Chapter 9Core Elements in Facilitating Counseling

Objectives:1. To learn the core elements that facilitates

counseling 2. To determine environmental circumstances

that may or may not affect the counseling process

3. To appreciate the importance of the different internal conditions that affect counseling process

4. To develop self-enthusiasm towards the attitudes that contributes to an effective counseling relationship

5. To exhibit the different external conditions influencing counseling through a diorama

Core Elements( gives significance to: )

Counseling process Relationship of counselor and client

A. External Conditions Influencing Counseling

A number of considerable factors have an impact in counseling process and relationship – for better or for worse these factors include the following:

Structures Facilities Physical Setting Proxemics Privacy Tape Recording Note Taking Professional Appearance & Concerns Counselee/Client characteristics

influencing counseling

Structure

A joint understanding between the counselor and counselee/client regarding the characteristics, conditions, procedures, and parameters of counseling.

Helps clarify the counselor-counselee relationship and give it direction; protect the rights, roles, and obligations of both counselors and counselees; and ensure the success of counseling.

Practical guidelines are part of building structure.

Time Limits ( a 50 minute session) Action limits (for prevention of

destructive behaviour) Role limits (what will be expected of

each participant) Procedural limits (counselee is given

the responsibility to work on specific goals or needs)

Facilities Use/Activities Occupants Equipment/Supplies Space Utilization Access/Circulation Environmental conditions Windows Sound Interior design Criteria

Physical Setting

The Room

The room should be comfortable and attractive. Counseling facilities should be designed for comfort and relaxation.

Colors of the Room

There can be several meanings for each color. The most common suggested color of a room is:

Blue: coolness, being soothing; like the sky, water, and, ice, trustworthiness, friendliness

The least suggested is Black; sophistication, formality, death, depression.

Seating Arrangements

What should be the seating arrangement: face-to-face or angled?

Is there a designated seat(s) for the client(s)?

Does the counselor decide where the client should sit or is it the client’s choice?

Counselor needs to experiment to find the arrangement that is most comfortable and productive.

Seating Arrangements depends with the counselor’s counseling technique.

Proxemics was coined by researcher E.T. Hall in 1963 when he investigated man’s use of personal space in contrast with “fixed” and “semi-fixed” feature space.

Fixed feature space – characterized by unmovable boundaries (divisions within an office building); Semi-fixed space – fixed boundaries such as furniture

Proxemics

Haase and DiMattia defined proxemics as “the manner in which man regulates the spatial features of his environment and conversely the impact of that environment on his subsequent behaviour”.

Proxemics is all about the room size, seating, physical distance between people, seating and furniture arrangements, and other physical features on the counseling relationship.

Personal distance – for conversations among good friends; from about 1.5 ft to around 4 ft.; touch is minimal; vision and hearing become important; distance use to interact with friends

Social distance – conversations among acquaintances; 4-12 ft; includes space required for more formal social interactions; hearing and vision are the primary senses involved; often utilized in business

Public distance – used for public speaking; distances greater than 12 ft; after 25 ft, interpersonal interaction is not possible (hall); little detail involved in communication; one-way communication

Privacy Reduced privacy decreased counselee

self-disclosure and that although spatial dividers improved counselee’s perceptions of privacy, self-disclosure failed to increase.

According to AFGA Code of Ethics, “the counseling relationship and information resulting there must be kept confidentially consistent with the obligations of the member as a professional person”.

Tape Recording

Tape Recording has been widely used in counselor preparation because of its training value

One proviso attached to the question of ethics is that all recordings are made with the counselee’s permission and chat subsequent use of recordings is made only with the counselee’s written consent.

Note-Taking

Taking notes should not interfere with the flow of the interview.

The need to explain the purpose of note taking to a counselee should be clear.

It is very important during the first session to explain to the counselee that the notes are confidential. It is important to take that explanation a step further and talk briefly about who will have access to the case record.

The counselor should always be prepared to show his/her counselee the notes.

Professional Appearance and Concerns

Dress/ Appearance

Dressing appropriately is the first physical characteristic that affects the counseling process (Meier and Davis).

An appearance that matches that of other colleagues is fitting.

Credentials

Counselor should provide some information about his/her credentials and position. The rule is to be completely straightforward.

It is important to let the counselee know something about the counselor. This is also one way of making the counselee comfortable since the counselor will not be a stranger to him/her anymore.

Time

Arranging the session for the same time each week or day can signify the counselor’s commitment to the relationship. Some counselees measure their importance to the counselor by how often their sessions exceed the scheduled time.

Be explicit with counselee about the length of a session. A typical individual counseling session lasts45 or 50 minutes.

