Counselling Skills l

This Course is Taught By:
Iona Lister

Her Background: Licentiate, Speech and Language Therapy, UK, Diploma in Advanced Counselling Skills.

She has been a clinician and manager of health services for fifteen years, and a trainer for UK-based medical charities, focusing on psychosocial issues, mental health disorders, and also the promotion of communication skills for people in helping roles. As a freelance writer, she contributes articles for magazines, has written four published books, and has written course material on coaching and counselling related fields.




Lesson Structure: Counselling Skills I BPS109

There are 8 lessons:

Learning specific skills:
What is Counselling
Perceptions of Counselling
Differences between Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists
Counelling Theories
Empathy
Transferrence
Directiveness, non directiveness
Behavioural Therapies
Systematic Desensitisation
Positive Reinforcement and Extinction
Goals of Psychoanalytical Approach
Defense Mechanisms (Repression, Displacement, Rationalisation, Projection, Reaction Formulation, Intellectualisation, Denial, Sublimation)
Use of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic Techniques
Analytic Framework
Free Associations
Interpretation
Dream Analysis
Resistance & Transferance
Humaniustic Therapy
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Therapies and Counsellors
Case Studies
Methods of Learning
Micro Skills
Triads
Modelling
Online and Telephone Counselling
Telemental Health
Clinical Considerations
Listening & bonding:
Scope of Listening and Bonding
Meeting and greeting
Creating a Safe Environment
Location
Time and Duration of Sessions
Privacy in Telephone and online counselling
Showing warmth on the phone
The contract
Helping the client relax
Listening with intent
Minimal Responses
Non Verbal Behaviour
Use of Voice
Use of Silense
Case Studies
Active Listening
Dealing with Silent Phone Calls
Reflection:
Non Directive Counselling
Paraphrasing
Feelings
Reflection of Feeling
Client Responses to Reflection of Feelings
Reflection of Content and Feeling
Case Studies
Questioning:
Open & Closed Questions
Other types of Questions (Linear, Information seeking, Strategic, Reflectivew, Clarification, etc)
Questions to Avoid
Goals of Questioning
Identification
Assessment
Intervention
Case Studies
Interview techniques:
Summarising
Application
Confrontation
Reframing
Case Studies
Perspective
Summary
Changing beliefs and normalising:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Changing Self-Destructive Beliefs
Irrational Beliefs
Normalising
Case Studies
Designing a Questionnaire
Finding solutions:
Moving Forward
Choices (Reviewing, Creating, Making choices)
Facilitating Actions
Gestalt Awareness Circle
Psychological Blocks
Case Study
Ending the counselling:
Terminating the session
Closure
Further Meetings
Dependency
Confronting Dependency
Chronic Callers
Terminating Silent Phone Calls
Silent Endings
Case Study
Other Services

Learning Goals: Counselling Skills I BPS109

Explain the processes involved in the training of counsellors in micro skills.
Explain how to commence the counselling process and evaluation of non-verbal responses and minimal responses.
Discuss both content and feeling, and their appropriateness to the counselling process.
Demonstrate different questioning techniques and to understand risks involved with some types of questioning.
Demonstrate how to use various micro-skills including summarising, confrontation, and reframing.
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.

Practicals:

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 experiencing that problem.
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 and open questions in a simulated counselling situation.
Evaluate your use of open and closed questions in a counselling role play.
Identify the main risks involved in asking too many questions,
Explain the importance of avoiding questions beginning with ‘why’ in counselling.
Explain how the application of different micro-skills would be useful in counselling in observed communication (written or oral).
Give examples of situtions when it would be appropriate for the counsellor to use 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.
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 and 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, and how a counsellor might help a client overcome them.
Describe the process through which a counsellor would take a client 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, and how dependency can be addressed.
Explain any negative aspects of dependency in a case study.

Many people use counselling skills in their daily lives. However, sometimes it may be inappropriate for people to use their usual methods of support. They may not want to discuss their problems with a friend or family member. They may feel that the person is too close, that they don’t want them to know their confidential problems or the person they would usually confide in might be part of the problem. Counsellors are trained to be effective helpers in difficult or sensitive situations. They should be independent, neutral and professional, as well as respecting our privacy. Counselling can help people to clarify their problems, identify changes they would like to make, get a fresh perspective, consider other options and look at the impact that life events have made on their emotional wellbeing.

This course is accredited by ACCPH and allows you to join as a professional member after completion. Membership allows you to add the letters MACCPH after your name (post-nominals).