Human Vulnerability and Counselling Skills - Essay Example

Practice Session and Reflective Essay Name Institution Course Date Practice Session and Reflective Essay Introduction Effective counsellors understand their own human vulnerability, have a strong knowledge base, have the desire to continue searching, and understand that they often deal with easily influenced and vulnerable people. It has come to my attention that counsellors are responsible for the emotional life as well as the death of their clients; therefore, it is an extremely heavy burden that should be taken up willingly and consciously. A counselling session can result in a process of working through or overcoming personal issues from day-to-day hardship and situations that are potentially life threatening. In this reflective essay, I provide an overview of the counselling session and I discuss what I felt before, during as well as after the session. I will highlight the relevant theory and skills associated with counselling, Session Summary The counselling session involved Zeyneb, a teacher and the focus was on the stressors she had experienced lately. She had a high pressured job and she dedicated most of her time towards work. As a result, she was left with no time to do things she loves doing. She was so busy, to the extent that she did not have time to stop and press the pause button. Therefore, I decided to focus on ways to manage some of her problems; at first, I decided to focus on things that made her feel like she was enjoying life. To make sure that she does not feel like the quality of her life is duplicated, I focused on the things she is interested in such as hobbies. Because of her long working hours, she normally brings lots of work back home; thus, it has become challenging to separate work from home. Her desire is to have a balanced lifestyle in order that every time she goes home, she gets time to do what she likes. She understands that work-life balance is important, but her workload has stressed her out leading to burn out and lack of enough sleep. As a result, she has been asked to up her vitamin intake and finds ways to reduce fatigue and tension. She prefers a less demanding job, therefore, she is planning to quit her job in order to resolve this problem. I tried helping by talking to her boss, with the anticipation that her work load would be reduced. Self-Assessment Rapport can be described as a state of understanding other people harmoniously; thus, allowing for easier and greater communication.  It involves getting on well with the person in the counselling session in order to make sure that the communication process becomes more effective and easier. In the counselling session with Zeyneb, I used active listening skills with the goal of understanding her and her story. Before making any attempt at an intervention, I made sure that I exhibited to Zeyneb that I knew where they were sourced from. More importantly, I made sure that I watched my speed of intimacy considering that it takes longer to create a trust needed to talk about more sensitive and personal issues. To examine the trust level, I would concentrate on the content shared by Zeyneb (since some clients would at first only share surface-level information) and her body language. I learned that it is imperative to understand such non-verbal signals since not every client would openly verbalise their uneasiness. As mentioned by LoFrisco (2012), the counsellors should treat their client with respect. Therefore, I made sure that I started the counselling session on time, had paperwork prepared for the client, and I made sure that I dress professionally. Attending, according to AIPC (2009), is a behavioural factor that plays a crucial role in building rapport. Therefore, when I first met Zeyneb, I told her that I was interested in listening to her as well as helping her. By attending, I was able to encourage her to open up and talk about her issues. I learned that eye contact is polite and crucial when listening or talking to another person. I made sure that I was not staring at Zeyneb, but I maintained a normal eye contact to demonstrate that I was interested in what she was saying. Counselling, as pointed out by AIPC (2009), mainly involves talking and listening, but at times, silence can profoundly affect the client during the counselling session. Although silence could be somewhat awkward at first, it can help the counsellor offer a sustainable solution instead of rushing to fill the gaps. As mentioned by AIPC (2009), most counsellors have the innate desire of helping other people, and due to this emotional involvement, occasionally it becomes very problematic to convert the potential into practical outcomes. I have realised that different emotional states and mind-sets need a certain approach; therefore, being able to adjust to the needs of the client could likely lead to a successful relationship. Micro-Skills Identified, Defined and Used Counselling Micro-skills, as pointed out by Ridley, Mollen, and Kelly (2011), are specific skills utilised by counsellors to improve how they communicate with the clients. Such skills allow the counsellor to successfully build a working relationship with the clients in a conversation that is both meaningful and helpful. On the other hand, advanced counselling Skills build is rooted in the basis of counselling skills crucial for developing more advanced counselling as well