Workbook 1

Counselling and
Counselling process
 Defining Counselling
1. Counselling is an activity that can only happen if the person
seeking help, the client, wants it to happen. Counselling takes
place when someone who is troubled invites and allows another
person to enter into a particular kind of relationship with them
2. A person seeks a counselling relationship when they encounter
a ‘problem in living’ that they have nor been able to resolve
through their everyday resources, and that has resulted in their
exclusion from some aspect of full participation in social life.
3. Counselling is fundamentally based on conversation on the
capacity of people to ‘talk things through’ and to generate new
possibilities for action through dialogue.
4. Counselling depends on the creation of a relationship between
two people, which is sufficiently secure to allow the person
seeking help to explore issues that are painful and troubling.
5. The person seeking counselling possesses strengths and resources that
can be channelled in the service of resolving a problem in living. The act
of seeking counselling is not viewed as an indicator of personal
deficiency or pathology.
6. The person in the role of counsellor does not necessarily posses special
training or knowledge of psychological theories – counselling in
grounded in ordinary human qualities such as a capacity to listen,
sensitivity to the experience of others, personal integrity and
resourcefulness in solving the difficulties that arise in everyday life.
7. The person seeking counselling invites another person to provide him or
her with time and space characterised by the presence of a number of
features that are not readily available in everyday life: permission to
speak, respect for difference, confidentiality and affirmation.
a) Encouragement and permission to speak
b) Respect for difference
c) Confidentiality
d) Affirmation
8. Counselling represents an arena for support, reflection
and renewal that is unique within modern societies.
9. The potential outcomes of counselling can be
understood as falling into three broad categories:
a) Resolution
b) Learning
c) Social inclusion
10. Counselling always exists within a social and cultural
context: “counsellor” and “client” are social roles, an the
ways in which participants makes sense of the aims
and work of counselling are shaped by the broad
cultural and specific community and organisational
contexts within which they live.
 The aims of counselling
1. Insight – the acquisition of an understanding of the
origins and development of emotional difficulties
2. Relating to others – becoming better able to form and
maintain meaningful and satisfying relationships with
other people
3. Self-awareness – becoming more aware of thoughts and
feelings that had been blocked off or denied, or
developing a more accurate sense of how self is
perceived by others
4. Self-acceptance – the development of positive attitude
towards self, marked by an ability to acknowledge areas
of experience that had been the subject f self-criticism
and rejection
5. Self-actualisation or individualisation – moving in the
direction of fulfilling potential or achieving an integration
of previously conflicting parts of self.
6. Enlightenment – assisting the client to arrive
at a higher state of spiritual awakening
7. Problem solving - finding a solution to a
specific problem that the client had
8. Psychological education – enabling the
client to acquire ideas and techniques with
which control behaviour
9. Acquisition of social skills – learning and
mastering social and interpersonal skills
10.Cognitive change - the modification or
replacement of irrational beliefs
11.Behaviour change - the modification or
replacement of maladaptive or self-destructive
patterns of behaviour
12.Systemic change – introducing change into the
way ion that social systems operate
13.Empowerment – working in skill, awareness and
knowledge
14.Restitution – helping the client to ,ale amends for
pervious destructive behaviour
15.Generativity and social action – inspiring in the
person a desire and capacity to care for others
and pass on knowledge
 The five stages/dimensions of
the well-formed interview
1. Initiating the session – rapport and structuring
2. Gathering the data – drawing our stories,
concerns, problems, or issues
3. Mutual goal settings – what does the client want to
happen?
4. Working – exploring alternatives, confronting client
incongruities and conflict, re-storying
5. Terminating – generalising and acting a new story
 The Relating-Understanding-changing
(RUC) counselling and helping model

