The Counseling Skills Practice Manual

David R. Hutchinson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781483342580
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

The Counseling Skills Practice Manual is a practical guide for students who are working on improving their counseling skills. Designed as a companion to The Essential Counselor and its accompanying DVD of professionally demonstrated skills, this manual works directly with the student, offering a discussion of each skill set along with examples and practice exercises. The manual features 12 practice sessions, each of which focuses on a specific counseling skill set. Many of the essential skills are covered, such as using questions, nonverbal behaviors, making reflections of client meaning, and feeling. But the student also gains practice here with other important skills, such as learning how to deal with clients in crisis and reluctant clients, how to appropriately confront, and how to give and receive accurate and supportive feedback to one another. These practice sessions are designed to help the students recognize and build upon their natural interpersonal skill set as they learn new skills. They will help students become more competent in their use of counseling skills and feel more comfortable and confident in their roles as emerging counseling professionals.

1

Getting Started

Using Your Natural Interest and Curiosity About People

Introduction

You have been drawn to the helping professions because of some innate interest in how people behave, and also because of your natural inclination to do this kind of work. Perhaps you have been told you’re a good listener, or you find yourself to be someone to whom people typically turn when there are problems. Maybe you grew up in a home where there were difficulties, and you learned how to “read” people as a strategy to keep things as safe as possible. It’s possible that your life experiences have given you some very good intuitive skills that help you to see to the heart of the issues that people talk about, and you can respond in ways that are effective and even therapeutic.

All of these things taken together represent the best of what you’ll be able to offer your clients. Your natural listening skills, your interest in what people have to say, and your cumulative life experience will serve as the foundation for how you will approach this work. They are the best things you have to offer your client.

The textbook that accompanies this manual, The Essential Counselor, presents many skills that you will be able to use in your work. Never lose sight of the fact, however, that it is your own self—you as a person—and your “wisdom” about life, that will drive the skills you use. Your basic assumptions about the nature of people and the theoretical ways you approach your work will help you in your work, as well.

Your course of study will undoubtedly state the importance of empathy as a single most important ingredient in the counseling process. Your ability to see the world through the eyes of another, to imagine with a high degree of accuracy what it would be like to be this other person, is what it means to be empathic. You will best be able to do this when you bring all of your life experience into the counseling space with you. The more of life you have experienced, the more you’ll be able to accurately identify with your clients. This doesn’t mean that you’ll talk about these experiences of yours, but rather that these experiences will serve to help you understand what goes on for your client. This is why helping professionals who have a rich life history—including all of the good, bad, and ugly things that have been a part of their lives—are probably in the best position to provide this understanding.

The word “empathy” is closely related to the concept of “compassion.” Both words have their root meanings in Latin words which roughly mean “suffering with another.” This is what we do when we hear stories of abuse and trauma, of heartbreak and of loss … we suffer with another. Perhaps you will have some words of wisdom, or some suggestions that will help someone heal from the wounds she has endured, but the simple fact of your “suffering with” presence will, of itself, be primarily helpful.

Reflection Exercises: Your Natural Helping Foundation

The following set of reflection exercises is designed to help you articulate the experiences, the beliefs, the motivations, and natural skills you bring to this helping work.

The Reflection Exercises each begin with a set of questions. Try to be as honest with yourself as possible as you consider each of these. There are no right or wrong answers to these, rather they are meant to help you clearly articulate where you stand and what you think about some critical issues that will ultimately affect your work.

The first of these Reflection Exercises suggests that you do a brief life review. It will prompt you to look at the events and people who have influenced your decisions to become a counselor.

The second Reflection Exercise asks you to look at your underlying assumptions about the essential nature of people and what constitutes a healthy person. These assumptions, naturally, will impact how you approach the people you’re counseling.

Finally, the last Reflection Exercise will ask you to review your natural helping skills, the set of personal characteristics and skills you think will benefit your work. You can, of course, also include in this review the things about which you have the most to learn.

