scale
Addresses awfulizing. Have the client write a scale from 0 - 100% in 10% intervals. Have the client progressively alter their concerning item to fit into perspective of the other items.
Chaining
Involves the series of smaller behaviors that are linked to the desired complex behavior. Each step is prompted and reinforced, strengthening all of the parts of the chain that move toward the desired behavior
Check feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations: Behind Their Story
Ask the client to describe what they’re feeling they describe something or vice versa. Helps client to be fully present
Circular Questioning
This is a technique for interviewing hypothesis validation in which each family member comments on the behavior and interactions of other family members
Cognitive restructuring
Involves identifying, challenging, and changing faulty beliefs and distortions in thinking though examining logic, testing the truth of the thought or believe, and finding alternative explanation. Involves looking for evidence for and against the distorted thought
Compliments
Seeks to validate the client for what they are already doing well and to reinforce that what the client is doing is working.
Congruence
The therapist acts as a role model for the client, and models the human struggle toward greater realness and a space in which the real self and ideal self are the same
Contract
An essential element with all clients, individual and group, establishing the structure of the relationship, from the Child Ego state perspective of how the client will be different as a result of work done. The contract is concrete, specific, and measurable
Decatastrophizing or what if
Therapist would have the client state their feared consequence of a situation and then identify strategies for coping.
Decentering
Helpful with anxious clients who believe they are the focus of others. The technique is to set up experiments to challenge
the client’s belief and assist them to see that others are not focused upon the client, but rather daydrea, attend to children, drive, bite their nails, or whatever the situation discloses
Deconstruct the problem
The therapist will assist the client in making the problem specific and manaeable