as assessment skills needed by counsellors to work with diverse group of clients. Some of the micro skills I used while speaking with Zeyneb include opening confidentiality, reframing, nodding, and pausing. On the other hand, advanced skills included externalising, mapping the influence, normalising, scaling question, relaxation techniques, and formulating a short-term goal. According to Aladag (2013), the basic counselling skills include a reflection of content and feeling, encouraging, questions, attending, as well as summarising. Advanced counselling skills included directives, self-disclosure, confrontation, immediacy, interpretation, information, and feedback. Confidentiality is an advanced skill associated with maintaining process and information private and safe with the aim of supporting autonomy, respect, as well as commitment. Devoid of commitment, there will be no trust between the client and the counsellor considering that trust is an important factor needed for psychological contact. When utilizing self-disclosure, the counsellors appropriately as well as briefly reveal information regarding themselves in a facilitative manner. The objective of self-disclosure is improving the relationship between the client and the counsellor and it can be made after the client makes a request for information or the counsellor could provide it voluntarily. Another advanced skill used is directive counselling, whereby I played an active role in a client's decision making by providing recommendations, guidance, and/or advice. Descriptions of how each skill was demonstrated With regard to attending behaviour, I encouraged Zeyneb to talk and I showed that I was interested in what she was saying. I utilised attending behaviour all through the entire counselling, but it was crucial in the early stages of building rapport. Some of the attentive body language I used during the counselling session includes leaning slightly forward, using gestures, and eye contact. Another skill that was demonstrated was questioning, considering that questioning the client effectively guide the conversation during the counselling session and helped in enriching Zeyneb’s story. I used questioning to gather information all through the counselling session. An example includes: “what would you like to talk about today?” Another skill was responding, which enabled me to confirm with Zeyneb that she was being heard properly. Responding was useful all through the counselling session and it enabled me to clarify and encourage Zeyneb’s stories. Example: “imagine you go home tonight and sleep and wake up tomorrow morning and realise a miracle has happened, what this miracle would look like for you?” With regard to macro skills, I used non-verbal communication such as eye contact, nodding and a pause during communication. Besides that, I used reflecting to bring out underlying feelings and to help add the emotional dimension to Zeyneb’s story. I reflected back to Zeyneb to reassure her that I was listening and to touch on some of her feelings. I also used both open-ended and closed questions: such as “how is this making you feel?” “Where do you sit on the scale from 0 to 10?” I used advanced counselling skills to open and close the counselling session. “What would you like to talk about today?” “How are you feeling now compared to before?” To let Zeyneb know that I was listening, I utilised minimal responses, such as utilising non-verbal responses and expressions. I also used externalising to separate the problem and mapping the influence; for instance, the client said “I want to come home and switch off’ ‘social life with friends’ ‘ go out on weeknights’. Evaluation of Effectiveness by Observing Responses to Interventions Basically, effective counselling can be achieved if the counsellor understands self and is aware of how he /she impact other people. As a counsellor, I should be equipped not just with macro skills but also advanced listening skills. I should be able to recognise the different empathy levels of their responses (specifically, reflecting a clear understanding of the client’s feelings). More importantly, it is imperative to develop a capacity to be open-minded, to desist from responses that are judgemental and to check actively with the client in making sure that the expressed feelings are correct. By observing responses to interventions, it would become easier for the client to take responsibility for the impact of the actions taken. As pointed out by Bates and Stevenson (1998), self-disclosure is a crucial tool which could be utilised by the counsellor to develop an effective counselling framework. Effective counsellors should be able to model their behaviours for the client. Being able to keenly observe the clients responses can enable the counsellor to come up with effective interventions. Reference to Relevant Literature, Linking Ideas to Theory As pointed out by Aladag (2013), a number of structured and systematic counselling skills have been developed since 1960’s teach for novice counsellors. Some of the ap­proaches to training developed to help the counsellor educa­tors include Interpersonal Process Recall, Microcounseling/Microtraining, Helping Skills Program and Human Relations Training. All the specific methods have distinctive contributions and functions to instil counselling skills. The theory of structuration, as pointed out by Bilon (2013), plays a crucial role in solving