Lessons 1-3 Flashcards
Describe the stages of counseling
Relationship Establishment
-AKA: Building rapport, gaining trust, or creating warmth.
Assessment
-An exploration of the problem
Developing a Plan of Action
-The plan specifies goals and means for reaching those goals.
Intervention and Implementation
-Interventions with a target goal are employed.
Compare and contrast:
Theoretical Integration
Technical Eclecticism
Theoretical Integration
>Seeks to build a conceptual framework from the best elements of two or more approaches.
>Seeks to create a new theory which opens up more possibilities for practice and research.
Technical Eclecticism
>The selection and application of interventions, based on data and experience.
>Eclecticism will use interventions borrowed from many different systems. Often those systems may otherwise be incompatible.
The 3 components of the Therapeutic/Working Alliance.
- Agreement between client and counsellor on the purpose of counselling.
- There must be agreement on means, the tasks to be complete to fulfill a purpose.
- There must be a warm bond between counsellor and client.
What are curative factors in group therapy? Name 10
Factors associated with group therapy which can cause positive outcomes.
- Instillation of hope
- Universality
- Altruism
- Development of socializing techniques
- Imitative Behaviour
- Interpersonal Learning
- Group Cohesiveness
- Imparting of Information
- Catharsis
- Existential Factors
Group Guidance vs Group Counselling
Group Guidance tends to: o Have a more directive counsellor o Highly Structured o Cognitive Group Counselling tends to: o Have a more facilitative counsellor o More unstructured o Affective
The Wellness program for elementary school children lists 3 basic steps for planning group therapy.
What are the 3 steps?
o 1. Identify and Organize Topics
o Using theory, research, needs assessment, past experience, consultation, or whatever might help, identify and sequentially organize the topics for a program.
o 2. Design and Structure Sessions
o Divide topics into sessions and design the structure of each session.
o 3. Incorporate Curative Factors
What is the Experience-Reflection design for a developmental group therapy experience?
Establish Support
• Establishment of clear purposes, expectations, boundaries, resources, and means to support efforts.
Provide Challenging Preparation
• The expansion of concepts and competencies.
Establish a Seminar-Practicum
• Students engage in real-life try-outs and participate in a group discussion to reflect on the experience, solve problems, refine skills, explore questions and the like.
Stimulate Transfer
• The final phase provides an opportunity to dwell on such issues regarding one’s own life and to begin acting upon what was learned.
State three characteristic themes of the counselling field
- Concern for normal people
- Concerned with problems of living. How one navigates life.
- Developmental orientation. The goal is to solve immediate problems and enhance one’s future as well.
State the significance of Parsons
He envisioned:
“A practice of vocational guidance based on rationality and reason with service, concern for others, cooperation, and social justice among its core values.”
Focused on individual growth and prevention
What was the significance of Williamson?
- Believed duty of counsellor is to ascertain a deficiency in the client and prescribe a rectifying procedure
- Development of traits and factors
- Directive Approach
- Goal is to improve the decision-making of the client
Year when counselling began being mentioned in professional literature?
1931
Year when counselling began being mentioned in professional literature?
1931
What were Parson’s 3 factors for choosing a vocation?
o Knowledge of work
o Knowledge of self
o Matching of the two through “true reasoning”
How did the Moral Therapy Movement in France influence Canadian Counselling
Migrated to Canada around 1850
Promoted a humane approach as the best way to treat psychological problems
Define Social Work
A profession concerned with helping individuals, families, groups and communities to enhance their individual and collective wellbeing. It aims to help people develop their skills and their ability to use their own resources and those of the community to resolve problems.
Define Social Work
A profession concerned with helping individuals, families, groups and communities to enhance their individual and collective wellbeing. It aims to help people develop their skills and their ability to use their own resources and those of the community to resolve problems.
What are the 3 levels of helping relationships?
Nonprofessional
-Friends & Colleagues
Paraprofessional
- Generalist human services workers
- Mental health technicians, child care workers, probation personnel, youth counsellors
Professional
-Social workers, psychiatrists, etc.
How does social work differ from the other helping specialties?
