Counselling skills Flashcards
What is counselling?
Counselling is the process of building a therapeutic alliance in order to help the person navigate current problems so that they are able to deal with them in the current situation and the future.
client-counsellor relationship
Clear and identified goals that both are working towards
Once the goal is achieved the relationship ends and the client takes the skills learnt into the real world
There is mutal respect from both sides even if they don’t always agree
It is not a friendship but a professional relationship with boundaries
The client puts trust into the counsellor to give them the skills to help themselves and the counsellor trusts that the client has the ability to help themselves and wants to
Egans key ingredients:
- Focus is on the client and the relating factors of the clients life
- Success is determined by the outcomes of the clients life and the life enahdning impact it has on the clients life
- Describe what an effective therapist looks like
- Develop a therpautic/working alliance with the client
- Learn and use the communication skills that are used within the therpautic realm
- Implement the basic principles that are related to cognition, behaivour and emotions
- Get the clients feedback to show how effective the outcomes are
- Understand that beliefs, values, nroms and moral principles play a major role in the helping process
- Helping the clients redo current bad decisions and help them mae and use life enhancing decisions
- Adopt a treatment model aligned with problem identification, problem control and error control
Core counsellor attributes
- Do no harm:
Counsellor is ethically responsible to prioritize the wellbeing and safety of their clients. Do not let your status/power rule your helping. - Be genuine and congruent
Be authentic and do not play the role of the counsellor rather be yourself with a qualification - Accept all clients with no judgmental regardless of what they bring to the session. In times that we disagree or have conflict we need to be respectful in our communication
- Communicate deep empathetic understanding
Walking in the other persons shoes with our sockson. (see their world, understand their feelings, appreciate them as human beings, communicate verbally and non-verbally your understanding)
Case conceptualisation/case formulation
Understanding and interpreting the clients current problem within their whole history-some people will come with many problems, some may stem from childhood however the problem they are coming with today has nothing to do with childhood, however the behaviours and actions they are taking today is a reflection of something that happened in childhood. The counsellor needs to be able to understand them as a whole
Stages within the counselling process:
- Preparation
It is important to prepare for each counselling session, regardless of whether it is a first session or a long-term client. - Introduction:
Setting the scene for the session by addressing confidentialy, mandatory reporting, costs, theoretical orientation and how the sessions will be structured. Also allowing client sto ask questions and to let them know that it is ok to be anxious and that they have courage just by showing up - Cultural sensitivity:
“awareness and appreciation of the values, norms, and beliefs characteristic of a cultural, ethnic, racial, or other group that is not one’s own, accompanied by a willingness to adapt one’s behavior accordingly.” - Present problem:
invite the client to describe in their own words their reasons for coming to counselling, or simply asking them, in the words of Esther Perel “where shall we begin?”.
Microskills approach
Attending
Client observation
Minimal encouragers
paraphrasing, and summarising
Questioning
Feeling reflection
Reflection of meaning
Supportive challenging
Attending
Eye contact:
cultural differences
Body orientation:
Open posture
Mirror your client’s posture (appropriately)
Leaning in
Notice congruence/incongurence
Visual, verbal, vocal and body movement
Active listening
Empathetic in nature
True meaning of what client is saying/describing about their experiences
The process of relating that is unfolding in the counselling interaction
Indirect ways client is using tone of voice, body language affect
What is missing or not being voiced
TEXT VERSION* 2.4
Distorted listening
Filtered listening
elvaluative listening
stereotype-based listening
Fact centered rather than person centered listening
sympathetic listening
Interrupting
Reflecting
Mirroring the emotional elements of client communication
Experiencing feelings
People often use the word ‘feel’ when they are describing a thought
It can be tempting for a new counsellor to help their client avoid painful feelings rather than face them
Accurate feeling identification
- Overt, covert, or a combination of both
- Positive, negative or neutral
- In or out of conscious awareness
- Varying levels of intensity or a constant, chronic level of intensity
- Congruent or incongruent
- Helpful or harmful