Stage 1: Relating
Main task: to start establishing a collaborative
working relationship
Stage 2: Understanding
Main Task: to assess and agree on a shared
definition of the clients problem (s)
Stage 3: Changing
Main Task: to assist the client to change so that the
problems and problem situations are addressed
more effectively than in the past.
Objectives for initial session
1. Develop a supportive working
relationship
2. Develop a working model
3. Develop working definitions
4. Develop working goals and interventions
 Questioning skills
Choices when Questioning:
• Purpose of question- effective questions that
contribute to enlarging their own and their clients
understanding of problems and problematic skill
patterns
• Present versus past focus – life skills helping tends
to focus more on clients’ presents than pasts
• Number of topics covered – an issue that of whether
just to ask questions in the areas of presenting
problems
• Degree of detail – how detailed should you be?
• Intimacy level- helpers need be sensitive to
the intimacy and threat level of questions
• Timing – helpers require caution regarding
the timing and ordering of questions
• Number of questions – helpers should avoid
conducting interrogations that may lead to
either defensiveness or dependence or both
• Confirmatory questions – are questions
designed to elect responses fitting pet
theories.
 Types of questions
• Clarification questions- seek information about and clarify your
perception of client’s words and phrases.
• “ When you say…., what does that mean”
• ‘ Sounds to me as if your saying….’
• Elaboration questions-are open questions that gave clients the
opportunity to expand on what they have already started talking
about.
• ‘Would you care to elaborate?’
• ‘Is there anything more you wish to add?’
• Challenging questions – confront client with the need to produce
evidence for there perception:
• ‘Where is the evidence for…..?’
• ‘What makes you think that?’
• Specific detail questions: aim to collect concrete information
about clients’ problems and problematic skills patterns:
• ‘how frequent is it?’
• ‘How do you actually behave”
• ‘What brings it on?’
• Request for example questions: Example:
• ‘Tell me of a specific instance?’
• ‘Can you give me and example?’
• ‘Show me Questions: Examples:
• ‘Show me how you actually spoke to …..?’
• ‘Imagine I’m your…., show me how you behaved to
me?’
• Eliciting personal meaning questions: the
information clients provide often has personal or
symbolic meaning for them. The questions should
be open and tentative since the client should, know
the answers better than anyone else. Example:
• ‘I’m wondering about the meaning of….for you?’
• ‘what do you make of that?’
• Work in Partnership with client
• Ask establishing agenda and transition
questions
• Intersperse reflective responding with
questions
• Ask follow up questions
• Encourage client to do their own work
carefully observe how questions are
answered
• Use good voice and body messages
 Confronting skills
• Confronting inconsistencies – you may
experience inconsistencies in messages your
clients sends including the following:
• Inconstancy between verbal voice and body
messages.
• Inconstancy within verbal messages ‘you say are
you are doing poorly, but report being in the top
10 % of your class.’
• Inconstancy between words and actions. ‘You
say you love your children from your former
marriage, but you’re behind in your maintenance.’
• Inconstancy between past and present
• Confronting possible distortions of Reality:
when clients talks to helper they make
statements like the following:
• ‘they are all out to get me.’
• ‘I have no friends.’
• ‘I’m a terrible mother.’
All of these may be examples of the unrealistic
perceptions that harm rather than help clients.
• Confronting not acknowledging choice: you can
confront clients with their role as choosers in their
lives.

 How to confront
1. Start with reflective responding
2. Where possible, help clients to confront
themselves
3. Do not talk them down
4. Use a minimum amount of ‘muscle’
5. Avoid threatening voice and body messages
6. Leave the ultimate responsibility with the
clients
7. Do not over do it.
 Understanding context skills
Helpers require skills of eliciting information about understanding
the contexts of problems. Problems and problematic skills do
not exist in vacuums.
• Cultural context
• Racial context
• social class context
• family of origin context
• Work/study context
• Health/medical context
• Gender context
• Sexual preference context
• Age context
• Reference group context
• Religious context
Possess understanding context skills
Clients vary in the number of contextual
considerations to identifying and clarifying
their problems. Helpers also vary in the range
of clients they see.
• Posses contextual knowledge
• Demonstrate contextual empathy
• Give permission to discuss helper-client
differences
• Give permission to discuss problems in terms
of their broader contexts
• Focus questions of broader contexts
 Types of summaries
• Basic reflective summary
• Reflecting feelings and reasons summary
• Clarification summary
• Theme summary
• Identification of problem areas summary
• Details of problem summary
• Other types of summaries
› End of session summary
› Beginning of the next session summary
› Problems redefined in the skills terms summary
› Educational content summary
 Clarifying Goals
Some questions for clarifying goals:
What are your goals in the situation?
What would you consider a successful outcome?
What are your options in setting goals?
What do you want to achieve in the situation:
• For yourself
• For one or more others; or
• For your relationship, if appropriate?
What do you want to avoid in the situations:
• For yourself;
• For one or more others; or
• For your relationship, if appropriate?
Personal characteristics of effective counsellors
• Effective therapists have an identity
• Effective therapists respect and appreciate themselves
• Effective therapists are open to change
• Effective therapists make choices that are life orientated
• Effective therapists are authentic, sincere and honest
• Effective therapists have a sense of humour
• Effective therapists make mistakes and are willing to admit them
• Effective therapists generally live in the present
• Effective therapists appreciate the influence of culture
• Effective therapists have a sincere interest in the welfare of
others
• Effective therapists posses effective interpersonal skills
• Effective therapists become deeply involved in their work and
derive meaning from it
• Effective therapists are passionate
• Effective therapists are able to maintain healty boundaries
 Training manual for Counsellors
• Introduction
• Confidentiality
• The need to keep records
• Requirements of the counsellor’s own supervision
• The need to protect others
• Working in conjunction with other professionals
• Education training programs, conferences,
workshops and seminars
• Where the law requires disclosures of information's
• Respecting the clients right to privacy
• Professional ethics
• Respect for the client
• Limits of the client-counsellor relationship
• Responsibility of the counsellor
• Counsellor competence
• Referral
• Termination
• Legal obligations
• Self promotion
Thank you for watching
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luck with workbook 1.
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