Definition of Counseling

T he Discipline of Counseling is a relationship characterized by the

application of one or more psychological theories and a recognized set of
communication skills appropriate to a client’s intimate concerns,
problems, or aspirations (Feltham & Dryden 1993). These clients are
individuals or a group in a demoralized, distressed, or in a negative state
of mind about their situation or context. Therefore, counseling can be for
one person or a group and may be delivered through a number of
methods such as through face-to-face dialog, group work, telephone,
email, or other written materials.

Definition of Counseling
The Collins Dictionary of Sociology defines counseling as -the process of
guiding a person during a stage of life when reassessments or decisions
have to be made about himself x herself and his or her life course.”
Counselors are professionally trained and certifiedto perform
counseling. Their job is to provide advice or guidance in decision-making
in emotionally significant situations by helping clients explore and
understand their worlds and discover better ways and well-informed
choices in resolving an emotional or interpersonal problem.

As a discipline, it is allied to psychology and deals with normal responses

to normal life events, which may sometimes create stress for some
people who, in turn, choose to ask for help and support. Counseling is
generally a non-clinical intervention. Traditionally in many societies,
counseling is provided by family, friends, and wise elderly. When these
providers prove insufficient, counselors become the choice. Counselors
exist in a wide range of areas of expertise: marriage, family, youth,
student and other life transitions dealing with managing of issues of loss
and death, retirement, divorce, parenting, and bankruptcy.

Counseling is widely considered the heart of the guidance services in

schools. In the school context, counseling is usually done as individual or
group intervention designed to facilitate positive change in student
behavior, feelings, and attitudes. As a process, it involves two sides: an
individual or group who needs help and a mature professionally trained
counselor. Through methods adapted to the needs of the client(s), the
trained counselor helps in defining a problem and acquires initiative,
determination, courage, and efficiency to solve that problem. It helps
clients understand and clarify their views of their life space and to learn
to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well-informed
choices and through resolution or problems of an emotional or
interpersonal nature (Burks & Steffire 1979).

Counseling also utilizes appraisal and assessment to aid counseling by

gathering information about clients through the use of psychological
tests and non-psychometric devices. Psychometrics is a branch of
psychology that deals with the design, administration, and interpretation
of quantitative tests for the measurement of psychological variables such
as intelligence, aptitude, interests, and personality traits. The underlying
assumption is that the variable being measured is a fixed and
unchanging attribute of a person. The intent of psychometric testing is to
use a number of carefully calibrated short or multiple-choice questions
to accurately measure an individual’s aptitude or potential in a particular
area, for example, reading or arithmetic. Tests employed are strictly
standardized and administered by a professionally trained
psychometrician.

Counseling is not to be confused with psychiatry, which is a branch of

general medicine that deals with the treatment of the mentally ill by
medically-trained professionals using clinical interventions including
drugs, surgical procedures, and non-physical approaches.

Roles of Guidance Counselors

G iven that the youth are the future of every nation, the role of
providing guidance to them at critical moments of their growth is a
serious nation-building undertaking. Counseling is a process and a
relationship between the client(s) and counselor. The role of the
counselor is to assist the person or persons (clients) in realizing a change
in behavior or attitude, to assist them to seek the achievement of goals,
assist them to find help, and in some cases, the role of counselors
includes the teaching of social skills, effective communication, spiritual
guidance, decision-making, and career choices. A counselor’s roles may
sometimes include aiding one in coping with a crisis. In some settings,
counseling includes premarital and marital counseling, grief and loss
(divorce, death, or amputation), domestic violence, and other types of
abuse, special counseling situations like terminal illness (death and
dying) as well as counseling of emotionally and mentally disturbed.
individuals. Counseling could be short-term (brief counseling) or long-
term.
Functions of Guidance Counselors
The Philippine Republic Act No. 9258 (Sec. 2-3) defines a guidance
counselor as a natural person who has been professionally registered and
licensed by a legitimate state entity and by virtue of specialized training
to perform the functions of guidance and counseling. The guidance
counselor’s functions include the use of an integrated approach to
developing a well-functioning individual primarily through:

1. helping a client develop potentials to the fullest;

2. helping a client plan to utilize his or her potentials to the fullest;
3. helping a client plan his or her future in accordance with his or her
abilities, interests, and needs;
4. sharing and applying the knowledge related to counseling such as
counseling theories, tools, and techniques; and
5. administering a wide range of human development services.

Competencies of Guidance Counselors

Guidance counselors have the ability to administer and maintain career
guidance and counseling programs. They are capable of properly guiding
the. students toward becoming productive and contributing individuals
through informed career choices with reference to appropriate bureaus,
relevant stakeholders, and national programs, and in light of the
available opportunities in the community, the country, and globally.
They are capable of designing and implementing programs that expose
students to the world and value of work and guide, provide, and equip
the students with the necessary life skills and values.

They can administer career advocacy activities. These are activities that
are designed to guide secondary-level students in choosing the career
tracks that they intend to pursue. They also involve the provision of
career information and experiences, advising, coordinating and making
referrals, career talks, career and job fairs, parents’ orientations, and
conducting seminar-workshops on career decision-making.

Guidance counselors are capable of career advocates. They can conduct

career advocacy activities for secondary-level students of the schools in
employment sites. They can collaborate with various government
agencies, student organizations, industry associations, guidance and
counseling associations, professional associations, and other relevant
stakeholders to foster student understanding and appreciation of the
world of work and to prepare better and aspire for it.
Guidance counselors can facilitate the conduct of career advocacy in
collaboration with career advocates and peer facilitators. The career
advocates are not necessarily registered and licensed guidance
counselors but they provide direct guidance on career and employment
guidance. They include homeroom advisers and teachers of all learning
areas who can implement career advocacy activities. Peer facilitators, on
the other hand, are secondary-level students trained to assist career
advocates in implementing career advocacy activities.

Other Competencies that Apply to the Broader

Counseling Work
There are many competencies that apply to almost all kinds of
counseling contexts but not uniformly. Different authors have
thematized them differently. Egan (2002) calls them the three-stage
theory of counseling and marks out three broad competencies for a
counselor that includes:

STAGE I. What’s going on? This involves helping clients to clarify the
key issues calling for change.

STAGE II. What solutions make sense for me? This involves helping
clients determine outcomes.

STAGE II. What do I have to do to get what I need or want? This

involves helping clients develop strategies for accomplishing goals.

Many other writers also use a three-stage model that looks at this
working relationship as having a beginning, middle, and end (Culley &
Bond 2004; Smith 2008). Alistair Ross (2003) provides a similar model:
starting out, moving on and letting go. However, stage models have less
use for many informal educators. The sort of relationship generally
involved in informal and community counseling does not generally
involve an explicit contract, and the time, duration, and frequency of
encounters are highly variable. Endings can be extremely abrupt, for
example. This said, by focusing on beginnings, middles, and endings
such models do help us to think about what might be involved at
different moments in relationships and to develop appropriate responses
(Smith 2008).

Much of the literature around helping and helping relationships explores

‘helping skills’ (Carkoff 2000; Egan 2002; Shulman 1979; Young 1998).
The critical skills pertain to the process of fostering conversation and
exploration. The tradition of professional counseling requires trainees to
possess a set of skills and a body of knowledge to study in the curriculum
of accumulated scientific knowledge and the skills needed to be an
effective helper in counseling.

