Counseling Primer

Leonard A. Austin

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135894511
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Designed to bring synthesis to counseling students' entire course of study, this title covers the vital information from all CACREP-required core courses. It also prepares final semester master's students for their comprehensive written and oral examinations and the National Counselors Examination. Additionally, it serves as resource manual for practicing mental health professionals, including theories, terms, ethical codes, tips on taking exams, and sample forms.

Chapter 1

THE COUNSELING RELATIONSHIP

And so the two strangers meet. They look at each other, sniff the air between them. Their invisible antennae gently stretch out, tentatively probing, and gingerly assessing. Their intuitions working consciously and far below consciousness, take stock. One silently thinks, “Is this someone I can believe in? Someone I can trust with my secrets, my guilts, and shames, my tender and deep hopes for my life, my vulnerability?” The other wonders, “Is this someone I can invest in? Someone I can stand by in pain and crisis? Someone I can make myself vulnerable to? What surprise may this person bring forth, and what may that surprise trigger within me?” (Bugental, 1978, pp. 27–28)

DEFINITION

The counseling relationship begins with those enabling acts that the counselor uses to help clients recognize, decide, know, feel, and choose whether to change or not. Shertzer and Stone (1980) defined the relationship as a counselor’s “endeavor, by interaction with others, to contribute in a facilitating, positive way to their client’s improvement” (p. 5). A more recent definition by Chapman (1997) reads:

Counseling is the intentional injection of oneself into the personal life/lives of an individual or group with the expressed purpose of affecting change. This insertion, while deliberate, is predicated upon adequate training, the receipt of professional qualifications, and the adherence to an established code of professional ethics. (p. 1)

Still other definitions of the counseling relationship center around the application of various researched, psychotherapeutic principles to individuals, groups, couples, and families, with a goal of minimizing ineffective and psychopathological behaviors while maximizing optimal mental health.

The basic concepts of the counseling relationship as initially developed by Carl Rogers (1951, 1957, 1961, 1980) have evolved over the years, and today Rogerian concepts “are generally acknowledged by most theoretical approaches as core conditions in the therapeutic process” (Hackney & Cormier, 1994, p. 14). Rogers’ relationship-building skills, cited below, form a foundation for all the therapeutic work to follow.

ESTABLISHING RAPPORT

Most counselor educators agree that establishing rapport is an essential first step to successful counseling. However, it is not some magical gift or a condition that just happens or doesn’t. Rapport skills can be learned. Rogerian skills, or conditions, enable the counselor to facilitate an environment of trust and productivity in the counseling session. They are generally considered fundamental to a positive working counseling relationship.

Core Conditions

Rogers (1959) said the following three core conditions must be experienced by the counselor and perceived by the client. Hackney and Cormier (1994) further affirmed the three as core conditions, saying they are absolutely central to the therapeutic process.

Genuineness. The counselor is congruent, fully present to the client, in harmony with himself/herself, and genuinely interested. The counselor is transparent, is open, and encompasses the attitudes that are being experienced by the client at that very moment in the counseling session. Rogers said, “genuineness or congruence is the most basic of the three conditions” (Rogers, 1959, p. 184).

Unconditional Positive Regard. The counselor embodies a nonpossessive caring or total acceptance of the client’s individuality, respecting and accepting of the client regardless of differing values, views, or how the client sees a given situation.

Empathic Understanding. The counselor feels what the client is feeling and truly understands the client’s intimate experience. The counselor has the ability to emotionally relate and resonate with the client’s experience as if it were the counselor’s very own experience. In addition, having empathy for a client from another culture includes the ability to relate to the impact of that client’s cultural background, race, gender, religion, etc.

ATTENDING SKILLS

The attending skills of the counselor serve several important functions in the counseling relationship. They encourage the client to continue to talk, they model appropriate in-session behaviors, they communicate respect to the client, they give insight to the counselor, and they help the counselor stay focused on the client. Corsini and Gross (1991) believed that counselors need to possess the following personal attributes before application of attending skills will be successful: self-awareness, centering and relaxing, humor, genuineness, concreteness, nonjudgmental attitude toward self, and nonjudgmental attitude toward others (i.e., respect).

