chapter 1 - what counseling is and how it works

Chapter 1

What Counseling Is and How It Works

© 2015. Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Why People Become Counselors

• You have some natural talent or interest toward helping others. Maybe you have served that role throughout your life.

• You enjoy touching others’ lives, knowing you have influenced or impacted someone.

• You derive tremendous satisfaction from the kind of close, intimate relationships that take place in helping encounters.



• You may have experienced a number of personal challenges and difficulties in your life and wish to use what you learned to assist others.

• You are able to gain broadened perspectives on the meaning of life as a result of your searching conversations with others.



• You are able to give something back to your community, to use your own learning experiences to benefit others.

• You pass on a legacy to others as part of your commitment and dedication to service.

• You help yourself by helping others. • Which one of these fits you best? Why?


Healing Domains

• In almost every culture of the world, there are professionals whose main job is to promote healing by harnessing forces of the following domains:– Natural– Spiritual– Physical– Psychological

• How are each similar? Different?© 2015. Cengage Learning.

All rights reserved.

Expectations of Counseling Programs

• Skill mastery and performance competencies• Ability to succeed at academic tasks • Ability to translate book and classroom

learning into action• Learn what you can do and what you can

deliver


Countertransference

• When clinicians lose their objectivity and clarity because of their own personal issues, which interfere with their work

• One has to have a handle on own biases, unresolved issues, and strong emotional reactions that may interfere with one’s ability to think clearly and respond helpfully to clients

• Sigmund Freud theory (1912)


Benefits of Your Emotions

• The personal reactions you have to your clients can become a therapeutic benefit, as well as a delightful side effect of being a member of the counseling profession– Challenged to grow, not just professionally but

also personally– Clients become their best teachers, prompting

them to make significant changes in their own lives


Counselor Reactions/Feelings

• Participants were asked to record their innermost thoughts and feelings during simulated sessions with a client– Students reported struggles with controlling their

anger and frustration when clients didn’t cooperate or meet their expectations

– They described fears over feeling incompetent, and elation over feeling that they were helpful in some way


Benefits for Counselor

• Counseling trains people to be more passionate consumers of life


Benefits for Counselor

• Intensive training in observing nonverbal behavior, analyzing motives, handling confrontations, and reflecting feelings helps counselors to be more attractive human beings and to be experts at efficiently developing trusting, productive relationships– If counselors can do that in their offices, they can

certainly do it with their friends, colleagues, children, siblings, partners, spouses, and parents


Integrated Learning

• We are not restricted to our texts for learning– Literature, history, anthropology, sociology,

biology, biochemistry, education, psychology, and philosophy are all beneficial — even necessary — if we are truly to understand the human mind

• How do each aid us to understand the human mind in terms of what they have to offer to the field of human services?


Your Transformation

• All your relationships will change• New expectations and standards for intimacy

will emerge• A newfound ability to enrich your family and

work relationships will be integrated by you• You will be ruined — forever dissatisfied with

superficial encounters


Your Transformation

• Your love relationships may very well change forever and many of your friendships may be outgrown

• You are not only choosing a new profession but also a new way of being and a new way of relating to yourself, others, and the world

• Did you expect this when you decided to study counseling?


Things to Ask Yourself

• Are you smart enough, or capable enough, to make it in this field?

• Is this the right job for you? Are you wasting your time?

• Will you ever know enough to be able to help someone?

• Will others find out how inadequate you really feel inside?


Things to Ask Yourself

• Will your personal issues interfere with your ability to help people?

• Will you hurt someone because of some lapse or mistake?

• Will you be forced to look at things that you would rather avoid?


The Exchange

• Reflect on what you can learn from the client– Your work is not only what you can do for them

• Look for where the client’s story mirrors your own issues, see how they deal with their issues, reflect on the lessons they may be teaching you about life

• The client is not some “case”– They are a gift to help you grow


How Will You Be?

• Extraordinary practitioners spend more time reflecting on their work and thinking about their sessions constructively than do other colleagues

• Counselors are constantly striving for more mastery in their lives, applying the technology of psychological helping to themselves


How Will You Be?

• At any moment in time, the counselor ought to be able to articulate three or four specific personal areas in need of upgrading — and be actively involved in the process

• What are your areas of upgrading?


Traps

• The counselor can fall into one of two traps when asked for advice – They offer poor advice, which teaches the client to

resent the professional forever and to not take responsibility for the negative outcome

– They offer sound advice, giving the client the message that the thing to do with a difficult question is to run back to the counselor for help


Whose Life is it Anyway?

