Relationships & Communication Counselling Level 3 Certificate Course

There are 6 lessons:

1 Communication in emerging relationships

• Stages in relationships
• The communication process
• Some Basic Principles of Communication
• Communication filtered through perceptions
• Verbal or Non-Verbal Communication
• Classification of Non-Verbal Communication
• Communication is Everyone’s Responsibility
• Ineffective Communication – Relationship Breakdown
• Case Study
• Effective Communication

2 Self-awareness in emerging relationship

• Negative Communication
• Self-awareness
• Setting the stage for change
• Thoughtful communication
• Recognising reative patterns
• Relationship goals
• Realistic relationship goals

3 Communication patterns in relationships

• Negative patterns of communication
• Aggresive patterns
• Victim patterns
• Avoidance patterns
• The thought, feeling and action cycle
• Emotions (feelings)
• Patterns of thought
• Behaviour (actions)
• Communicative intent

4 Influences on relating behaviour

• Influences on communication
• Environmental influencies
• Communicating changing interpersonal needs
• Changing expectations and needs
• Adult psychological development
• Erikson’s psycho-social stages

5 Communication techniques and skills

• Triads
• Listening
• Paraphrasing
• Reflective responses (emotions)
• Reflective responses (content)
• Summarising
• Guidelines to preventing inauthentic listening: Open questions, message statements/requests, self-discosure
• Encouraging clients to learn communication skills

6 Maintaining relationships

• Kinds and stages of relationship
• Factors that help maintain relationships: Agreement/contracts, praise and gifts of service
• Relationship-nurturing communication: Straight talk

Practicals:

• Determine ways in which we consciously communicate in a relationship, and ways in which we unconsciously communicate.
• Determine different negative messages that can damage relationships, and different positive messages that can nurture them.
• Determine attitudes or expectations (thoughts and beliefs) that can result in destructive communication, and describe one likely negative outcome for each.
• Identify common needs that we want to satisfy through our relationships.
• Identify cultural or social influences that affect individual and family attitudes to happiness, self-expression, and relationships.
• Explain psychological theories and terms such as attribution theory, implicit personality theory, Gestalt impression formation, inference processes, stereotyping.
• List benefits and disadvantages of €˜self-disclosure€™ and €˜self-disguise or concealment€™ (lying).
• Define effective communication.
• Discuss the role that judgment plays in preventing a person from understanding and/or respecting another person€™s point of view and feelings.
• Discuss strategies for replacing negative communication patterns in relationships for positive patterns.

Your learning experience with ADL will not only depend on the quality of the course, but also the quality of the person teaching it. This course is taught by Iona Lister and your course fee includes unlimited tutorial support throughout. Here are Iona's credentials:

Iona Lister
Licentiate, Speech and Language Therapy, UK, Diploma in Advanced Counselling Skills.

Iona 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. She tutors and facilitates groups via workshops and teleconferences, and now specialises in Sight Loss. As a freelance writer, she contributes regular feature articles for magazines, has written five published books, as well as published courses relating to personal development and counselling skills.

Iona has aslo written published books, courses and articles across a wide range of subjects, mostly in the areas of health, counselling, psychology, crafts and wildlife.

She has drawn experience from clinical and managerial experience within the NHS as well as medical and humanitarian subjects. She has been a regular feature writer and expert panel member of a national magazine for six years.

Books include: A Guide to Living with Alzheimer's Disease (and associated dementias), The Psychology of Facial Disfigurement; a Guide for Health and Social Care Professionals, When a Medical Skin Condition Affects the Way you Look; A Guide to Managing Your Future, Facing Disfigurement with Confidence, Cross Stitch: A Guide to Creativity and Success for Beginners.
Courses written include: Mental Health and Social Work, Counselling Skills, Understanding and Responding to Substance Misuse, Journalling for Personal Development, Guided Imagery, Stress Management.
Current work includes: Tutor: Courses associated with Creative Writing, Counselling Skills, Psychology, Holistic Therapy, Certified Hypnotherapist and Hypnotension Practitioner.
Facilitator of Teleconference Groups: Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)
Trainer (Skills for Seeing): Macular Society
Reviewer of Books/Information: Macmillan Cancer Support
Fundraiser: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Embroidery/Art Groups Facilitator, Board Member
Website Manager: The Strathcarron Project, Coordinator (Delaware & Tennessee) Human Writes

When we enter or begin a relationship, we often bring to it our old patterns of perception, relating and communication, and these can affect the way that we begin and develop a new relationship and the nature of that relationship.

