Exam Flashcards
Feelings versus emotions
Feelings = play out in our heads. Cognitive associations and reactions to an emotion
Emotions = Involve primary data (physiological response), can be measured objectively.
Best use case for visual imagery, analogy, metaphor
When the client is resistant and confused
Systems theory (x5)
Microsystem - immediate family, neighbourhood, school
Mesosystem - Connections between family, neighbourhood and school
Exosystem - Economic system, education system, government agency
Macrosystem - Social values, cultural values, beliefs
Chronosystem - changes overtime, historical events, biological changes, physiological changes
Individualization
How did I become the individual that I am now?
Psychological seperateness + sense of intimacy = healthy differentiation
Differentiation (x5)
- Accept personaly responsibility
- Balance between belonging and separating from our family origin
- Lifelong development
- Being autonomous, but not isolating yourself
- You have questioned the values you live by, and made them your own
Cultural competence
The ability to first recognise and understand one’s own cultural backgrounds and values, and hot it influences our relationship with a client.
Values, judgments and perceptions
Values underpin our preferences, beliefs and expectations
Judgments about right or wrong > expectations of how others should behave
Expectations shape perceptions > influence our actions and interactions
2 key principles when working with diversity
- Acceptance (creates space for seeing possibilities and facilitates choice-based interactions)
- Empathy towards self and others
Acknowledging positionality
Is being able to see the world from their position and accepting that things could be different. Your position on certain things could be different and could be transformed based on experiences.
The person is the political
Being respectfully curious about the social injustice or various experiences associated with discrimination and marginalisation.
Process of presence
- Being receptively open to the client
- Being inwardly connected to your own experience
- Extending your inward experience to make contact with client through words, images, and silence
It creates a neurophysiological experience of safety (polyvagal theory).
A postmodern conceptualisation
From a postmodern approach, counselling is about facilitating a storytelling process
3 parts to a postmodern approach (story telling)
- Co-construction = tell as many stories as possible about past and present circumstances and even desired future states
- Deconstruction = What things could have resulted in the appearance and emergence of the problem, and how the person can resist the problem
- Reconstruction = Using all those past life themes and their personal values, to weave a new and preferred unified narrative
Construction = Living new plans, decisions, and actions to move in certain directions
6 steps for a miracle question
- Laying the foundation and setting the scene
- Constructing a new perspective on the miracle
- Becoming curious about exceptional times
- Scaling questions
- Follow up on your miracle question in the following session
- Repeat using a progress scale
Externalizing conversations (x4 steps)
- Characterise the problem
- Mapping the effects of the problem
- Evaluation of the effects of the problem
- Justification of the evaluations
3 strategies to regulate emotions
- Attention strategies = “positive thinking”, distraction, mindfulness
- Knowledge strategies = Cognitive dissonance, cognitive reappraisal
- Body strategies = eating, drugs, exercise, venting to a friend. Linked to attention strategies
4 stages of professional burnout
- Enthusiasm = being overly available with the client
- Stagnation = Expectations shrink, and personal discontent begins to surface
- Frustration = being bored, less tolerant, less empathic and interested
- Apathy = characterized by depression or listlessness
ABCDE model for challenging self-destructive beliefs
A = Activating event
B = Beliefs - rational or irrational (Stuckness is here)
C = Consequences - emotional or behavioural
D = Disputing irrational beliefs (the counsellor does this)
E = Effects of disputing irrational beliefs
The use of ‘here and now’, which theory it comes from
Focus on what the client is feeling at the current time. It is a main concept of Gestalt Therapy.
2 ways to bring the client to the present moment
- Notice their non-verbal behaviour and bring it to light.
- Ask questions about what they are experiencing in the current moment
Modelling
There will always be a real-life relationship between the counsellor and client, the counsellor will naturally model adaptive and constructive ways of relating and help the person to explore feelings.
Giving the client feedback
Start with how you are feeling, then, then follow it up with a concrete statement.
If the feedback is responded with defensiveness, the immediacy of the counselling relationship will be brought into focus. The counsellor will use ‘here and now’ to explore the clients feelings and perception
Transference and counter-transference
Transference = The client behaves towards a counsellor as though the counsellor were a significant person from their past (usually parent)
Counter-transference = When the counsellor starts feeling or behaving similar to the client’s parent.
It is inevitable that both happen. Supervision is usually where this comes to light.