Counselling skills

1
Counselling skills

• Why therapy works
• Patricia Lambert

2
Ground Rules

• Respect
• Care
• Confidentiality

3
Communication

• All communication messages are encoded by senders
  and then decoded by receivers (Duck, 1998)
• Verbal
• Vocal
• Bodily
• Touch
• Other mediums of communication

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Activity 1 -

• Read the feeling word and take a moment to
  reflect on the feeling. It may help you to think
  about the last time you experienced that feeling.
  What was happening to you, what made you react?
• Your task is to communicate that feeling to your
  group without using any words (you may use your
  voice). Think of the facial expressions, body
  posture.
• The rest of the group needs to guess the feeling
  you are trying to convey.

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Activity 1 - Reflection

• How did that feel? (Were you embarrassed, feeling
  exposed?)
• How easy was it to guess the feeling?

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Verbal Communication

• Language
• Content
• Metaphors, imagery
• Amount
• Ownership
• Style

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Vocal Communication

• Pitch
• Emphasis
• Speech rate
• Volume
• Articulation

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Bodily Communication

• Gaze
• Facial expressions
• Posture
• Clothes
• Grooming
• Proximity
• Touch

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Other mediums

• Letters
• E-mails
• Texts
• Telephone
• Internet Online Counselling

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Client Counsellor Communication

• The focus of the counsellor is on how the client
  experiences his/her own world.
• Need to be aware of communication style
  differences.
• The counsellor use of senses to listen
• Listening with the ears the clients narrative
• Listening with the eyes the clients body
  language
• Listening with your body the felt sense what
  the counsellor is feeling

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Counsellor Client Communication

• Counsellors attitude
• To encourage clients communication
• To facilitate clients self-exploration
• To develop and maintain trust
• To create a safe environment

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Activity 3 part 1

• Get into groups of 5 or 6 (all male or female)
• In the 1st column of your chart write down words
  that are associated with the emotion.
• In the 2nd column write down actions that are
  associated with this emotions.
• In the 3rd column write down the actions that
  could be taken if there were no social
  restrictions, expectations, rules etc

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Activity 3 part 2

• On the second chart use metaphors, imagery
  without using any of the words from the previous
  chart (if possible) that could express the
  emotion.
• And/or draw the emotion.

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Counselling skills

• Undivided attention
• Non- judgemental
• Refrain from giving advice
• Empathy
• Memory
• Listen
• Being real
• Accepting silence
• Eye contact
• Smiling
• Posture
• Verbal responses
• Setting the room

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Helpful Verbal Responses

• Paraphrasing
• Reflecting
• Clarifying
• Challenging incongruence
• Minimal responses
• Open questions

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Unhelpful Responses

• Searching for the positive
• Being optimistic
• Talking about own problems
• Leading questions
• Giving advice
• Interruptions

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Creative skills

• Intuition
• Metaphors
• Imagery
• Objects
• Poetry
• Crafts
• Drawing Sketching
• Diagrams

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Listening a challenge

• Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher, put the
  challenge this way
• I do not know if you have ever examined how you
  listen, in a dialogue with yourself, to your
  conversation in various relationships with your
  intimate friends, your wife or husband. If we try
  to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult,
  because we are always projecting our opinions and
  ideas, our prejudices, our background, our
  inclinations, our impulses when they dominate,
  we hardly listen at all to what is being said. In
  that state there is no value at all. One listens
  and therefore learns, only in a state of
  attention, a state of silence, in which this
  whole background is in abeyance, is quiet then,
  it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.

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Counsellors self-awareness

• Fears
• Values
• Principles
• Personal conflicts
• Personal needs
• Resistance
• Life experiences
• Attitudes

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Personal Reactions

• SEX
• UGLY
• ABORTION
• PAIN
• FAILURE
• SIN
• IMPOTENT
• ABUSE
• HOPELESS
• RAPE

• FEAR
• SUICIDE
• ADDICTED
• BATTERED
• DEATH
• GOD
• SELF-HARM
• MAD
• HATE
• STUPID

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Activity 2 - Listening

• Get in groups of 3. One observer, two
  participants
• The task is for each participant to talk to each
  other at the same time for about a minute about
  what they did over the week end.
• Now carry on talking to each other and try to
  listen to each other.
• What did they say?

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Activity 2 - reflection

• What was happening?
• How difficult was it to talk?
• How difficult was it to listen
• For the participants?
• For the observer?

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The Core Conditions Carl Rogers

• Empathy
• Unconditional Positive regard (UPR)
• Congruence

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Empathy

• Can I let myself enter fully into the world of
  his/her feelings and personal meanings, and see
  these as he/she does?
• Listening
• Making sense of what is said
• Understanding from the others point of view
• Checking that understanding is right

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Unconditional Positive Regard

• Can I be acceptant of each facet of the clients
  facets which he/she presents to me? Can I receive
  him as he is?
• Respect
• Value
• Non-judgemental
• Validating

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Congruence the real self

• Can I be expressive enough as a person that what
  I am will be communicated unambiguously?
• Authenticity open, honest, real and consistent
• Acknowledging own feelings
• Acknowledging own limitations
• Communicating own feelings when appropriate