crucial dilemma bound up with examining systems structuration. The theory of structuration provides a different way both in methodological choices and in theoretical assumptions. According to Bilon (2013), the ‘classical’ sociological theories play an important role in career counselling since it helps interpret to capture counselling’s multifaceted and complexity nature. The theory of structuration and other systemic theories have enabled researchers to infiltrate into more aspects/dimensions and contexts of counselling. Career counselling is embedded deeply in the cultural context. In Kuntze, Molen, and Born (2009) study, they observed that minimal encouragements in counselling session are very important because they encourage clients and assure them that they are receiving attention from the counsellor. When the counsellor asks the client questions, he/she helps them in putting their own thoughts into words as well as clarifying their problems. Open questions are important because they offer clients sufficient freedom to formulate their answer. On the other hand, the answer for the closed questions largely depends on the question’s content. As indicated in Strong, Pyle, and Sutherland (2009), scaling questions serves as a barometer of the imagined or actual experiences of the clients (such as rating the client’s confidence in answering a question at ‘‘4’’ out of ‘‘10’’). Answering the scaling questions enable the counsellors to evaluate clients’ experiences. Reflection on Learning from This Assessment and Goals Identified I have learned a lot through the counselling session; for instance, it came to my attention that effective counsellors should be less comfortable with the issues or problems that the clients are facing, instead, they should create an intuitive capability to appropriately respond to the issues. I should deeply understand concepts such as immediacy, unconditional regard, empathy, confrontation as well as respect. More importantly, I am supposed to understand the different levels of candidness. After developing a relationship with the client, it becomes easier to explore the client’s feelings comprehensively and with high levels of genuineness. My future goal is to use self-disclosure in order to associate with the client’s feelings. Through self-disclosure, I will be able to assure my clients that I can feel what they are going through. In addition, I desire to learn relaxation techniques that could help me reduce the client’s anxiety. In so doing, I will be able to make the client feel calm, breath normally, sleep better, reduce muscle tension and reduce hormones output. Given that clients are inclined to respond to immediacy or self-disclosure negatively, I intend to find ways of improving my counselling relationship with the client. Conclusion In conclusion, this reflective essay has highlighted the relevant theory and skills associated with counselling. As mentioned in the essay, competencies and macro skills depends on how the counsellors conduct themselves, process their feelings and think. Counselling is a vehicle of life enhancement, change and development in a person’s life. For that reason, skilful counsellor during the counselling session could help clients desiring to develop themselves as well as change their lives for the better. References AIPC. (2009, October 16). Five Counselling Microskills. Retrieved from The Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors : http://www.aipc.net.au/articles/five-counselling-microskills/ AIPC. (2009, October 16). Strategies to Build Rapport with Clients. Retrieved from AIPC: http://www.aipc.net.au/articles/strategies-to-build-rapport-with-clients/ Aladag, M. (2013). Counseling Skills Pre-Practicum Training at Guidance and Counseling Undergraduate Programs: A Qualitative Investigation. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 13(1), 72-79. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1016669.pdf Bates, M., & Stevenson, P. (1998). Good Counselling is Just Excellent Communication Skills! Or is it? Counselling Australia, 3, 1-7. Retrieved from https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/12563/8374.pdf;jsessionid=5CEB2C847E7CDDDA821B8C4AE992FD6A?sequence=1 Bilon, A. (2013). Career Counselling: Current Trends in Research and Theory. Journal of Counsellogy, 1, 217-236. Retrieved from http://www.studiaporadoznawcze.dsw.edu.pl/fileadmin/user_upload/wydawnictwo/Studia_Poradoznawcze/2_Career_Counselling_Current_Trends_in_Research_and_Theory.pdf Kuntze, J., Molen, H. T., & Born, M. P. (2009). Increase in counselling communication skills after basic and advanced microskills training. Retrieved from https://moscow.sci-hub.io/67a4cb10f9d84523fd9d8423fc3996ce/kuntze2009.pdf LoFrisco, B. (2012, December 6). How To Build Rapport With Clients. Retrieved from MastersInCounseling.org: https://www.mastersincounseling.org/how-to-build-rapport-with-clients.html Ridley, C. R., Mollen, D., & Kelly, S. M. (2011). Beyond Microskills: Toward a Model of Counseling Competence. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(6), 1-40. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/education/ce/beyond-microskills.pdf Strong, T., Pyle, N. R., & Sutherland, O. (2009). Scaling questions: asking and answering them in counselling. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 22(2), 171–185. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515070903157321 Read More