Confidentiality

The extent and limitation of confidentiality must be explained to the counselee during the first session. Many organizations provide confidentiality information in writing.

The counselees also need to understand the kinds of information that cannot be kept confidential.

Record-keeping

A school counselor is required to keep accurate, detailed, appropriate and organized records of all counseling sessions, meeting, and discussions.

It is important to ensure that the

counselor is aware of the school’s existing record-keeping system and procedure.

Stress Management

Interviewing or counseling is stressful. It’s particularly stressful when counselors are in the early learning stages.

Client Characteristics Influencing Counseling

Most successful candidates for traditional approaches ten to be YAVIS: young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful.

Less successful are HOUNDs: homely, old, unintelligent, nonverbal, and disadvantaged; or DUDs – dumb, unintelligent, nonverbal, and disadvantaged.

B. Counselor Attitudes that Influence Counseling

The attitudes of counselors, their approaches to the individual, and what they do all influence the counseling relationship to a marked degree.

Attitudes

An attitude is a point of view about a situation. It is a relatively lasting cluster of feelings, beliefs, and behaviour tendencies directed towards specific persons, ideas, objects, or groups.

It has three components: Cognitive Component, Behavior Component, and Affective Component.

What you think. (Cognitive Component)-Beliefs people hold about the object of the attitude-A person’s perceptions, opinions, and beliefs

What you do. (Behavioral Component)-Predispositions to act in certain ways toward the object-The tendency for a person to act in a certain way toward someone or something

What you feel. (Affective Component)-Emotional feeling stimulated by the object-The emotional component and often learned

Beliefs

Fundamental among the counselor’s philosophical attitudes is a belief in the worth and value of each counselee.

Another important part of the counselor’s philosophical orientation is the belief in the need for freedom. Erich Fromm says that people have freed themselves from the old bonds of slavery and feudalism and become individuals, enjoying certain right and liberties, but have not gained freedom in the positive sense of realizing their intellectual and artistic possibilities. Fromm sees the root of this problem in the nature of modern industrial civilization.

A third cardinal principle of the counselor is the belief in the desirability of liberty. Liberty means more than the absence of external restraint. It includes the power to act positively to achieve one’s chosen goals.

Belief System

All counseling theories propose an interpretation of human nature, from which a certain style arises. Ultimately, one’s beliefs about how people interact and how they are motivated to achieve will determine what counseling orientation one formulates.

Values

Patterson points out that the counselor’s values influence the ethics of the counseling relationship, the goals of counseling, and the methods employed in counseling.

He believes in consciously and directly manipulating or influencing counselee because:

Each individual’s philosophy of life is different, unique, and unsuited to adoption by another.

All counselors cannot be expected to have a fully developed, adequate philosophy of life.

The appropriate places for instruction in values are the home, school, and church.

An individual develops a code of ethics, not from a single source or in a short period of time, but over a long time and from many influences.

One ought not to be prevented from developing one’s own unique philosophy because it will be more personally meaningful.

The counselee must have right to refuse to accept any ethic or philosophy of life.

Importance of Value

Value is built-in in an individual. It is something positive.

Values are things, persons, ideas or goals which are important to life. Anything which enables life to be understood, evaluated, and directed are values.

Modern Classification of Values

Instrinsic and Instrumentsal Accidental and Natural Primary and Secondary Moral and Ethnical Values Religious Values Cultural Values Social Values

Value System

Rev. Bachmeyer describes the value systems which every individual has are his self-image and experience. Self-image, as defined by Tomas Andres, is a set of assumptions about who we are, about what we expect the future to bring about, whether we succeed or fail, about how we are/ are not competent, about how we should and should not relate to one another.

Acceptance and Understanding“by acceptance, I mean a warm regard for him as a person of unconditional self-worth – of value no matter what his condition, his behaviour or his feelings. It means a respect and liking for him as a separate person, willingness for him to possess his own feelings in his own way. It means an acceptance of and a regard for his attitudes of the moment, no matter how negative or positive, no matter how much they may contradict other attitudes be has held in the past”.

-Rogers

Characteristics of Acceptance: Tyler identified two components of acceptance

– “willingness to allow individuals to differ from one another in all sorts of ways”

– “a realization that the ongoing experience of each person is a complex pattern of striving, thinking, and feeling”.

Understanding: ability to perceived another’s relationships, meanings, content, and structure. Tyler defined understanding as “simply to grasp clearly and completely the meaning the counselee is trying to convey”.