Culley and Bond's Foundation Skills

Culley and Bond (2004) have described all these as foundation skills .
They have grouped these foundation skills around three headings:
attending and listening, reflective skills, and probing skills.

1. Attending and listening.

Attending and listening skills refer to active listening, which means
listening with purpose and responding in such a way that clients are
aware that they have both been heard and understood. (Culley & Bond
2004)

2. Reflective skills.
These skills are concerned with the other person’s frame of reference.
For Culley and Bond (2004), reflective skills ‘capture’ what the client is
saying and plays it back to them—but in the counselor’s own words. The
key skills are restating, paraphrasing, and summarizing; for instance, the
counselor may begin with, “Did you mean to say…?” (Culley & Bond
2004)

3. Probing skills.
These skills facilitate going deeper, asking more directed or leading
questions (leading in the sense that they move the conversation in a
particular direction). Culley and Bond (2004) looked at the different
forms that questions can take (and how they can help or inhibit
exploration), and the role of making statements. Making statements is
seen as generally gentler, less intrusive, and less controlling than asking
questions—although that does depend on the statement. Probing tends to
increase the helper’s control over both process and content, and as a
result, “should be used sparingly and with care, particularly in the early
stages of counseling” (Culley & Bond 2004). As Alistair Ross (2003) has
commented, counseling skills such as these are important and can be
developed through reflection and training. However, no matter how good
a person’s skills are, they must be matched by relational qualities.
Counselors also need to be strong in their relational qualities. The
distinction between good and poor practitioner lies in the belief system
of the helper, and how it translates into helping the relationship that he /
she puts forward. (Combs & Gonzales 1994)
Four Common Skills
Elsewhere and across applied social science disciplines, there are four
common skills that require studying the curriculum of
accumulated scientific knowledge across disciplines ; which are
skills for communicating, motivating, problem solving, and resolving
conflicts.

1. Communication skills.
These include the ability to actively listen, demonstrate understanding,
ask appropriate questions, and provide information as needed. Active
listening involves listening to the words, the gestures, and’ other body
language. It involves listening for what is said and what is not said. It
requires listening to content—its meaning and the emotions behind the
it. Demonstrating understanding includes responding to what is said by
repeating the same words or using other words, stating the meaning of
the words, and describing the feelings that accompany the words.

Effective communication means the message you want to communicate is

received as you intended it to be received. However, it is common for the
intended message to be misunderstood. This happens because people
have different ways of saying things or similar statements may have
different meanings for some people. Understanding the communication
cycle (Sender » Message » Channel » Receiver » Feedback) and the
barriers (noise, interruptions, uncomfortable surroundings,
stereotyping, message. complexity, misstatements) that can get in the
way of effective communication are very important for developing
communication skills.

2. Motivational skills.
These skills are the ones that influence a helpee to take action after the
helping session or consultation. There is an old saying, “You can lead a
horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” Sometimes, we label
students as being ‘hard-headed’ because of their non-compliance with
suggestions. But we do not reflect on the why and how come. There are
varied theories related to this skill area. Needs, desires, incentives, drive,
cognitive dissonance, and other factors have been purported to motivate-
behaviors. Recognizing the client’s readiness for action must be
considered. Does the client have the necessary knowledge, skills, or
ability to perform the necessary tasks to correct the problem area? Are
there (attitudinal) concerns interfering with taking action?

3. Problem-solving skills.
These include differentiating between symptoms and the problem,
pinpointing probable causes and triggers for the problem, and then
generating a range of possible solutions to the actual problem.

4. Conflict resolution skills.

These involve learning about styles of conflict resolution. It also includes
recognizing the signs of it and learning the process of conflict resolution.
Helping professionals should have the skills to facilitate communication
and problem solving between parties that are having a conflict as well as
to help them focus on facts rather than personalities or blaming one
another. Skills here are necessary in unblocking some barriers that are
inevitable to counseling. Skill building in this area is important.

C ounseling offers a wide range of services to individuals, groups,

organizations, and communities. In all the services, several processes are
involved from needs assessment to intervention or program designing
and a selection of an array of methods available to the profession in
dispensing the services appropriately.

Conducting Needs Assessment for Individuals, Groups,

Organizations, and Communities
Since counseling is essentially an intervention, it is important that
counselors accurately understand the needs of their clients. This also
helps to align their competencies ‘to the needs of individuals, groups,
organizations, and communities that they intend to serve. Needs
assessments may range from a systematic observation of symptoms to
conducting formal surveys using a questionnaire to determine the felt
needs of the potential clients. The results of the needs assessment will
become the basis to decide on the range of services to make available to
the clients as well as choice of processes to be followed. In some cases,
individual counseling may be made while in some cases, group
counseling may be considered appropriate. The choice of counselors in
terms of areas of specialization (that may be fitting to the context) can be
determined after a needs assessment is done. Needs assessment is
generally a diagnostic procedure.

Monitoring and Evaluating for Counseling Effectivity

When interventions are designed, the implementation stage follows. To
ensure that everything planned is performed accordingly, accurate
documentation of all details is necessary to generate data of factual
evidence about the implementation. Both the planned and the unplanned
occurrences in the process are documented. This is called monitoring.
The goal is to ensure that everything is being done as designed based on
the diagnostic procedure and resource alignment. Monitoring is done
during the implementation phase.

At the end of the period of implementation or at certain marked

reasonable period, assessments are needed to determine initial results—
what is happening. This is called evaluation. Evaluation examines the
results and finds out if the intended results are being met or not. It is the
basis to continue or to phase out a program. If monitoring documents
the process, evaluation concentrates on the results.

Counseling in School Setting

I n the school setting, the role of the school counselor is more complex
since the needs of students can vary widely. This.gives rise to the more
dynamic and complex role of school counselors; it depended on a
school’s local circumstances as well as by the dynamism within the
profession itself. As such, school counselors assume many different
responsibilities and tasks based on the particular needs of students and
the school context. Historically, it was understood that “guidance
process occurs in an individual in a developmental sequence to the age of
maturity” (Coy 1999). Guidance, based on this insight, tends to be more
centered on the developmental needs of individuals.

Frank Parsons, known as the “Father of Guidance and Counseling,”

developed a vocational program that matched an individual’s traits with
a vocation (Coy 1999). This insight-oriented school counseling to
vocational guidance. The roles of guidance here “were similar to modern
career counseling with a focus on the transition from the school to work,
emphasizing an appropriate client-occupational placement match”
(Lambie & Williamson 2004). In the United States, with the launching of
Sputnik in 1957 and the passing of the National Defense Education Act
(NDEA) in 1958, the NDEA “poured millions of dollars into schools of
education to train a new generation of counselors who would be expected
to identify and assist promising American youths to enter the sciences
and pursue higher education” (Hayes, Dagley, & Horne 1996). School
guidance counselors began to encourage students with high aptitude in
the areas of math and science to take more courses to prepare for college
so that they. might become future technological innovators.

Changes in the School Counselor Training

Today, the training of school counselors has changed. Counselors are
taking on many new tasks and roles. School counselors are now educated
and experienced in knowledge and skill-based programs that stress
counseling, guidance, consultation, coordination, and referrals (Coy
1999). The role of the school counselor has progressed from providing
guidance and career information to addressing the developmental needs
of students. They can help students to learn effectively by addressing the
diverse areas and the challenges that may interfere with their learning.