It has a mandate to negotiate social systems and advocate for change, to understand clients’ habitats and niches
What are the 4 attribution models?
Medical Model
- Clients not held responsible for cause or solution of problem
- Drawback: Client dependency
Moral Model
- Clients seen as responsible for cause and solution to problem. Counsellors as coaches or motivators.
- Drawback: Victims of circumstance may blame selves for problems
Compensatory Model
- Responsible for solving problems only. Counsellor as teacher.
- Drawback: Clients feel undue pressure to solve problems they didn’t create.
Enlightenment Model
- Responsible for cause but not solution.
- Drawback: Dependency on counsellor.
Why is the DSM controversial for counsellors?
It is atheoretical
Frames disorders as dispositional, not holistic
Only deals with individual diagnosis. Often severe diagnosis.
Why is the DSM helpful for counsellors to know? (3 points)
DSM system is universally used in other helping professions and forms basis for a common dialogue
DSM system helps counsellors recognize patterns of distress in clients who may need a referral
Learning DSM establishes a good level of professionalism for working with clients
Are the steps of the counselling process linear?
It can be viewed in many ways.
Sometimes every stage is ongoing.
Sometimes progress is a spiral, with each stage being revisited.
In what stages of counselling would you try to establish the components of a working alliance?
A working alliance depends on:
- Shared purpose
- Agreement on means
- A warm bond,
These can be addressed particularly during the following stages:
- Relationship Establishment
- Assessment
- Developing a Plan of Action
Define: Technical Eclecticism
The selection of techniques (interventions) is guided by data on what has worked best for other clients in the past with similar problems or similar characteristics.
Define: Theoretical Integration
To create a conceptual framework that synthesizes the best elements of two or more approaches to therapy
Define: Informal Theories
Ideas picked up through experience. They lack formal, explicit text.
Describe the benefits of informal theories
Although not backed by theory, demonstrate certain patterns that counsellors can work with.
Commonalities from expert counsellors suggests the existence of a common implicit theory.
Define: Theory
A model that counsellors use as a guide to hypothesize about the formation of possible solutions to a problem
5 requirements for a good theory:
- Clear, easily understood, communicable
- Comprehensive
- Explicit and Heuristic
- Specific in relating
means to desired outcome - Useful to its intended practitioners
Define: Style-Shift Counselling
As needs change, counsellors depart from a theory they are using to another approach.
Hierarchy of Eclecticism:
4 levels
Syncretism
A sloppy, unsystematic process of putting unrelated clinical concepts together.
Traditional
It incorporates an orderly combination of compatible features from diverse sources into a harmonious whole.
Theoretical Interactionism
Requires that the counsellor master at least 2 theories before trying to make any combinations
Technical Eclecticism
Procedures from different theories are selected and used in treatment “without necessarily subscribing to the theories that spawned them”
List 3 techniques from Psychoanalysis
Free Association
Dream Analysis
Analysis of Transference
Analysis of Resistance
Interpretation
Describe the stages of the A-B-C-D-E Model
o A - Activating Experience
o B – How the person thinks about the experience
o C – Emotional Reaction to B
o D - Disputing irrational thoughts.
o E - Effective thoughts.
List 3 techniques of REBT
o Cognitive Disputation
o Imaginal Disputation
o Behavioural Disputation
o Confrontation
o Encouragement
Name 2 limitations of REBT
o Not effective with specific mental health disorders (Schizophrenia)
o Potential for overzealous counsellors
o Changing thinking may not easily change emotions
o De-emphasis on the working alliance
Name 2 strengths of REBT
o Clear, Easily Learned, Effective
o Easy to combine
o Short and easy for client to use independently
o Continuous evolution
o Effective with anxiety and depression
(RT)
4 Primary Psychological Needs:
Love and Belonging
Power
Freedom
Fun
Describe the WDEP system
Helps counsellors and clients make progress and employ techniques
W – Wants. Find out the desires of the client D – Direction. Client explores the direction they want in life. E – Evaluation. Clients helped to evaluate their behaviours and determine how responsible their personal behaviours are. There may be breakdown if client can’t recognize problem behaviours P – Plan. Make a plan for behaviour change.