Listening Skills

Attending skills are called listening skills by some authors. Corsini and Gross (1991) found that listening skills extend far beyond simply hearing what a client has to say. Effective listening skills are exhibited when counselors carefully

observe the client’s verbal behaviors,

notice the client’s nonverbal behaviors,

observe the client’s bodily reactions,

use both open- and closed-ended questions,

encourage the client,

paraphrase what the client has said,

summarize what the client has said, and

reflect back to the client the client’s feelings.

Nonverbal Communications

Both counselors and clients exhibit nonverbal communication behaviors. When a discrepancy exists between verbal and nonverbal messages, the nonverbal one is probably the most believable. Mehrabian (1971) found that most people retain only 7% of a message from the content; 38% from voice, speed of talk, and volume; and 55% from nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions and body language).

Counselors can use nonverbal behaviors to reinforce their words or to offer comfort. Hackney and Cormier (1994) identified several nonverbal behaviors counselors can use to free clients’ potential for self-examination and self-understanding. These include direct eye contact, facial expressions (frowns, smiles, raised eyebrows), body positions and movement (intermittent head nods, relaxed posture), and verbal responses (modulated voice, minimal verbal stimuli).

According to Carkhuff (1980, 1983), counselors should attend to the general energy levels of clients in four major areas: grooming, posture, body build, and nonverbal expressions. Specific nonverbal expressions that help counselors understand the condition of clients include appearance of clothes and hair, conditions of hands and fingernails, head and eye movements, speed of movements, facial expressions, gestures, and items clients bring to the session.

Observing clients’ nonverbal actions is not a new practice for counselors. In 1905, Sigmund Freud wrote, “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore” (p. 64).

Verbal Communications

Besides the specific content of their verbal communications, clients offer several forms of verbal cues that provide important information to counselors. These include pauses, loudness, silences, hesitations, speech rate, inflections, and the specific words clients choose to describe their situations. Paralanguage, which refers to all extra-speech sounds and noises emitted from the client’s mouth, including giggles, hissing, “uh,” “hm,” whistling, humming, etc., can also provide information to an attentive counselor.

Advanced Attending Skills

Seasoned counselors, having mastered the basic attending skills and developed their own unique counseling style, will also be able to

identify and confront the client’s inconsistencies,

identify and confront the client’s conflicted emotions,

take the client to deeper emotional levels,

demonstrate case management skills,

question succinctly,

self-disclose sparingly,

willingly address such sensitive issues as sexuality, abuse, religion, or gender,

draw on a client’s strengths and past successes,

freely use immediacy,

identify themes and recurring patterns in a client’s life,

hypothesize about a client’s condition, motives, prognosis, etc.,

increase a client’s locus of control,

apply personal theory consistently,

set achievable goals,

align client’s values with behavior, and

be timely and appropriate in terminating a client.

Obstacles to the Attending Skills

Egan (1990) identified obstacles that counselors may encounter as they attempt to apply the basic attending skills listed above:

being preoccupied,

being judgmental,

having bias,

pigeonholing clients,

attending to facts,

rehearsing,

sympathizing, and

interrupting.

GOALS OF THE RELATIONSHIP

Goals of the therapeutic relationship will depend largely on the concerns of the client and the theory of the counselor. Broad-based goals, however, can be clustered into several categories for ease in conceptualizing the change process:

Changes in behavior. Counselors help clients live more productively through focusing on current problems and the factors that influence and maintain them (Corey, 1991).

Changes in decision-making ability. Counselors help clients develop critical decision-making skills. For each decision, clients learn to estimate the probable consequences in personal sacrifice of time, money, energy, and risk-taking. Counselors also help clients explore their values as related to situations and ...