More importantly, I made sure that I watched my speed of intimacy considering that it takes longer to create a trust needed to talk about more sensitive and personal issues. To examine the trust level, I would concentrate on the content shared by Zeyneb (since some clients would at first only share surface-level information) and her body language. I learned that it is imperative to understand such non-verbal signals since not every client would openly verbalise their uneasiness. As mentioned by LoFrisco (2012), the counsellors should treat their client with respect.

Therefore, I made sure that I started the counselling session on time, had paperwork prepared for the client, and I made sure that I dress professionally. Attending, according to AIPC (2009), is a behavioural factor that plays a crucial role in building rapport. Therefore, when I first met Zeyneb, I told her that I was interested in listening to her as well as helping her. By attending, I was able to encourage her to open up and talk about her issues. I learned that eye contact is polite and crucial when listening or talking to another person.

I made sure that I was not staring at Zeyneb, but I maintained a normal eye contact to demonstrate that I was interested in what she was saying. Counselling, as pointed out by AIPC (2009), mainly involves talking and listening, but at times, silence can profoundly affect the client during the counselling session. Although silence could be somewhat awkward at first, it can help the counsellor offer a sustainable solution instead of rushing to fill the gaps. As mentioned by AIPC (2009), most counsellors have the innate desire of helping other people, and due to this emotional involvement, occasionally it becomes very problematic to convert the potential into practical outcomes.

I have realised that different emotional states and mind-sets need a certain approach; therefore, being able to adjust to the needs of the client could likely lead to a successful relationship. Micro-Skills Identified, Defined and Used Counselling Micro-skills, as pointed out by Ridley, Mollen, and Kelly (2011), are specific skills utilised by counsellors to improve how they communicate with the clients. Such skills allow the counsellor to successfully build a working relationship with the clients in a conversation that is both meaningful and helpful.

 On the other hand, advanced counselling Skills build is rooted in the basis of counselling skills crucial for developing more advanced counselling as well as assessment skills needed by counsellors to work with diverse group of clients. Some of the micro skills I used while speaking with Zeyneb include opening confidentiality, reframing, nodding, and pausing. On the other hand, advanced skills included externalising, mapping the influence, normalising, scaling question, relaxation techniques, and formulating a short-term goal.

According to Aladag (2013), the basic counselling skills include a reflection of content and feeling, encouraging, questions, attending, as well as summarising. Advanced counselling skills included directives, self-disclosure, confrontation, immediacy, interpretation, information, and feedback. Confidentiality is an advanced skill associated with maintaining process and information private and safe with the aim of supporting autonomy, respect, as well as commitment. Devoid of commitment, there will be no trust between the client and the counsellor considering that trust is an important factor needed for psychological contact.

When utilizing self-disclosure, the counsellors appropriately as well as briefly reveal information regarding themselves in a facilitative manner. The objective of self-disclosure is improving the relationship between the client and the counsellor and it can be made after the client makes a request for information or the counsellor could provide it voluntarily. Another advanced skill used is directive counselling, whereby I played an active role in a client's decision making by providing recommendations, guidance, and/or advice.

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