Counselling Skills

COUNSELLING SKILLS l The role of the counsellor is to facilitate the person's resolution of these issues, whilst respect their values, personal resources, culture and capacity for choice. Counselling can provide people with a regular time and space to talk about their problems and explore difficult feelings in a confidential and dependable environment.
Counsellors do not usually offer advice, but instead give insight into the client's feelings and behaviour and help the client change their behaviour if necessary. They do this by listening to what the client has to say and commenting on it from a professional perspective. Counselling covers a wide spectrum from the highly trained counsellor to some one who uses counselling skills as part of their role, for example, a nurse or teacher.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The course is divided into eight lessons as follows:

1. Learning Specific Skills: Methods of learning; learning micro-skills
2. Listening and Bonding: Meeting and greeting; helping the client relax; listening with intent
3. Reflection: Paraphrasing; reflection of feeling; client responses to reflection of feelings; reflection of content and feeling
4. Questioning: Open and closed questions; other types of questions; goals of questioning
5. Interview Techniques: Summarising; confrontation; reframing
6. Changing Beliefs and Normalising: Changing self-destructive beliefs; irrational beliefs; normalising
7. Finding Solutions: Making choices; facilitating actions; gestalt awareness circle; psychological blocks
8. Ending the Counselling: Terminating the session; closure; further meetings; dependency, confronting dependency

Aims

• The ability to explain the processes involved in the training of counsellors in micro skills.
• Demonstrate the skills involved in commencing the counselling process and evaluation of non-verbal responses and minimal responses.
• Demonstrate reflection of content, feeling, both content and feeling, and its appropriateness to the counselling process.
• Develop different questioning techniques and to understand risks involved with some types of questioning.
• Show how to use various micro-skills including summarising, confrontation, and reframing.
• To demonstrate self-destructive beliefs and show methods of challenging them, including normalising.
• Explain how counselling a client can improve their psychological well-being through making choices, overcoming psychological blocks and facilitating actions.
• Demonstrate effective ways of terminating a counselling session and to explain ways of addressing dependency. WHAT YOU MAY DO IN THIS COURSE
  
• Report on an observed counselling session, simulated or real.
• Identify the learning methods available to the trainee counsellor.
• Demonstrate difficulties that might arise when first learning and applying micro skills.
• Identify why trainee counsellors might be unwilling to disclose personal problems during training.
• Identify risks that can arise for trainee counsellors not willing to disclose personal problems.                                 
• Discuss different approaches to modelling, as a form of counselling
• Evaluate verbal and non-verbal communication in an observed interview.
• Identify the counsellor's primary role (in a generic sense).
• Show how to use minimal responses as an important means of listening with intent.
• Explain the importance of different types of non-verbal response in the counselling procedure.
• Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person which that problem relates to.
• Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
• Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
• Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
• Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase
• Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person which that problem relates to.
• Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
• Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
• Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
• Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase
• Demonstrate/observe varying responses to a variety of closed questions in a simulated counselling situation.
• Demonstrate/observe varying responses to a variety of open questions in a simulated counselling situation.
• Compare your use of open and closed questions in a counselling situation.
• Identify the main risks involved in asking too many questions
• Explain the importance of avoiding questions beginning with 'why' in counselling.
• Identify in observed communication (written or oral), the application of different micro-skills which would be useful in counselling.
• Demonstrate examples of when it would be appropriate for the counsellor to use confrontation
• List the chief elements of good confrontation.
• Discuss appropriate use of confrontation, in case studies.
• Show how reframing can be used to change a client's perspective on things.
• Develop a method for identifying the existence of self-destructive beliefs (SDB's).
• Identify self-destructive beliefs (SDB's) amongst individuals within a group.
• Explain the existence of self destructive beliefs in an individual.
• List methods that can be used to challenge SDB's?
• Explain what is meant by normalising, in a case study.
• Demonstrate precautions that should be observed when using normalizing.
• Determine optional responses to different dilemmas.
• Evaluate optional responses to different dilemmas.
• Explain how the 'circle of awareness' can be applied to assist a client, in a case study.
• Explain why psychological blockages may arise
• Demonstrate how a counsellor might help a client to overcome psychological blockages.
• Describe the steps a counsellor would take a client through to reach a desired goal, in a case study.
• Identify inter-dependency in observed relationships.
• Explain why good time management is an important part of the counselling process.
• Compare terminating a session with terminating the counselling process.
• Demonstrate dangers posed by client - counsellor inter-dependency
• Explain how dependency can be addressed and potentially overcome.
• Explain any negative aspects of dependency in a case study.