When you have completed these reflection exercises and written about the influence of your life experience and beliefs on your future counseling work, you may be sharing this with one of your student peers or your instructor. You don’t want to be writing about things that would unduly embarrass you. Perhaps you could write about those things in a language that only you would understand, or simply use euphemisms to describe particularly difficult experiences (e.g., “a tough time as a sophomore in high school”).

REFLECTION EXERCISE #1: A LIFE REVIEW

Your cumulative life experience will be the greatest single asset you bring to your counseling work. The more varied, the richer your life experience, the greater will be your ability to understand the experiences of your clients. This does not mean you have to have had the same experiences they have had (they would never be exactly the same anyway), but the range and variety of experiences will simply expand your ability to understand. These experiences may provide the greatest motivation to do this work.

In a “bulleted” list fashion, name the significant people and events that you think have brought you to this place in time where you want to become a helping professional. Some of these may be positive influences, some may be less so. List as many as seem relevant and identify the positive (or otherwise) nature of the influence that this person/event has had on you.

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REFLECTION EXERCISE #2: YOUR PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY AND CLOSELY HELD VALUES

Fundamental to your work with people will be your basic assumptions about the nature of people. Are we born flawed, or are we born as essentially “good?” What role does our upbringing have in shaping who we become? How does someone become psychologically healthy? What does it even mean to be “healthy,” and should helping someone become healthy (whatever you think that means) be a goal of counseling?

Related to these basic assumptions, ask yourself about the primary values you hold that will shape your work with people? You might review the values outlined in the text as you review your own.

Take some time to contemplate these questions. There is a lot here. You might even want to think about what you’ve read—or consider reading—what others have said about these. These are critical philosophical questions which will have a huge impact on how you work with people, and it’s best that you consider them at the outset of your career. Naturally, there probably will be some change in these as you mature in your development as a professional; yet some will maintain permanence.

When you have taken time to think about all this, perhaps making some notes in the process, compose a brief personal mission statement—your beliefs and values about life and helping others, if you want to call it something—that incorporates all of your thinking about these questions. This philosophy will intimately affect the counseling work you do. Again, you can present this here as a bulleted list.

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REFLECTION EXERCISE #3: YOUR PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND NATURAL SKILLS

You have a set of natural skills and personal characteristics that will serve as the backbone of your counseling work. Naturally, the skills you acquire and the theoretical approaches you learn about working with people will be important. They will be add-ons, however, to the critically central important role your own “person-hood” serves. Who you are as a person will intimately affect how you work with others.

In this third personal review, take some time to look at those skills and personal characteristics of yours that you think will most influence your work. Most of these will be positive assets and attributes, but you may identify some that are less than positive, things that you believe will need your attention and future work. The chapter in The Essential Counselor that talks about assessment and planning surveys the parts of a “whole person.” You might want to take a look at this as you embark on this review of your own characteristics and skills.

After you’ve taken some time to think about these skills and characteristics, list them in the space that follows.

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Role Play: Using Your Natural Skills

The Essential Counselor outlines a lab practice model for role plays. In this model, there is a client, a counselor, and either one or two observers. You can review that model in the text and use it here, if it seems suitable. Alternatively, you could work with one other student, taking turns as counselor and client, or with a friend or relative, if another student is not available. If you are working with observers, their job is to remain silent during the role play, to keep time, and then to provide feedback at the end of the role play.

When you are in the client role (where another student or friend is being the counselor) you will talk about the reflections you’ve written about—your life experiences, your values and beliefs, and your natural helping skills—with the counselor. Talk about those things that feel safe. Do not feel compelled to share aspects of your life or beliefs that feel uncomfortable to talk about; those could be saved for discussion in your own personal counseling, not this skills training course.

Given that you most likely will not have time to discuss all that you’ve written, you can pick and choose to talk about those things that seem most relevant and best to talk about at this starting out point in this course. Take 20 minutes for this, and then spend 5 minutes talking with the person who ...