• The counselor is to block their effects on a client’s decisions as far as is humanly possible

• Neutrality is the catchword of a therapeutic relationship

• Although counselors may feel strongly about choices clients make, their role is only to help clients decide


Whose Life is it Anyway?

• The counselor can help examine potential consequences but must accept the client’s right to choose– This caution does not mean that counselors

attempt to hide their true feelings from clients, using distance and neutrality

• What happens if a client’s decision does not fit in with your values? Society norms? Legal codes? Will you appear bias?


Distractions Becoming Neutral

• One reason counseling is such difficult work is that the professional makes a deliberate decision to suspend all distractions — both internal and external — while in session – Whether the phone rings in another room or a

siren blares through the streets, counselors do their best to block out all stimuli that are extraneous to the task at hand


Internal Distractions Becoming Neutral

• Immerse yourself totally in the helping role• Ignore internal physical and emotional needs– Hunger, ailments, negative thoughts about the

client, your plans for the rest of the day, etc.• Develop meditation-type skills– Gently pushing aside distracting thoughts,

indulgent feelings, and any other internal behavior that reduces concentration without sacrificing the genuineness of being human


Internal Distractions Becoming Neutral

• Counseling is very much an exercise in mindfulness in which you totally immerse yourself in the present moment


Tolerance for Despair

• Counselor must get used to despair– People should feel safe to cry and honestly express

their pain in the counselor’s office• Often, feelings of desperation are exaggerated

because the therapeutic environment is so nurturing and accepting

• To be a counselor requires that you learn to become comfortable in the presence of others’ discomfort


Your Role During Grief

• What clients need most during these difficult times is to not experience their mourning alone– Human connection in times of distress can be a

significant buffer against incapacitating grief, ensuring that the pain does not cross the line into clinical depression or unmanageable anxiety• Counselors provide connection by being fully present

and providing the safety needed to experience whatever reactions are present


Your Role During Grief

• As witnesses to grief, we stay connected to the poignancy of life, reminded time and time again of the old wisdom that you cannot experience life’s joys unless you are willing to feel its pain– Listening to clients can stir up memories of our

own losses, or warn us of potential losses to come– We can only sit with our client’s pain if we are

unafraid to face our own


Ambiguity

• Clients are often not fully aware of their real problems– They report discomfort, vaguely and abstractly,

but circle relentlessly when the counselor attempts to help them focus

• Very often, clients want counseling because they are experiencing a true dilemma wherein no answer or response is truly satisfactory


I Thought I Was Supposed to Solve Problems

• Counselors must relinquish the quest for answers and instead relish the challenge of helping clients with abstractions and uncertainty inherent in being human

• To be a counselor means dedicating yourself to the resolution of conflicts that are often irreconcilable, solving problems that have no right answers, and mediating disputes among parties who may enjoy fighting


Counseling is…

• A profession with a history and set of standards distinct from other related disciplines

• An activity designed to work primarily with those who are experiencing developmental or adjustment problems– Also to work with those who struggle with forms

of mental illness


Counseling is…

• A relationship (whether in a group, family, or individual format) constructed in a way that promotes trust, safety, support, and lasting change

• Multidimensional, dealing with human feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as with the past, present, and future


Counseling is a Process of Steps

• Helping people articulate why they are seeking help

• Formulating goals and expectations for treatment

• Teaching clients how to get the most from the counseling experience

• Developing a high degree of trust and favorable expectations for change



• Diagnosing those concerns and dysfunctional areas in need of upgrading

• Exploring the client’s world, including past and present functioning

• Understanding the cultural context (gender, ethnicity, race, religion, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, etc.) of the client’s experience



• Examining underlying family and systemic factors both contributing to the problems and providing potential resources

• Discussing underlying issues and concerns and their meanings

• Supporting and accepting the client as a person while selectively reinforcing those behaviors that are most fully functioning



• Confronting inconsistencies in the client’s thoughts, language, and behavior

• Challenging assumptions that are inappropriate, self-destructive, counter- productive, or irrational

• Uncovering hidden and unconscious motives behind actions

• Encouraging clients to accept greater responsibility for their choices and actions



• Developing more options and narrowing alternatives to those that are most suitable

• Providing honest, constructive feedback • Structuring opportunities for practicing new

ways of acting and being • Facilitating greater independence in the client

so counseling ends in the most efficient period of time


chapter 1 - what counseling is and how it works

Education