A Counseling Skills Primer

3 Minute Microskills Videos for the Visual Learner

Ed.D Nina Spadaro, PhD Tiffany Rush-Wilson, MS Rives Whittle Thornton

• Publisher: The Lentz Leadership Institute
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780997439977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Counseling

Nina Spadaro, Tiffany Rush-Wilson, and Rives Thornton virtually bring counseling skills to life in this multi-media e-book. Integrating straight-forward written descriptions with clear video demonstrations of each skill greatly enhances the learning experience of the reader. The authors explain and demonstrate microskills, which are the building blocks of the helping professions and the core of all therapeutic relationships. In addition, the concept of mesoskills is introduced for the first time – a concept that incorporates how to assemble the microskills together to effectively conduct the different stages of the therapeutic relationship, from the initial meeting of clients to their final sessions. The mesoskills are artfully described as well as demonstrated on video for the reader to fully understand these crucial concepts that have so much positive impact in the counseling relationship. This book is essential for all individuals who want to be effective as a helping professional and is applicable with any theoretical orientation.

Chapter 1:
Introduction

Welcome to the study of counseling skills. Counseling skills are the conversational foundation upon which therapeutic relationships are built. A Counseling Skills Primer is intended for those who want to enhance their learning to use conversational skills in a therapeutic way within a professional helping relationship. This primer is a multimedia reference to therapeutic skills as it includes both written descriptions and video demonstrations. While this primer is not a stand-alone textbook, teachers and students will find this text a practical supplement to any course of study or laboratory that aims at developing the techniques of the helping professions.

There are several helping professions which rely upon the use of interpersonal relationship skills to nurture change in clients. These include mental health counselors, marriage and family counselors, clinical social workers, rehabilitation counselors, chemical addiction counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurse practitioners. A Counseling Skills Primer focuses on presenting the interpersonal and conversational skills related to the main tool, the therapeutic conversation, which is common to all these fields. For the sake of simplicity the term “counselor” and “counseling” will be used throughout this text to mean all of these professionals who help others to attain personal growth through a therapeutic interpersonal relationship.

Counselors are agents of change. Conversation is the tool counselors use to motivate, inspire, and heal. Using ordinary elements of conversation, counseling can be life-changing. This book is an invitation to become mindful of the effects of a counselor’s presence, language, and voice upon a client. To effectively use basic elements of conversation to increase self-knowledge, self-determination, self-confidence, and self-acceptance in a client, counselors must develop awareness of the impact of each basic element of conversation. While there are basic elements common to both social conversations and therapeutic conversations such as the exchange of information, politeness, and a flow of conversation back and forth, to have an effective therapeutic conversation a counselor needs to incorporate finely honed and practiced skills, apply psychotherapeutic theory, and always be thinking of how the conversation can be helpful to the client.

The Therapeutic Relationship

The counseling relationship is a healing relationship. The relationship between counselor and client is the single most important and sacred “canvas” for the art of counseling, and the counselor’s verbal and nonverbal communication skills are the brushes which deliver paint to this canvas. The outcome of counseling is most strongly influenced by the quality of the relationship between counselor and client. This single factor supersedes the effects of the counselor’s experience level and theoretical orientation. To foster personal growth and change, the relationship formed between the counselor and the client needs to be one of the most emotionally safe relationships that clients can experience.

While the client is ultimately responsible for the outcome of counseling, the counselor is responsible for forming and maintaining the therapeutic counseling relationship which provides the springboard for this outcome. This healing relationship is mindfully created by trained counselors through the intentional use of microskills and mesoskills.

The Counselor is the Tool

The presence and total behavior of the counselor is the main tool for creating a therapeutic relationship. Counselors use their nonverbal and verbal communication skills intentionally to set the stage for the client’s trust, to send a message of unconditional acceptance to the client, and to communicate clearly. A Counseling Skills Primer focuses upon the verbal and nonverbal skills which are behind the counselor’s ability to connect and communicate through words, tone of voice, facial expression, and body language. Students of counseling have usually experienced being the kind of person who invites the confidences of friends, relatives, and even strangers. Many who are attracted to this field may have heard this phrase throughout their lives: “I can’t believe I am telling you this, I have never told anyone before!” This means that the counseling student has a natural facility for engendering trust and acceptance. Studying and practicing counseling skills will strengthen the intentional use of these skills, and encourage more effective and efficient positive change to take place.

Make Your Relationships Your Laboratory

Counselors are agents of social change. The social change that counselors create is at the personal level. People who are in control of their behaviors, who learn to manage their negative emotions, and who are free to be productive and cooperative with others create ripples of change throughout their communities and in future generations. Counselors co-create this change in part by adopting and applying a set of ethical values which are expressed in their own interpersonal relationships. Each profession has a specific set of ethical guidelines, but all of them contain the principle of doing good and doing no harm. To create social change, counselors start with themselves.

Ethical students of counseling not only study skills and content, they practice doing good and doing no harm in their interpersonal laboratory of friends, family, and coworkers. Counseling students practice being genuinely present, trustworthy, compassionate, accepting, and respectful. Counselors develop trust through predictability and authentic presence while remaining sensitive to the impact their behaviors have on others. During training counselors learn to scrutinize even their interpersonal interactions for congruence with their professional values. By applying these values in all their interpersonal relationships they develop ethical patterns in relating. They prepare themselves for the day when a client comes to the threshold of their office with their last shred of hope in hand.

The Language of Counseling

As in every field of human endeavor, the field of counseling uses words and terms in specific ways that can sound similar but differ from the use of these words in common speech. Counselors are trained to notice subtleties of verbal and nonverbal interpersonal interactions, and therefore the professional language of counseling reflects these subtleties. Just as the Inuit and Yupik languages reflect an understanding of the subtle differences among about fifty kinds of snow and sea ice upon which their survival depends, the language of counseling reflects nuances of conversation typically not noticed by the layperson. Intentional use of a healing conversational style marks the mastery of therapeutic communication.

The exact meaning of a counseling skill cannot be assumed by merely reading the name. The student of counseling must read the descriptions carefully, and follow this up with observing the skill demonstrated in the video linked to the description. For example the word “confrontation” usually conjures an unpleasant image involving verbal aggression and conflict. In the lexicon of counseling skills, a well-executed counseling confrontation will not alarm or intimidate a client, but will intrigue and can motivate a client. The lexicon of counseling uses common words in therapy-specific ways.

The terms used for the skills in this book are selected to be as close to the meaning of the actual skill as possible. In some cases the name presented is long in order to be specific. Shortened versions of the name are then used in the follow up description. Various counselor-educators have named these skills somewhat differently and many of these alternative names for skills are included for reference.

How to Learn Counseling Skills

There are five steps to mastering a counseling skill:

1. Understanding the Counseling Skill Description
2. Recognition of the Skill When Demonstrated by Others
3. Conscious Practice of Isolated Skills
4. Self-observation and Self-evaluation in Mock Counseling
5. Intentional Use of the Skill in Supervised Counseling

Step ...