Common Concerns that May Interfere with Student Learning

Some common concerns that can interfere with the learning process
include: suicide, violence, divorce, child abuse, unwanted pregnancy,
drug addiction, truancy, increasing dropout rates, decreasing economic
resources, peer pressure, poverty, and decision-making skills. Guidance
counselors can provide early intervention for the prevention of various
school-related problems. In this sense, the school counselors have to
collaborate with their school colleagues in the expansion of new models
for interventions. Therefore, the role of the professional school counselor
is intricate and versatile. It is very important that school counselors
“define their role better by recognizing that they cannot do their work
alone and they need to collaborate with other stakeholders” (Sears &
Granello 2002). The role of counselors is hugely consultative. They are
not the center of a school counseling program or advocates for students
and their caregivers; they are facilitators who are highly educated to
effectively collaborate and coordinate direct and indirect services
required for students to be able to succeed in the school environment
and their personal lives.

Multiple Roles of School Counselors

Apart from their counseling roles, school counselors are also assigned
non-counseling roles. Non-counseling tasks can range from part-time
teaching, secretarial responsibilities, substituting for teachers when they
are not available, lunch duty, and other responsibilities assigned by
administrators and staff looking for extra assistance. Non-counseling
tasks can take a considerable amount of time and pull school counselors
away from more appropriate counseling activities. Presence of these non-
counseling roles often brings confusion and lack of effectivity to the
guidance programs of school (Dahir 2004).

Evidence show that the efforts to delineate the school counselor’s work
have been done in the United States and in the Philippines. In 2003, the
American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model was
developed and was “preceded by efforts at delineating the best way to
organize and manage professional school counselors’ work” (ASCA
2005). While professional associations such as ASCA have strongly
encouraged their members to endorse and utilize their model and the
national standards associated with it, school principals have historically
exerted a major influence on the role of school counselors regardless of
recommendations by professional organizations (Paisley & Borders
1995).

In the Philippines, the roles of schools counselors have been prescribed

and professionalized the practice (Republic Act No. 9258). However, due
to lack of qualified school counselors, the guidance counseling functions
are rarely fully implemented and provided. Furthermore, school
counseling programs are understaffed and school counselors are faced
with an increasing student to counselor ratio. A ratio of 250 students for
every counselor is recommended by ASCA while the Commission on
Higher Education (CHED) for the Philippines recommends 1:500 or in a
worse situation, 1:1000 (CMO 21 s. 2006). Far from providing a full
range of guidance services, schools’ guidance programs have tended to
provide the minimum services such as administering psychometric tests,
interviewing new students and transferees, reacting to problems of
students, and counseling the problematic students.

Strengthening School Counseling

Acting proactively implies that school counselors supported by
administrators, “use data gathered on student performance to develop
their school counseling programs and to help teachers customize
educational practices to meet students’ individual needs” (Sclafani
2005). They can also “collect data on the effectiveness of their overall
program, rather than documenting random lessons and the number of
children they see” (Vail 2005). In any case, increased accountability
require that measures are undertaken by school administration to ensure
that data are collected on school counseling programs to prove program
effectiveness in the lives of students. Since school counselors have a
responsibility to serve all students, the main path for school counselors
to reach all students is to put into practice through the use of
comprehensive school guidance counseling programs that include
classroom guidance lessons (Gysbers 2001). All students can benefit
from school guidance programs if they are realistically designed and
collaboratively implemented in an environment that is keen at
scaffolding growth of children and young adults.

By all means, guidance and counseling services are indispensable to the

full transformation of a child that unblocks all barriers to students’
individual and holistic development. While everybody sees the
manifestations through the student’s behavior and performance, the
serious job of looking beneath the manifestations and address the root
causes is indeed a critical role of guidance and counseling leadership. As
such, the school counselors have to constantly develop and maintain an
effective school counseling program. The programs must have a distinct
focus per cluster of students from K-12 and collegiate levels while
keeping the generic guidance and counseling services.

The Role of the Elementary School Counselor (K-6)

Developmentally, the social-emotional needs of humans at this stage can
be marked distinctively. However, there are several factors that may be
responsible for behavior differences such as home environment, family
size, economic status, intellectual ability, and so on. Counselors build
their program expectations on common experiences of this age group.
The roles of counselors are that of intervention and prevention in
connection with the common problems that are likely to interfere with
the ability of children to achieve their greatest academic, social, and
personal potential (Ward & Worsham 1998).

In this light, Ward and Worsham (1998) see the primary role of the K-6
or elementary school counselors to include development and
implementation or facilitation of classroom guidance activities,
individual and group counseling, parent education, parent and teacher
consultation, referrals to professionals and public agencies, and crisis
intervention and management. The goal is to address and remediate the
students’ problems early enough to increase the chance of helping them
successfully cope with unique demands that confront adolescents when
they reach middle school and high school. A smooth transition at this
stage prepares students for smoother transition in the next stage of life
and in the future.

The Role of the Junior High School Counselor (Grades 7-10)

At this developmental stage of life as young adolescents, grade 7 through
10, the primary role of the junior high school counselor is to provide
guidance and counseling in dealing with peer relationships and social
interactions, and as such, includes work with students, teachers, and
parents in an attempt to help each understand the other (Ward &
Worsham 1998). Outside of this focus are the general guidance services
such as consulting with teachers, parents, and staff regarding meeting
the developmental needs of each student, interpreting tests, and
providing orientation to transferees and new students.

The Role of the Senior High School Counselor (Grades 11-12)

For Ward and Worsham (1998), the primary role ‘of senior high school
counselors is to provide guidance and counseling pertaining to
educational and career decisions as well as college placement counseling.
In addition, other common services are also made available to meet the
needs of individuals or groups, and provide orientation activities for
transferees or new students to the school.

The Role of the College Level Counselor (College to Post-graduate Level)

On the collegiate level, the roles of school counselors include counseling,
appraisal and assessment, information, placement, research and
evaluation, follow-up, and student activities (CMO 21 s. 2006).


o Maintain students’ confidential, appropriate, usable, and regulo.
updated cumulative records, which contain relevant informa
about students such as family background, test data, court,
notes, etc.
o Facilitate maintenance of an active networking with the home,
community, industry, and other relevant agencies for career and
job placement of students/graduates.
o Work in collaboration with all other units and personnel of the
school like the faculty, staff, and administrators to effect a
holistic guidance program.
o Help ensure that academic accommodation is made available to
learners with special needs.
o Provide referrals whenever necessary.
o Provide information materials on career and job opportunities.
o Provide skills development programs.
o Maintain an institutional and valid students’ appraisal data for
curricular and co-curricular placements for students.
o Sustain a continuous follow-up and monitoring of student
placement on a regular basis.

The Processes, Methods, and Tools in

Counseling
C ounselors work in various settings—from government to private
sectors, to civil society to school setting. Drawing on a wide range of
processes, methods, and tools, counselors are trained to use what is
appropriate for the setting and relative to their specialty. There are
classical approaches informed by theories to counseling that scaffold
their process and selection of methods and tools.

The late 1950s saw three schools of thought in psychology that became
very dominant: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the humanistic
perspective.