Characteristics of Understanding:

Experiencing is felt, rather than thought, known, or verbalized

Experiencing occurs in the immediate present

Experiencing can be directly referred to by the individual

Experiencing guides conceptualization Experiencing is implicitly meaningful

Fiedler’s description of ideal relationship:

The counselor is able to participate completely in patient’s communications.

The counselor’s comments are always right in line with what they patient is trying to convey.

The counselor is well able to understand tile patient’s feelings.

The counselor really cries to understand the patient’s feelings.

The counselor always follows the patient’s line of though.

Levels of Understanding (Davis):

Knowledge about other individuals Verbal or intellectual understanding and

behavioural or operational Derived directly from individuals

themselves and is an attempt to step into their perceptual world, to know their internal world, their fears, loves, and anxieties.

Self-understanding

Grace, Character, and Culture

Helping grace seems to have five key attributes: warm concern for and acceptance of the other; openness and atonement to the other’s experiential reality; a grasp of what the other needs for his/her essential flourishing; an ability to facilitate the realization of such needs in the right manner and at the right time; and an authentic presence.

Emotional Competence

One of the hallmarks of the self-creating person. A person who has it is able to manage their emotions aware in terms of the basic skills of control, expression, catharsis and transmutation, plus one or two others.

Zero level – when a person’s helping is always contaminated by hidden, distorted emotion and has an oppressive, interfering, and inappropriate quality.

When a person does help in an emotionally clear and clean way at some tomes, but also slips over at other times into compulsive, intrusive “helping” without realizing that he or she has done so.

When a person makes this kind of slip much less often, knows when it has happened and can correct it.

C. Internal Conditions that Influence Counseling

These are growth-facilitating qualities in all counseling relationships, regardless of the counselor’s theoretical orientation. Four conditions are – rapport, empathy, counselor congruence or genuineness, and attentiveness.

Rapport

Described as a condition essential and unconditional relationship between counselor and counselee.

Rapport is generated by the smoothness (lack of awkwardness, bumbling) with which the counselor opens and interacts within the relationship.

Empathy

Said to exist when counselors recognize the feeling a client presents as being the client’s and not of their own feeling, and are able to communicate back to the client the same feeling so the client can recognize its similarity to the one expressed.

Rogers defined it as “as if it were you own, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ quality”.

Buchheimer identified dimensions of empathy:

Tone – an expressive and nonverbal dimension reflected when two people interact in expressive harmony and unity

Pace or appropriate timing of counselor leads

Flexibility or the counselor’s ability to discard previously thought out tactics or goals if they do not fit the counselee’s situation

Perception of the counselee’s frame of reference – ability to abstract the core of the counselee’s concern and to formulate it objectively and palatably so that the person can elaborate

Repertoire – resourcefulness with which counselors vary their leading in appropriate ways to apply to both manifest and dynamic content of the counselee’s expression

Five levels of empathic understanding:

Level 1 – verbal and behavioural expressions of the helper either do not attend to detract significantly from the verbal and behavioural expressions of the helpee in that they communicate significantly less of the helpee’s feelings than the helper has communicated.

Level 2 – while the helper responds to the expressed feelings of the helpee, he does so in such a way that he subtracts noticeable affect from the communications of the helpee.

Level 3 – the expressions of the helper in response to the expressions of the helpee are essentially interchangeable with those of the helpee in that they express essentially the same affect and meaning.

Level 4 – the responses of the helper add noticeably to the expressions of the helpee in such a way to express feeling a level deeper than the helpee was able express himself.

Level 5 – the helper’s responses add significantly to the feeling and meaning of the expressions of the helpee in such a way as to accurately express feeling levels below what the helpee himself was able to express or in the event of ongoing deep self-exploration on the helpee’s part, to be fully with him in his deepest moments.

Personal characteristics or behaviours that enhance a counselor’s ability to provide empathic understanding include, but are not limited to, the following:

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own values, attitudes, and beliefs and the emotional and behavioural impact they have on his/ her own life

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own feelings and emotional response patterns and how they manifest themselves in interactive patterns

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own life experiences and his/her personal reactions to those experiences

Possesses the capacity and willingness to communicate these personal reactions to his/her clients

Counselor’s Congruence or Genuineness

According to Capuzzi and Gross, genuineness and congruence describe the ability to be authentic in the helping relationship.

Five levels of genuineness or counselor’s self-congruence

Level 1 – the helper’s verbalizations are clearly unrelated to what he is feeling at the moment, or his only genuine responses are negative in regard to the helpee and appear to have a totally destructive effect upon the helpee.

Level 2 – the helper’s verbalizations are slightly unrelated to what he appears otherwise to be a feeling at the moment, or when his responses are genuine they are negative in regard to the helpee and he does not appear to know how to employ his negative reactions as a basis for inquiry into the relationship.

