Essential Counseling Skills

Practice and Application Guide

Sandy Magnuson, Ken Norem

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781483352251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Counseling

Essential Counseling Skills: Practice and Application Guide offers practical, step-by-step guidance for developing and applying the skills necessary for careers in counseling. Using the metaphor of a professional journey, this guide provides commentary and background information throughout, as readers are directed in their development of such key counseling skills as empathy, building relationships, case conceptualization, and facilitating change. Deep reflection is further encouraged at every key stage through the integration of theory with a wealth of applied exercises and examples.

TOUR 1

Preparation for Departure

Who Am I and How Do
I Interact With Others?

During this tour you will have opportunities to

• Increase understanding of, as well as appreciation for, reflection and reflective practice

• Explore personal beliefs and values related to helping clients

• Consider potential manifestations of cultural differences in counseling relationships

• Learn strategies for effectively giving and receiving feedback

• Gain understanding of the wellness philosophy and way of life

• Reflect

The relationships you develop with clients, their families, and other appropriately involved individuals will be central to your work as a professional counselor. You will be a key component of those relationships with primary responsibility for building them. Thus, we begin our journey by focusing on the person of the counselor. That’s you!

Throughout your preparation program, you will likely encounter invitations to examine your own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and reactions—perhaps at deeper levels than you have previously explored. You may be asked to do so with your peers, your instructors, and your supervisor. This expectation evokes discomfort for some counselors-in-training.

Quite appropriately, individuals often share limited aspects of themselves in professional and academic communities. Disclosing personal components in academic settings may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable. However, to become an effective professional counselor, you must be willing to reflect, to consider the intention of your responses, and to continually challenge yourself to take risks in order to more fully understand yourself as well as the clients with whom you will work.

We encourage you to engage in a process of self-evaluation and self-monitoring now, and throughout your career, so you can continue to grow personally and professionally. It is important to identify your beliefs about children, adolescents, adults, and families in addition to your ideas about how people change.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE: FOR NOW, IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU!

An electronic search using reflective practice yields diagrams, articles, and entries from diverse fields. An entire journal is devoted to the notion. The term is used widely and broadly; yet, this important element of professional development is subject to obscurity, ambiguity, and simplification. Reflection is not something that can be measured; in fact, you could complete exercises designed for reflection and even produce a written document without engaging in reflection. Yet, we contend that investment in reflective practice is essential for preservice and in-service professional counselors. So, what is it?

Osterman and Kottkamp (2004) described reflective practice as “a meaningful and effective professional development strategy. Even more, it is a way of thinking that fosters personal learning, behavioral change, and improved performance” (p. 1). Reflective practice includes self-examination and introspection. For professional counselors, reflection is intentional consideration of why they do the things they do before, during, and after counseling sessions. It includes thoughtful examination of diverse viewpoints, new counseling methods, revised ethical standards, and changes in legislation. Reflection goes beyond the facts and moves to the meaning and relevance the information or experience holds for each individual.

Counselors-in-training often unwittingly use a blend of unexamined assumptions, newly acquired knowledge, theory, and values to make sense of new situations that arise in practice. Over time, these components merge into personal theories that guide their work with clients.

Reflection illuminates unexamined assumptions (Bolton, 2010; Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004). The reflective process brings these personal theories into awareness. Through active reflection, individuals entertain a “sorting” process during which aspects of personal and professional theories that seem sound at the time are maintained, and those components lacking in veracity are discarded. With time, experience, and reflection, counselors use their personal theories in combination with established counseling approaches reliably and intentionally when deciding on an appropriate course of action. Thus, self-reflection is critical to professional growth and ongoing development.

Counselors’ work is often time and labor intense. As schedules become saturated with responsibilities for documentation, accounting, preparation, and so forth, time for reflection is diminished and all-too-often forgotten. However, the importance of reflection, centering, and focusing parallels the complexity of issues presented by clients, regardless of the settings in which counselors work.

It remains important for new and experienced counselors to continually explore their own beliefs and the ways in which those beliefs impact their practice. Reflective practice is one avenue for doing that (Bolton, 2010). Small group discussions, journal writing, case analyses, electronic recordings, and role plays often facilitate reflection. We encourage you to participate in these activities in order to develop the habit of continuous professional self-reflection.

We encourage you to keep a reflective journal. Hubbs and Brand (2005) described reflective journals as “paper mirrors” (p. 60) that provide “a vehicle for inner dialogue that connects thoughts, feelings, and actions” (p. 62). Such journals also document “struggles, questions, frustrations, and successes” (p. 70). After practice and actual counseling sessions, you may achieve clarity as you journal your thoughts and feelings about the session in response to a sequence of questions:

• What’s going on with me right now?

• What did I do well?

• When did I struggle?

• When did I feel stuck?

• What do I wish I would have done differently?

• What disturbed me?

• When did my personal experiences hinder?

• When did my personal experiences become my assets?

• What did I learn about myself?

PREPARING FOR GUIDED REFLECTION

Visit with your instructor or supervisor about his or her recommendations, preferences, and requirements regarding a journal. Some instructors invite a written dialogue as they periodically collect journals and respond to students’ entries. Others regard the journals as students’ private records.

Purchase a composition book, assemble a loose-leaf blinder, or create an electronic file for your journal.

Prepare a cover or title page. You may want to compose a title that personalizes your journal. For example, I (Sandy) titled one of my journals Sandy: From the Country to the Clinic. Practicum I, Summer 1982.

Date the first or second blank page, and allow your thoughts and feelings about what you’ve read thus far to flow through ...