Represented by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) , psychoanalysis draw

attention to the darker forces of the unconscious and the influence that
this has on how we feel about ourselves. The field of psychoanalysis
encompasses a vast number of therapeutic models that utilize dreams,
fantasies, associations, and the expression of thoughts both verbally and
physically. The assumption is that there are inner battles that are waged
in a client that are directly responsible for the appearance of symptoms
and behavioral problems, causing the person to seek treatment.
Psychoanalytic therapy tends to be highly focused on unearthing the
underlying issues to undress the symptoms, which will lead to minimize
or eliminate the symptoms.

Represented by B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) , behaviorism focused on

the effects of reinforcement on observable behavior. All psychological
disorders are a result of maladaptive learning that all behavior is learnt
from our environment and symptoms are acquired through classical
conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves
learning by association. Operant conditioning involves learning by
reinforcement (e.g., rewards) and punishment. The therapeutic
techniques used in this type of treatment are action-based and rooted in
the theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning and
utilize the same learning strategies that led to the formation of unwanted
behaviors. Behavioral therapy tends to be highly focused on teaching
clients new behaviors to minimize or eliminate the issue.

Represented by Carl Rogers (1902-1987), Abraham Maslow (1908-

1970), and George Kelly (1905-1966), the humanistic perspective
attempted to understand the conscious mind, free will, human dignity,
and the capacity for self-reflection and growth. These humanists argued
that the person is not hostage to the contingence and historical
circumstances of his / her past. The human potential for change requires
only exercise of the distinctively human capacities for choice, creativity,
and drive toward self-actualization. Humanistic therapeutic models are
rooted in insight and focus on self-development, growth, and
responsibilities. They seek to help individuals gain self-empowerment by
recognizing their strengths, creativity, and choice in their given
circumstances.

The Basic Counseling Approaches

The following are among the basic counseling approaches commonly
used today that provide processes, methods, and tools for counselors to
draw from: Psychoanalytic Therapy, Adlerian Therapy, Existential
Therapy, Person-centered Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional
Analysis, Behavior Therapy, Rational-emotive Therapy, and Reality
Therapy.

Psychoanalytic Therapy is an approach developed by Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalysis is based on Freud’s explanation that human beings are
basically determined by psychic energy and early experiences. These
unconscious energy and experiences drive people’s behavior in the form
of unconscious motives and conflicts. The goal of a therapist is to help a
client become conscious of this energy and early experiences and thereby
become empowered and harness both positively.

Adlerian Therapy is an approach similar to the Freudian. It was

developed by Alfred Adler (1870-1937) who believed that the first six
years of life influence an individual. But ensuing behavior depended on
how one interprets his/her past and its continuing influence on him/her.
For Adler, humans are motivated primarily by social urges.

Existential Therapy has no single founder, but Viktor Frankl (1905-

1997), Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), and Rollo May (1909-1994) are
considered key figures. Existential therapy focuses on the human
capacity to define and shape his /her own life, give meaning to a
personal circumstance through reflection, decision-making, and self-
awareness. It draws heavily on existentialist philosophy that emphasizes
human freedom to define oneself, and that our lives are not
predetermined; we have a responsibility to live and to see in life what we
chose to. The only things we cannot control is being born and the fact of
dying.

Person-centered Therapy originated from Carl Rogers (1902-1987).

For Rogers, people get, share, or surrender power and control over
themselves and others, and so empowerment depended on the self and
such required non-directive process. Non-directive counselors focus on
the client’s self-discovery rather than their input. The mainstay in this
non-directive counseling is counselor-client reflecting and clarifying the
verbal and non-verbal communications of clients. The process includes
the counselor’s use of active listening, reflection of feelings, clarification,
and just “being there” for the counselee in a non-interventionist way.

Gestalt Therapy was developed and introduced by Frederick S. Perls

(1893-1970). It is an existential approach, stressing that people must
find their own way in life and accept personal responsibility for maturity.
They must develop an awareness of their unfinished business from the
past, traumatic experiences in life, and what they are doing in order for
them to bring about change in their lives. Gestalt therapy techniques
include confrontation, dialog with parties, role-playing, reliving, and re-
experiencing unfinished business in the form of resentment and guilt.
Counselors push for doing and experiencing rather than just talk about
one’s feelings as a client. It involves recognizing and letting go,
accompanied by actions like breaking a glass or hitting something hard.

Transactional Analysis was developed by Eric Berne (1910-1970). Its

main uniqueness is its emphasis on decisions and contracts that must be
made by the client. Like other existentialist philosophies, which are
based on the understanding of human nature, this approach believes that
the client has the potential for choice and so, the contract made by the
client clearly states the directions and goals of the therapeutic process.

Behavior Therapy, also referred to as behavior modification, is

associated with many theorists and among them are Arnold Lazarus,
Albert Bandura, B.F. Skinner, M.J. Mahoney, David L. Watson, and A.E.
Kazdin. Behavior therapy uses many action-oriented methods to help
people take steps to change what they are doing and thinking. This
approach focuses on overt behavior, precision in specifying the goals of
treatment, and the development of specific treatment plans. In this
approach, the counselor is active and directive, and functions as a
teacher or trainer in helping clients to work on improving behavior.

Rational-emotive Therapy was developed by Albert Ellis (1913-2007).

It is a form of cognitively-oriented behavioral therapy and is based on
the assumption that human beings are born with a potential for both
rational or straight thinking and irrational or crooked thinking. Because
people are fallible, this approach focuses on helping clients accept
themselves as people who would continue to make mistakes, yet at the
same time learn to live with themselves and be at peace with themselves.
Ellis stressed that through thinking, judging, deciding, and doing, people
can change their cognitive, emotive, and behavioral processes and react
differently from their usual patterns. They can train to master
themselves and control themselves like choosing not to be upset.

Reality Therapy was founded and promoted by William Glasser (1925-

2013). This therapy is a short-term approach that focuses on the present
and highlights a client’s strength. It stresses that a client can learn more
realistic behavior and achieve success. For Glasser, people choose their
behavior and are therefore responsible for what they do and how they
think and feel. What a client needs from a counselor is an
encouragement to assess the current style of living then leave them to
employ a process of honest self-examination, leading and resulting in the
improvement of one’s quality of life.

The Clientele and Audiences of

Counseling

I ndividuals and groups of people who receive services from various

counseling professions constitute the clientele and audience. These
individuals and groups vary in their needs and context where they avail
of counseling services.

Characteristics of the Clientele and Audiences of Counseling

The clientele and audiences of counseling are normal people. They are
not in need of clinical or mental help. They may be the youth in need of
guidance at critical moments of their growth, anyone in need of
assistance in realizing a change in behavior or attitude, or simply seeking
to achieve a goal. What the audience normally calls for in counseling is
the application or development of social skills, effective communication,
spiritual direction, decision-making, and career choices. Sometimes,
people need to cope with the crisis. Other clientele and audiences of
counseling may be people in need of premarital and marital counseling,
grief and loss (divorce, death, or amputation), domestic violence and
other types of abuse, or coping with terminal illness, death, and dying.

Needs of Various Types of Clientele and Audiences of Counseling

The needs vary for each type of clientele and audience of counseling. In
the school context, guidance and counselors aim to meet needs such as
job-hunting coaching, conflict management providers, human resources
personnel, marriage counselors, drug abuse and rehabilitation
counselors, bereavement counselors, and abused children caretakers and
rehabilitation in government and NGO settings.

