Counseling Module 1

What is counseling and what does it aim to do?

• A collaborative and professional relationship between counselor and client that uses evidence based theories, techniques and interventions to help the client grow/change

• Aims to help individuals better understand themselves, resolve challenges, develop coping skills within an ethical and culturally sensitive framework

How is counseling a science?

It provides foundation for evidence-based knowledge. Provides theories, tools and interventions that guide counselors

How is counseling an art with a heart

Reflects counselors’ ability to create interventions fit for the client, communicate with sensitivity and build rapport

This quality of an effective counselor allows you to “feel” and understand a client’ perspective. Which traits come naturally to most counselors but is something you need to evolve overtime?

• Empathy with Compassion and Acceptance

• Empathy and compassion

Basic formula of empathy

You feel _ because (or when) __

Whats the process of empathy

1. Empathic Listening

   • Counselor attends, observes and listens to client in order to understand the clients thoughts, feelings and experiences

2. Empathic Understanding

   • Accurately understands how the client sees and experiences their world

3. Empathic Responding

   • Reflecting that understanding back to the client

Without this quality of an effective counselor, practicing counseling with your client does not allow you to be authentic. Why does it matter?

• Genuine and Authentic

• Clients are sensitive to whether a therapist feels genuine so if a counselor appears artificial, clients will have difficulty developing trust

This quality of an effective counselor means you need to treat every client as a person with worth and you also need to treat yourself as important

Dignity and respect

This quality of an effective counselor needs you to be good motivators

• Instill hope

• Clients who enter counseling are in great distress hence, instilling hope requires being genuine in what is said and how it is conveyed

• It does NOT mean making unrealistic promises but making a realistic and grounded therapeutic plan

This quality of an effective counselor needs you to be aware and comfortable that clients come from different cultural backgrounds. “We seek the story before making the judgment”

Open and tolerant

This quality of an effective counselor’s goal is to help clients develop the knowledge, skills and confidence necessary to make decisions and advpcate for themselves

• Advocate and empower

• Advocacy asks “how can I help this person gain greater control over their own life?”

This quality of an effective counselor reminds you that it is important to be ready and willing to adapt the realities of the profession relative to your expectations. Counseling may not look exactly like what you imagine

Adaptive, creative and adaptable

This quality of an effective counselor makes you open to i proving oneself, meaning you recognize your limitations and actively work on them. How does this protect clients?

• Acknowledge weaknesses and willing to change

• Unwillingness to recognize weaknesses can result in blind spots, defensiveness or inappropriate interventions

This quality of an effective counselor emphasizes that counselors need to have a learning mindset. The field continuously changes and you need to research as it evolves, be under supervision, develop new techniques or interventions and accept feedback

Put the ego aside: learn as much as u can

This quality of an effective counselor can help counselors reduce tension or help clients gain psychological distance form a difficult situation

• Humor

• But you need to consider if they’re comfortable with humor, if its appropriate, if clients interpret it as minimizing their pain and if its directed at the situation

This quality of an effective counselor makes you learn the best way for you to provide high quality care while keeping the rest of your day to day life separate

• Maintain healthy boundaries

• Boundaries involve time, self-disclosure, social relationships, confidentiality, professional roles, etc.

This quality of an effective counselor allows therapist to experience psychotherapy from the client’s perspective because it provides a model of therapeutic practice

• Personal therapy for counselors

• It can enhance interpersonal awareness where they understand their patterns, vulnerabilities and reactions

• It provides a space for reflection

This quality of an effective counselor needs to be psychologically present rather than living in the past or worrying abt the future

Present and mindfully oriented

• Being present means paying attention to what the client is saying, tone of voice, body language, emotional shifts, your own reactions and what is rlly happening

These three related but distinct qualities of an effective counselor needs enough confidence in their skills to make appropriate decisions, understand that patients may relapse, resist, and struggle and maintain emotional stability when the client’s situation is emotionally intense

Confident, patient and grounded

This quality of an effective counselor means genuinely caring about the work and wanting to help clients

Passionate and enthusiastic

• “i care about doing this work well and committed to continuing to improve

• Should be balanced with boundaries and self-care

This quality of an effective counselor means you need to relate with a client

Interpersonally adept and able to connect

This quality of an effective counselor makes u realize that counselors are human beings, they have their own histories, emotions, biases and insecurities. The goal is to know enough to recognize that ur personal biases may interfere your personal judgment

Self awareness and coping with personal issues

• “Am I reacting strongly to this client because of what theyre doing or this situation reminds me of smth I went through”

This quality of an effective counselor reminds you that counselors must understand both the client’s cultural context and their own cultural assumptions

Multicultural awareness and sensitivity

• You might believe that ur way of communicating is normal but that reflects their own cultural upbringing