Level 3 – the helper provides no negative cues between what he says and what he feels, but he provides no positive cues to indicate a really genuine response to the helpee.

Level 4 – the helper presents some positive cues indicating a genuine response (whether positive or negative) in a non-destructive manner to the helpee.

Level 5 – the helper appears freely and deeply himself in a non-exploitative relationship with the helpee.

Attentiveness

Requires skill in listening and observing, though which the counselor comes to know and understand the core of content and feeling presented by the counselee.

Concreteness

Concreteness enables the counselor to remain close to the client’s level of feelings and experiences; it eliminates misunderstandings and permits clients to correct distortions in their expressions; it fosters client attention to specific problem areas.

Five levels of concreteness:

Level 1 – helper appears to lead or allow all discussion with the helper to deal only with vague and anonymous generalities

Level 2 – helper frequently appears to lead or allow even discussions of material personally relevant to the helpee to be dealt with on a vague and abstract level

Level 3 – helper is open and at times facilitative of the helpee’s discussion of personally relevant material in specific and concrete terminology

Level 4 – the helper appears frequently helpful in enabling the helpee to fully develop in concrete and specific terms almost all instances of concern

Level 5 – helper appears always helpful in guiding the discussion so that the helpee may discuss fluently, directly, and completely specific feelings and experiences.

Respect or Caring

The concept of unconditional positive regard refers to the acceptance and positive feelings that the counselor has for the child are not conditional upon the child’s actions or behaviours.

Levels of the scale of unconditional positive regard or respect/caring:

Level 1 – verbal and behavioural expressions of the helper communicate a clear lack of respect (or negative regard) for the helpee

Level 2 – helper responds to the helpee in such a way as to communicate little respect for the feelings, experiences, and potentials of the helpee

Level 3 – helper communicates a minimal acknowledgement of regard for the helpee’s position and concern for the helpee’s feelings, experience, and potentials

Level 4 – helper communicates a very deep respect and concern for the helpee

Level 5 – helper communicates the very deepest respect for the helpee’s worth as a person and his potentials as a free individual

Personal characteristics or behaviours that enhance a counselor’s ability to provide respect and positive regard include, but are not limited to the following:

Respects himself/herself Views himself/herself as having worth and

potential Can model and communicate this positive

self-image to clients Can recognize his or her own control needs,

and has the ability to use this recognition in a manner that allow clients to direct their own lives

Trustworthiness

Stability and reliability are essential ingredients in most therapeutic relationships and can offset some of the confusion and chaos that many counselee experience in their lives.

Persuasiveness (Social Influence)Process of encouraging counselee to take reasonable and growth-promoting risks, to make thoughtful decisions and healthy choices, to disclose and process feelings and experiences that may reawaken pain, and to move forward toward their goals.

Humor

Handled with care, humor can be a vehicle for insight, an affirmation of the working alliance, a true moment of meeting in the person person-to-person relationship or a gentle means of confrontation.

Warmth

Ability to communicate and demonstrate genuine caring and concern for clients.

Immediacy

Ability to deal with the here-and-now factors that operate within the helping relationship

Personal characteristics or behaviours that enhance a counselor’s ability to use immediacy effectively include, but are not limited to, the following:

Has perceptive accuracy in interpreting his/her own feelings for, thought about, and behaviours toward clients

Has perceptive accuracy in interpreting client’s feelings for, thoughts about, and behaviours toward him/her

Has the capacity for and willingness to deal with his/ her own issues related to clients on a personal as opposed to an abstract level

Hope

Final essential condition of psychotherapy

Empathy, trustworthiness, caring, congruence, and persuasiveness all facilitate the development of hope in counselee.

D. Counseling Relationship – The Common Denominator

Most experts agree that the relationship is a necessary condition for bringing about change in the individual. Counselee who perceive their counselors as empathic, caring, and credible, and who feel understood by them are likely to progress in treatment; while those have a negative perception of their counselor, whether or not the perception is grounded in reality, are less likely to make progress.

Main Stages of the Counseling Process

1

• Introduction• Set the context with the child, how does he feel about being here?

2

• Listen to his issues and concerns• Remember this may be the first time he has openly expressed there.

3• Try to clarify his problems and concerns by asking open and closed

problems

4• Consider the impact that his concerns are having on him and on his

relationships.

5• Look at his beliefs about his problems.

6• Look at his attempted solutions

7• Offer further thoughts and interventions

8• Monitor and assess change

The Stages of the Counseling Process

Building a Counseling Relationship Working in Counseling Relationship Termination of Counseling Relationship