As school guidance and counselors, these professionals provide the

need for personal guidance by helping students seek more options and
find better and more appropriate ones in dealing with situations of stress
or simply decision-making. This may include career options. Sometimes,
they bridge between family and the school in resolving conflicts that
affect students and their families to the extent of becoming a threat to
student development and learning.

As job-hunting coaches, counselors provide avenues for people to

find the necessary information and get employment that is suitable to
them. The services offered may include technical aspects of how to
prepare a curriculum vitae (CV) or a resume, how to speak to employers,
and how to present and conduct oneself before employers. These can
even cover such details as how to walk and how to groom oneself to meet
expectations of prospective employers.

As conflict management providers, these professionals provide the

need for principles and theory-based approaches to deal with conflict
and deescalate it, if not revolve it positively. Conflicts are everywhere
and they are not always that easy to avoid. These professionals provide
ways to manage conflict constructively.

As human resources personnel, these professionals provide the

needs common to all workplaces and they are employed in almost all
workplaces to deal with various employee needs that cover aspects of
remunerations, social services, compensations, conflict resolution, and
discipline. There is a wide range of services that employment provides
for the workforce, which are not directly related to their technical work.
They are designed to keep workers happy and cared for as humans. They
form part of human resource management.

As marriage counselors, these professionals provide the need for

conflict-resolution skills to parties, couples, and children to deal with
various stresses and issues that threaten their unity or peaceful
coexistence. Sometimes, their work is to reconcile couples, while at other
times, they work to help them part ways in the best way possible through
available legal instruments such as separation, divorce, or annulment.

As drug abuse and rehabilitation counselors, these professionals

meet the need to help people overcome their problems or mitigate some
of the most negative effects of drug abuse. Their goal is to facilitate client
rehabilitation.

As bereavement counselors, these professionals respond to the need

to be helped to go through loss, such as death in the family, in a way that
will help prevent depression and other unhealthy ways of dealing or
coping with loss such as committing suicide or giving up on life. Through
them, clients are empowered to experience recovery or some form of
healing that will help them cope well with such human tragedies.

As abused children caretakers and rehabilitation in government and

NGO settings, counselors meet the need to facilitate processing and
restoration of abused children through recognition and implementation
of existing laws and recovery procedures in coordination with relevant
units.

The Individual as Client of Counseling

The individual who needs to be helped to manage well a life-changing
situation or personal problem or crisis and other support needs may
undergo counseling as an individual. This is the common type of
counseling: the individualized type. The individual needs capacitation to
be able to manage well their unique circumstances, which may be very
difficult to endure alone. Problems like alcoholism, loss of job, divorce,
imprisonment, and rehabilitation can be a cause of shame and
embarrassment. Without acquiring enough strength and ability to go
through such life experience, people are vulnerable and may come out
worse; even while simply going through natural life transitions like
retirement and growing old.

The Group and Organization as Client of Counseling

Groups exist in communities, organizations, students in schools,
teachers in school, and departments in workplaces, and such an entity
can undergo group counseling to meet counseling needs on that level.
The needs can range from desire to reduce conflict or manage it, become
more productive as a team, or work better together. Some of the group
processes and procedures resemble those that are applied to individuals.
However, some are very unique to a group and organizational context.

The Community as Client of Counseling

When people experience something collectively, which may be socially
troubling and constitute the danger of blocking their collective capacity
to move on, counseling is necessary to be undertaken on a community
level. In post-apartheid South Africa, a truth and reconciliation
commission was sought to help the restoration of the South African
communities. Likewise, in the post-genocide Ruanda, a similar approach
was done to help restore trust and confidence in communities that were
brutally disrupted by civil war and mass killing.

Four Common Skills in Counseling

E lsewhere and across applied social science disciplines, there are four
common skills that require studying the curriculum of
accumulated scientific knowledge across disciplines ; which are
skills for communicating, motivating, problem solving, and resolving
conflicts.

1. Communication skills.
These include the ability to actively listen, demonstrate understanding,
ask appropriate questions, and provide information as needed. Active
listening involves listening to the words, the gestures, and’ other body
language. It involves listening for what is said and what is not said. It
requires listening to content—its meaning and the emotions behind the
it. Demonstrating understanding includes responding to what is said by
repeating the same words or using other words, stating the meaning of
the words, and describing the feelings that accompany the words.

Effective communication means the message you want to communicate is

received as you intended it to be received. However, it is common for the
intended message to be misunderstood. This happens because people
have different ways of saying things or similar statements may have
different meanings for some people. Understanding the communication
cycle (Sender » Message » Channel » Receiver » Feedback) and the
barriers (noise, interruptions, uncomfortable surroundings,
stereotyping, message. complexity, misstatements) that can get in the
way of effective communication are very important for developing
communication skills.

2. Motivational skills.
These skills are the ones that influence a helpee to take action after the
helping session or consultation. There is an old saying, “You can lead a
horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” Sometimes, we label
students as being ‘hard-headed’ because of their non-compliance with
suggestions. But we do not reflect on the why and how come. There are
varied theories related to this skill area. Needs, desires, incentives, drive,
cognitive dissonance, and other factors have been purported to motivate-
behaviors. Recognizing the client’s readiness for action must be
considered. Does the client have the necessary knowledge, skills, or
ability to perform the necessary tasks to correct the problem area? Are
there (attitudinal) concerns interfering with taking action?

3. Problem-solving skills.
These include differentiating between symptoms and the problem,
pinpointing probable causes and triggers for the problem, and then
generating a range of possible solutions to the actual problem.

4. Conflict resolution skills.

These involve learning about styles of conflict resolution. It also includes
recognizing the signs of it and learning the process of conflict resolution.
Helping professionals should have the skills to facilitate communication
and problem solving between parties that are having a conflict as well as
to help them focus on facts rather than personalities or blaming one
another. Skills here are necessary in unblocking some barriers that are
inevitable to counseling. Skill building in this area is important.

The Different Settings in Counseling

Government Setting
Counseling settings vary widely but the processes, methods, and tools
used by counselors are very similar. Counseling professionals in
government setting work with the various government agencies that have
counseling services such as social welfare, correctional department, the
court system, child and women affairs services, schools, military, police,
hospitals, mental and foster homes, and rehabilitation centers.
Sometimes, other specialized departments also have units of counselors
such as intelligence-gathering departments, military and police
departments, presidential guards, and special advisories.

Private Sectors Setting

In the private sector, counselors range from independent providers of
services or work for NGOs, or specialized for profit centers and
organizations that render a variety of counseling services. The processes,
methods, and tools used by counselors in the private sectors setting
remain very much the same as in the government setting.

Civil Society Setting

The context of civil society is generally charities or non-profit and issue-
based centers or organizations such as for abused women, abandoned
children and elderly, veterans, teachers, professionals, or religious
groups. The processes, methods, and tools used resemble each other.

School Setting
In the school setting, the role of the school counselor is more complex
since the needs of students can vary widely. This.gives rise to the more
dynamic and complex role of school counselors; it depended on a
school’s local circumstances as well as by the dynamism within the
profession itself. As such, school counselors assume many different
responsibilities and tasks based on the particular needs of students and
the school context. Historically, it was understood that “guidance
process occurs in an individual in a developmental sequence to the age of
maturity” (Coy 1999). Guidance, based on this insight, tends to be more
centered on the developmental needs of individuals.