Name 4 strengths of RT
Versatile
Concrete Emphasizes short term treatment Taught internationally Responsibility and freedom for individual Successfully challenged the medical model of client treatment. Addresses conflict resolution Focused on present
Name 3 Limitations of RT
Ignores unconscious and personal history
Holds all mental illnesses as attempts to control external.
-Essentially blames client for disorder
Few theoretical constructs
Ignores development
Susceptible to being overly moralistic
Dependent on good counsellor-client relationship
Keeps changing focus
Poor cross-culture support
The best treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
According to Logotherapy, there are 3 ways to discovering life’s meaning:
- Doing a deed
- Experiencing a value
- Suffering
Name 2 Limitations of Gestalt Therapy
- Lacks a strong theoretical basis
- Deals too strictly with the now and how of experience
- Eschews diagnosis and testing
- Too concerned with individual development and is criticized for its self-centredness.
Characterize Postmodern
There is no single definitive truth
Name the Counselling Approach:
“People live their lives by stories”
Narrative Counselling
Name 4 Narrative Counselling Techniques
Working Collaboratively Externalizing the problem Searching for unique outcomes Focusing on the unique outcomes Inviting witnesses Encouraging remembering practices Using positive written materials Helping others
3 categories of client commitment described by Solution-Focused Counselling
Visitors
Involved in the problem and are not a part of the solution
Complainants
Complain about situations but can be observant and describe problems even if they are not invested in resolving them
Customers
Not only able to describe problems and how they are involved in them, but are willing to work on finding solutions.
Describe the goal of solution-focused counselling
Help clients tap inner resources and notice exceptions to the times when they are distressed.
Then, direct them toward solutions to situations that already exist in these exceptions
Describe the goal of Collaborative Language Systems
Help client develop a greater degree of self-agency
-The ability to move in whatever direction one desires
Talking creates meaning, and this in turn leads to changes.
The self is continually being constructed.
Language creates knowledge and knowledge is not cumulative.
Define Crisis Counselling
The employment of a variety of direct and action-oriented approaches to help individuals find resources within themselves and/or deal externally with crisis.
4 types of crisis identified by crisis counselling:
- Developmental
- Takes place in the normal flow of human growth and development under circumstances that are considered normal - Situational
- Uncommon and extraordinary events occur that an individual has no way of predicting or controlling - Existential
- Which includes “inner conflicts and anxieties that accompany important human issues of purpose, responsibility, independence, freedom, and commitment.” - Ecosystemic
- In which some natural or human caused disaster overtakes a person or group.
Goals of crisis counselling
Getting immediate help in a variety of forms.
Initially use basic crisis theory to help people in crisis recognize and correct temporary affective, behavioural, and cognitive distortions brought on by traumatic events.
May require consistent follow-up or referral.
5 essential aspects to crisis intervention:
- Establish safety
- Enhance calming
- Build self-and-other efficacy
- Reconnect to social networks
- Instill hope
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The 3 listening and acting strategies of crisis counselling:
3 listening strategies:
- Define the problem (from client’s perspective)
- Ensuring client safety
- Providing support.
3 Acting strategies:
- Examining alternatives
- Making Plans
- Obtaining commitment (from the client that the actions have been planned)
Describe an example of an Existential Curative Factor in group counselling.
The more comprehensive and philosophical lessons of life that lead to higher levels of maturity and wisdom
E.g.: recognizing that life is at times unfair and unjust, facing the basic issues of life and death, living one’s life more honestly and responsibly
Generally speaking, how is a group guidance treatment planned?
- Identify and Organize Topics
- Design and Structure Sessions
- Divide topics into sessions and design the structure of each session. - Incorporate Curative Factors
- To some extent, the factors are already there. But a systematic approach will be more effective.
Define: Psychodrama
Beginning of 20th century
Members would act out unrehearsed role-plays
-Opportunity to give protagonist feedback
Popular with behaviourists, Gestaltists, and affective-oriented group leaders.