Frank Parsons, known as the “Father of Guidance and Counseling,”

developed a vocational program that matched an individual’s traits with
a vocation (Coy 1999). This insight-oriented school counseling to
vocational guidance. The roles of guidance here “were similar to modern
career counseling with a focus on the transition from the school to work,
emphasizing an appropriate client-occupational placement match”
(Lambie & Williamson 2004). In the United States, with the launching of
Sputnik in 1957 and the passing of the National Defense Education Act
(NDEA) in 1958, the NDEA “poured millions of dollars into schools of
education to train a new generation of counselors who would be expected
to identify and assist promising American youths to enter the sciences
and pursue higher education” (Hayes, Dagley, & Horne 1996). School
guidance counselors began to encourage students with high aptitude in
the areas of math and science to take more courses to prepare for college
so that they. might become future technological innovators.

Changes in the School Counselor Training

Today, the training of school counselors has changed. Counselors are
taking on many new tasks and roles. School counselors are now educated
and experienced in knowledge and skill-based programs that stress
counseling, guidance, consultation, coordination, and referrals (Coy
1999). The role of the school counselor has progressed from providing
guidance and career information to addressing the developmental needs
of students. They can help students to learn effectively by addressing the
diverse areas and the challenges that may interfere with their learning.
Common Concerns that May Interfere with Student Learning
Some common concerns that can interfere with the learning process
include: suicide, violence, divorce, child abuse, unwanted pregnancy,
drug addiction, truancy, increasing dropout rates, decreasing economic
resources, peer pressure, poverty, and decision-making skills. Guidance
counselors can provide early intervention for the prevention of various
school-related problems. In this sense, the school counselors have to
collaborate with their school colleagues in the expansion of new models
for interventions. Therefore, the role of the professional school counselor
is intricate and versatile. It is very important that school counselors
“define their role better by recognizing that they cannot do their work
alone and they need to collaborate with other stakeholders” (Sears &
Granello 2002). The role of counselors is hugely consultative. They are
not the center of a school counseling program or advocates for students
and their caregivers; they are facilitators who are highly educated to
effectively collaborate and coordinate direct and indirect services
required for students to be able to succeed in the school environment
and their personal lives.

Multiple Roles of School Counselors

Apart from their counseling roles, school counselors are also assigned
non-counseling roles. Non-counseling tasks can range from part-time
teaching, secretarial responsibilities, substituting for teachers when they
are not available, lunch duty, and other responsibilities assigned by
administrators and staff looking for extra assistance. Non-counseling
tasks can take a considerable amount of time and pull school counselors
away from more appropriate counseling activities. Presence of these non-
counseling roles often brings confusion and lack of effectivity to the
guidance programs of school (Dahir 2004).

Evidence show that the efforts to delineate the school counselor’s work
have been done in the United States and in the Philippines. In 2003, the
American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model was
developed and was “preceded by efforts at delineating the best way to
organize and manage professional school counselors’ work” (ASCA
2005). While professional associations such as ASCA have strongly
encouraged their members to endorse and utilize their model and the
national standards associated with it, school principals have historically
exerted a major influence on the role of school counselors regardless of
recommendations by professional organizations (Paisley & Borders
1995).
In the Philippines, the roles of schools counselors have been prescribed
and professionalized the practice (Republic Act No. 9258). However, due
to lack of qualified school counselors, the guidance counseling functions
are rarely fully implemented and provided. Furthermore, school
counseling programs are understaffed and school counselors are faced
with an increasing student to counselor ratio. A ratio of 250 students for
every counselor is recommended by ASCA while the Commission on
Higher Education (CHED) for the Philippines recommends 1:500 or in a
worse situation, 1:1000 (CMO 21 s. 2006). Far from providing a full
range of guidance services, schools’ guidance programs have tended to
provide the minimum services such as administering psychometric tests,
interviewing new students and transferees, reacting to problems of
students, and counseling the problematic students.

Strengthening School Counseling

Acting proactively implies that school counselors supported by
administrators, “use data gathered on student performance to develop
their school counseling programs and to help teachers customize
educational practices to meet students’ individual needs” (Sclafani
2005). They can also “collect data on the effectiveness of their overall
program, rather than documenting random lessons and the number of
children they see” (Vail 2005). In any case, increased accountability
require that measures are undertaken by school administration to ensure
that data are collected on school counseling programs to prove program
effectiveness in the lives of students. Since school counselors have a
responsibility to serve all students, the main path for school counselors
to reach all students is to put into practice through the use of
comprehensive school guidance counseling programs that include
classroom guidance lessons (Gysbers 2001). All students can benefit
from school guidance programs if they are realistically designed and
collaboratively implemented in an environment that is keen at
scaffolding growth of children and young adults.

By all means, guidance and counseling services are indispensable to the

full transformation of a child that unblocks all barriers to students’
individual and holistic development. While everybody sees the
manifestations through the student’s behavior and performance, the
serious job of looking beneath the manifestations and address the root
causes is indeed a critical role of guidance and counseling leadership. As
such, the school counselors have to constantly develop and maintain an
effective school counseling program. The programs must have a distinct
focus per cluster of students from K-12 and collegiate levels while
keeping the generic guidance and counseling services.
The Role of the Elementary School Counselor (K-6)
Developmentally, the social-emotional needs of humans at this stage can
be marked distinctively. However, there are several factors that may be
responsible for behavior differences such as home environment, family
size, economic status, intellectual ability, and so on. Counselors build
their program expectations on common experiences of this age group.
The roles of counselors are that of intervention and prevention in
connection with the common problems that are likely to interfere with
the ability of children to achieve their greatest academic, social, and
personal potential (Ward & Worsham 1998).

In this light, Ward and Worsham (1998) see the primary role of the K-6
or elementary school counselors to include development and
implementation or facilitation of classroom guidance activities,
individual and group counseling, parent education, parent and teacher
consultation, referrals to professionals and public agencies, and crisis
intervention and management. The goal is to address and remediate the
students’ problems early enough to increase the chance of helping them
successfully cope with unique demands that confront adolescents when
they reach middle school and high school. A smooth transition at this
stage prepares students for smoother transition in the next stage of life
and in the future.

The Role of the Junior High School Counselor (Grades 7-10)

At this developmental stage of life as young adolescents, grade 7 through
10, the primary role of the junior high school counselor is to provide
guidance and counseling in dealing with peer relationships and social
interactions, and as such, includes work with students, teachers, and
parents in an attempt to help each understand the other (Ward &
Worsham 1998). Outside of this focus are the general guidance services
such as consulting with teachers, parents, and staff regarding meeting
the developmental needs of each student, interpreting tests, and
providing orientation to transferees and new students.

The Role of the Senior High School Counselor (Grades 11-12)

For Ward and Worsham (1998), the primary role ‘of senior high school
counselors is to provide guidance and counseling pertaining to
educational and career decisions as well as college placement counseling.
In addition, other common services are also made available to meet the
needs of individuals or groups, and provide orientation activities for
transferees or new students to the school.

The Role of the College Level Counselor (College to Post-graduate Level)

On the collegiate level, the roles of school counselors include counseling,
appraisal and assessment, information, placement, research and
evaluation, follow-up, and student activities (CMO 21 s. 2006).


o Maintain students’ confidential, appropriate, usable, and regulo.
updated cumulative records, which contain relevant informa
about students such as family background, test data, court,
notes, etc.
o Facilitate maintenance of an active networking with the home,
community, industry, and other relevant agencies for career and
job placement of students/graduates.
o Work in collaboration with all other units and personnel of the
school like the faculty, staff, and administrators to effect a
holistic guidance program.
o Help ensure that academic accommodation is made available to
learners with special needs.
o Provide referrals whenever necessary.
o Provide information materials on career and job opportunities.
o Provide skills development programs.
o Maintain an institutional and valid students’ appraisal data for
curricular and co-curricular placements for students.
o Sustain a continuous follow-up and monitoring of student
placement on a regular basis.

Community Setting
The community has the greatest and widest application of counseling
services considering the diversity of people who constitute the
community. There are people who are in conflict with the law, socially
marginalized, people who suffer a loss of all kinds, those living in
institutional homes, and those experiencing different types of life
transitions that need counseling support and services. The community
setting creates a crossroad for individual context and group context.
Therefore, the needs recognized and addressed on other levels are
equally present in the community setting.
Culley and Bond’s Foundation Skills in
Counseling

C ulley and Bond (2004) have described the foundation skills in

counseling. They have grouped these foundation skills around three
headings: attending and listening, reflective skills, and probing skills.

1. Attending and listening.

Attending and listening skills refer to active listening, which means
listening with purpose and responding in such a way that clients are
aware that they have both been heard and understood. (Culley & Bond
2004)

2. Reflective skills.
These skills are concerned with the other person’s frame of reference.
For Culley and Bond (2004), reflective skills ‘capture’ what the client is
saying and plays it back to them—but in the counselor’s own words. The
key skills are restating, paraphrasing, and summarizing; for instance, the
counselor may begin with, “Did you mean to say…?” (Culley & Bond
2004)

3. Probing skills.
These skills facilitate going deeper, asking more directed or leading
questions (leading in the sense that they move the conversation in a
particular direction). Culley and Bond (2004) looked at the different
forms that questions can take (and how they can help or inhibit
exploration), and the role of making statements. Making statements is
seen as generally gentler, less intrusive, and less controlling than asking
questions—although that does depend on the statement. Probing tends to
increase the helper’s control over both process and content, and as a
result, “should be used sparingly and with care, particularly in the early
stages of counseling” (Culley & Bond 2004). As Alistair Ross (2003) has
commented, counseling skills such as these are important and can be
developed through reflection and training. However, no matter how good
a person’s skills are, they must be matched by relational qualities.
Counselors also need to be strong in their relational qualities. The
distinction between good and poor practitioner lies in the belief system
of the helper, and how it translates into helping the relationship that he /
she puts forward. (Combs & Gonzales 1994)
Core Values of Counseling

C ertain values are considered core to counseling and are reflected and
expressed in the practice of counseling. All counselors are expected to
embrace these and similar set of core values as essential and integral to
their work. These values are:

 Respect for human dignity. This means that the counselor must
provide a client unconditional positive regard, compassion, non-
judgmental attitude, empathy, and trust.

 Partnership. A counselor has to foster partnerships with the various

disciplines that come together to support an integrated healing that
encompasses various aspects such as the physical, emotional, spiritual,
and intellectual. These relationships should be of integrity, sensitivity,
and openness to ensure health, healing, and growth of clients.
 Autonomy. This entails respect for confidentiality and trust in a
relationship of counseling and ensuring a safe environment that is
needed for healing. It also means that healing or any advice cannot be
imposed on a client.
 Responsible caring. This primarily means respecting the potential of
every human being to change and to continue learning throughout
his/her life, and especially in the environment of counseling.
 Personal integrity. Counselors must reflect personal integrity, honesty,
and truthfulness with clients.
 Social justice. This means accepting and respecting the diversity of the
clients, the diversify of individuals, their cultures, languages, lifestyles,
identities, ideologies, intellectual capacities, personalities, and
capabilities regardless of the presented issues.
From such core values, the Ethical Principles of Counseling are
broadened.: The following principles contextualize the core values in
action. They form the foundation for ethical practice as expressed by The
New Zealand Association of Counselors (Ethical Principles for
Counselors).

Counselors shall:

1. Act with care and respect for individual and cultural differences and the
diversity of human experience.
 2. Avoid doing harm in all their professional work. Actively support the
principles embodied in the Treaty of Waitangi (a formal agreement
between the British Crown and Maori signed on February 6, 1840, at
Waitangi in the Bay of islands, which technically made over 500 Maori
chiefs to become a British Colony starting with the initial 43 Northland
Chiefs.
3. Respect the confidences with which they are entrusted.
4. Promote the safety and well-being of individuals, families, and
communities.
5. Seek to increase the range of choices and opportunities for clients.
6. Be honest and trustworthy in all their professional relationships.
7. Practice within the scope of their competence.
8. Treat colleagues and other professionals with respect.

Principles of Counseling

C ounseling is aimed at empowering a client. The general goal is to lead

an individual client or group to self-emancipation in relation to a felt
problem. At some stage in the process, the client should attain insight
and understanding of oneself, achieve better self-awareness and look at
oneself with increased self-acceptance and appreciation, and be able to
manage oneself positively. Client empowerment means that they develop
skills and abilities that require self-management and improved
motivation toward actions that are good for one’s self and develop a
positive outlook toward the past leading to some senseof closure and
attainment of relative inner and outer harmony resulting to
improvement in relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and
others.

The scope of counseling is wide. Essentially, it involves application of

some psychological theories and recognized communication skills. It
does not deal with clinical cases such as mental illness. It is a
professional relationship that requires an eventual closure and
termination of the counselee-counselor relationship.

The principles of counseling can be found in the basic process of

counseling since they govern each and every step: developing trust;
exploring problem areas; helping to set goals; empowering into action;
helping to maintain change; and agreeing when to end (Velleman 2001).
Counselors are to set aside their own value system in order to empathize
with their clients. Since the objective of counseling is to provide support
in dealing with issues of cone n. cowtseiznE effective when it is
performed with clear objectives that include prop icring smog degree of
advice, reassurance, release of emotional tension, clarified thinleag, and
reorientation. Counselors. must try to keep this principle in mind at all
tines in order to be effective.

Advice.
Counseling may involve advice-giving as one of the several functions that
counselors perform. When this is done, the requirement is that a
counselor makes judgments about a counselee’s problems and lays out
options for a course of action. Advice-giving has to avoid breeding a
relationship in which the counselee feels inferior and emotionally
dependent on the counselor.

Reassurance.
Counseling involves providing clients with reassurance, which is a way
of giving them courage to face a problem or confidence that they are
pursuing a suitable course of action. Reassurance is a valuable principle
because it can bring about a sense of relief that may empower a client to
function normally again.

Release of emotional tension.

Counseling provides clients the opportunity to get emotional release
from their pent-up frustrations and other personal issues. Counseling
experience shows that as persons begin to explain their concerns to a
sympathetic listener, their tensions begin to subside. They become more
relaxed and tend to become more coherent and rational. The release of
tensions helps remove mental blocks by providing a solution to the
problem.