Differentiate Couselling Groups from Psychotherapy Groups
Counselling Groups
o Seek to help participants resolve the usual, yet often difficult problems of living through interpersonal support and problem solving
o Non-severe career, educational, personal, social, and developmental concerns are frequently addressed.
o Focuses on the affective involvement of the participants
• Psychotherapy Groups
o Help individual group members remediate in-depth psychological problems
o Emphasis on reconstruction of major personality dimensions
o Probably easier to exclude individuals than include.
Which is the “safer” option?
- Homogenous Groups
- Heterogenous Groups
Homogenous Groups
Define: Feedback
Multidimensional Process that consists of group members responding to the verbal messages and nonverbal behaviours of one another
Name 4 Qualities of an effective group therapy leader
Caring
Meaning Attribution
o Clarifying, explain, providing a cognitive framework for change.
Emotional Stimulation
o Activity, Challenging, Risk-taking, Self-disclosure.
Executive Function
o Entails developing norms, structuring, and suggesting procedures
Define: Systems Theory
A generic term for conceptualizing a group of related elements that interact as a whole entity
o As a concept, more a way of thinking than a coherent, standardized theory
3 Basic Assumptions of Systems Theory
o 1. Causality is interpersonal
o 2. Psychosocial systems are best understood from an interactional viewpoint
o 3. Symptomatic behaviours must… be understood from an interactional viewpoint
Define: Circular Causality
The idea that events are related through a series of interacting feedback loops.
Define: Identified Patient
In the context of family counselling.
An individual who is seen as the cause of trouble within the family structure
(Not viewed by counsellor as the problem)
Define: “Battle for Structure”
As it relates to the process of family counselling
Who must win this battle?
Establishing parameters under which counselling is conducted
o Counsellor wins: counsellors inform clients about ways the counselling will occur
Define: “Battle for Initiative”
As it relates to the process of family counselling.
Who must win this battle?
Motivation to make needed changes
-Clients must win.
Define: “Mimesis”
As it relates to the process of family counselling.
Where a counsellor adopts a couple’s or family’s style or tempo of communication. Such as being jovial with a light-hearted couple & serious with a couple that is somber.
Define: Circular Questions
Focus attention on individual connections and highlight differences among members
Describe the 4 phases of family counselling
1. Pre-session Planning: Address: o Expectations o Concise Description of Problem o Factual Info: Callers name, phone number Listen to what is said and not said
- Initial sessions
• Most critical to success
• Build Rapport - The Middle Phase of Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling
• Where needed changes would be made
• Couples and families that are not sure if they wish to change will often only make superficial alterations
4. Termination: • Final Phase • Anyone can initiate termination • Should not be sudden • Work should be summarized and celebrated.
Define: First Order Change
Couples and families that are not sure if they wish to change will often only make superficial alterations
Name the strengths of Bowen Systems Theory
Focus on multigenerational family history and its patterns
The Genogram
Cognitive emphasis and focus on differentiation of self and Detriangulation are unique.
List the limitations of Bowen Systems Theory
Extensive and complex
Those who benefit most are severely dysfunctional or have low differentiation of self
This approach may require considerable investment on multiple levels, which some clients may not be willing or able.
Cite 2 techniques of Structural Family Counselling
Family Interaction
• When non-productive sequences are repeated, the counsellor will rearrange the physical environment. This forces the pattern to change.
o E.g., have people face each other when talking
Reframing
• Offer a different perspective on a problem
Describe Emotion-Focused Couples and Family Therapy (EFCFT)
From the 1980s
8-20 sessions.
90% of couples found it effective
o View of Human Nature
Relationships at core of human experience
Nurturant social environment will maximize potential
o Role of Counsellor
Focus on creating stronger and healthier emotional bond between clients
Anger is secondary emotion
o Goals
Shift in how clients relate to one another
Enhance emotional bond
o Techniques (more details on pg 463)
1. Validate & Establish working alliance 2. De-escalate negative cycle that has developed 3. Access underlying feelings 4. Restructure the negative communications 5. Consulate and integrate the changes
o Strengths
20 years of empirical support
Attachment theory foundation
Successful in many types of situations and populations
Strategies and interventions clearly articulated
o Limitations
May not be most effective form of couples therapy
Studies used less distressed samples than other theories
Fails when violence is present
Might not be valued in cultures where emotional display is frowned upon