Clarified thinking.
Clarified thinking tends to take place while the counselor and counselee
are talking and therefore becomes a logical emotional release. As this
relationship goes on, other self-empowering results may take place later
as a result of developments during the counseling relationship. Clarified
thinking encourages a client to accept responsibility for problems and to
be more realistic in solving them.

Reorientation.
Reorientation involves a change in the client’s emotional self through a
change in basic goals and aspirations. This requires a revision of the
client’s level of aspiration to bring it more in line with actual and
realistic attainment. It enables clients to recognize and accept their own
limitations. The counselor’s job is to recognize those in need of
reorientation and facilitate appropriate interventions.

Listening skills.
Listening attentively to clients is the counselor’s attempt to understand
both the content of the clients’ problem as they see it, and the emotions
they are experiencing related to the problem. Counselors do not make
interpretations of the client’s problems or offer any premature
suggestions as to how to deal with them, or solve the issues presented.
Good listening helps counselors to understand the concerns being
presented.

Respect.
In all circumstances, clients must be treated with respect, no matter how
peculiar, strange, disturbed, weird, or utterly different from the
counselor. Without this basic element, successful counseling is
impossible. Counselors do-not have to like the client, or their values, or
their behavior, but they have to put their personal feelings aside and
treat the client with respect.

Empathy and positive regard.

Carl Rogers combined empathy and positive regard as two principles that
should go along with respect and effective listening skills. Empathy
requires the counselor to listen and understand the feelings and
perspective of the client and positive regard is an aspect of respect. For
Rogers, clients have to be given both “unconditional positive regard” and
be treated with respect.

Clarification, confrontation, and interpretation.

Clarification is an attempt by the counselor to restate what the client is
either saying or feeling, so the client may learn something or understand
the issue better. Confrontation and interpretation are other more
advanced principles used by counselors in their interventions.

Transference and countertransference.

Other advanced principles deal with transference and
countertransference. When clients are helped to understand transference
reactions, they are empowered to gain understanding of important
aspects of their emotional life. Countertransference helps both clients
and counselors to understand the emotional and perceptional reactions
and how to effectively manage them.

Context and the Basic Concepts of

Counseling
C ounseling is affected by the context and the surrounding factors. They
are explored here as part of the basic concepts of counseling that are very
important to consider. The National Institute of Health presents a very
comprehensive understanding of the context of. counseling as follows.
First of all, context, as defined by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979,
1986, 1988), includes the peers, the culture, the neighborhoods, the
counseling, client, the counselor, and the contextual and the process
factors. Much influence though is within the family as being the primary
context in which the child learns and develops and likewise for
socializing of children and adolescents.

Peers as Context.
Friends’ attitudes, norms, and behaviors have a strong influence on
adolescents. Many personal issues are often introduced to the individual
by their peers. Parents can have much influence over their adolescent
children. Critical family issues involve family roles, both positively and
negatively. In most cases, the impact of parent influence can help
counter the negative influence that peers have on the adolescents’ issues.

Neighborhood as Context.
The interactions between the family and its neighborhood as immediate
context are also important to consider. A family functions within a
particular neighborhood. The behavioral problems in this particular
neighborhood require that families work against crime and social
isolation that may impact them. This is much easier in countryside
communities where a community network of parents, teachers,
grandparents, and civic leaders exist and where a sense of collaboration
in raising the children of the community forms part of shared ethos. For
this reason, neighborhood context is an important consideration in
counseling. It can both introduce additional strengths or challenges to
parenting and resources that should be considered when working with
families.
Culture as Context.
Culture provided meaning and coherence of life to any orderly life such
as community or organization. Various sectors of community families,
peers, and neighborhoods are all bound together by a cultural context
that influences them all as individual members. Therefore, the cultural
context is a major consideration in counseling. Extensive research on
culture and the family has demonstrated that so much influence on the
individual child and family is exerted by the cultural contexts
(Santisteban et al. 2003; Szapocznik & Kurtines 1993). Culture is the
source of norms, values, symbols, and language which provide the basis
for the normal functioning of an individual Understanding the cultural
context of a client makes it easier for a counselor to appreciate the
nature of their struggles as well as their cultural conditioning that
informs certain personal characteristics such as degree of openness to
share personal concerns, self-revealing, making choices, and personal
determination for independence (Corey 1991). Therefore, effective
counseling has to take into full consideration the culture of both the
counselor and the client especially in multicultural situations. The
cultures of the client and that of the counselor and other stakeholders
can all affect the nature of counseling.

Counseling as Context.
The National Institute of Health recognizes counseling itself as a context.
Regardless of a therapeutic approach in use, the counseling situation in
itself is a context. There is a deliberate specific focus, a set of procedures,
rules, expectations, experiences, and a way of monitoring progress and
determining results in any therapeutic approach (Corey 1991).
Counseling can therefore be affected by the counseling context.

From the counseling context, other success factors such as client factors,
counselor factors, contextual factors, and process factors should be
managed well so as to contribute toward the success of the engagement.

1. Client Factors. The client factors are everything that a client brings to
the counseling context. He or she is not a passive object receiving
treatment in the manner of a traditional doctor-patient situation. The
clients bring so much to the counseling context and therefore it remains
imperative that they are considered as an active part of the process.
Very often, the expectations and attitude of the client define the result
of a counseling process and experience. The success or failure of the
counseling process depends so much on the client.
2. Counselor Factors. The personality, skills, and personal qualities of a
counselor can significantly impact the outcomes of the counseling
 relationship (Velleman 2001). The counselor’s personal style and
qualities can make the interventions successful. The conditions for self-
restoration or experience of self-empowerment in a client are some
qualities that a counselor usually brings about. The experience of
positive or negative conditions can be attributed to the counselor. This
may be amplified or aggravated by the choice of counseling methods
that the counselor uses in his or her practice; this makes counseling
both a science and also an art.
3. Contextual Factors. The context in which counseling takes place can
define the outcomes. Counselors are therefore concerned with the
environment and atmosphere where to conduct the sessions. There are
ideal contexts and not ideal ones. For example, physical noise and
distance trigger the feeling of emotional safety of the client. A noisy
place can be a distraction that prevents healing. A place where a client
feels strongly fearful can provide a blockage from genuine engagement
with counseling process and procedure. A client has to feel comfortable
and positive. Ideally, counseling should take place in a quiet, warm,
counsel and comfortable place away from any distraction. Unless the
counselor effective and client talk in comfort and safety, there is no
way steps of healing degree can commence and yield desirable
outcomes.
4. Process Factors. The process factors constitute the actual counseling in
order undertaking. Vellemean (2001) presents the following six stages,
which for him apply to all problem areas in the process of counseling.
o Developing trust. This involves providing warmth,
genuineness, and empathy.
o Exploring problem areas. This involves providing a clear and
deep analysis of what the problem is, where it comes from, its
triggers, and why it may have developed.
o Helping to set goals. This involves setting and managing goal-
directed interventions.
o Empowering into action. This means fostering action to
achieve set goals.
o Helping to maintain change. This means providing support
and other techniques to enable the client to maintain changes.
o Agreeing when to end the helping relationship. This implies
that and assurances are there that guarantee the process is being
directed by the client and toward independence.