Communication patterns are modes of communication that are used frequently in certain situations or with certain people. Some patterns may be prevalent, that is, appearing in most communications regardless of the situation, while many are situation-specific, that is, used with certain people (friends, spouse, children, boss) or in certain situations (at work, in conflict, in fear).

NEGATIVE PATTERNS OF COMMUNICATION

Communication patterns (roadblocks) can include all of the following and much more:

• Apologising frequently
• Self-criticism (e.g. I’m such an idiot!)
• Criticism of others
• Complaining
• Self-justification (e.g. I spoke rudely because she was rude to me.)
• Blaming (e.g. If she hadn’t forgotten the book, I wouldn’t be angry.)
• Peace-making (e.g. It’s alright. It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t mean it.)
• Praising (sincere or false)
• Avoiding
• Judging/labelling (usually begins with “You’re…” or “Why are you so …?” or “If only you weren’t so…”)
• Lecturing
• Listening
• Questioning (really asking to learn, or interrogating)
• Insulting or otherwise trying to intimidate or belittle
• Supporting (e.g. You can do it. Of course you’re a kind man.)
• Self-disclosing (explaining one’s own thoughts, motives, feelings, needs etc)
• Self-concealing (hiding one’s true thoughts, feelings, needs, motives etc.)
• Gossiping (talking about others)
• Expressing emotion by yelling, crying, throwing things, banging doors etc.

Most of our communication patterns are learned. They may be learned by modelling our behaviour on the behaviour of significant persons in our lives. For instance, a person might use sarcasm in most conflict situations having learnt to unconsciously from a teacher who controlled unruly or hostile students with sarcasm. Another person might have learned from her father to use peace-making communications in disagreements, reflecting her father’s attempts to avoid unpleasant conflict.

Further dysfunctional ways of relating typically learnt by children include:

• how to remain superficial
• how to build facades
• how to play interpersonal games
• how to hide from ourselves and others
• how to downplay vulnerability
• how to manipulate others
• how to hurt and punish others if necessary (from Gerard Egan, 1975).

Because the learning is often unconscious, we are often not aware of the ‘teachers’ in our lives until we begin analysing our patterns and recognising them in people who influenced us.

Some patterns develop out of situations, especially if those situations were traumatic or life-changing. A judgmental, critical man might come out of a near-death situation with new tolerance for others, and communicate more appreciation. A previously outgoing, tolerant and positive woman might become more negative, suspicious and self-concealing after being physically attacked.

Sometimes, the change results from the development of already latent tendencies (the woman may have previously avoided her inherent fearfulness) while other changes may result from fixation on the traumatic or critical incident and its associated emotions (the woman’s whole perspective is influenced by her terror of the attack). On the other hand, the changes may be a temporary strategy for coping as the person re-thinks their beliefs and values (the woman might have been too trusting and chosen to see only the positives, so her new pattern might help her cope as she struggles to form a more realistic, balanced perspective).

Other patterns may be consciously developed. Humanistic psychologists emphasise the individual’s inherent drive to personal growth, and the importance of seeking fulfilment, in their theories of human behaviour. Even children can choose to make changes that bring them closer to their ideals, and much teenage angst can be explained as the young person’s search for personal meaning. A person might become more self-critical as a way of working towards an ideal, or might use praise as a way of communicating and nurturing an appreciative attitude to life and other people. The beauty of being human is our incredible capacity for purposeful, self-driven change.

Often we might feel that those around us will criticize us for making the attempt to change parts of who we are, however if we are able to prepare those closest to us and explain to them what we are wanting to do and why, and ask for their assistance and support, they may be more inclined to encourage us as we change, rather than feeling threatened by our use of new skills.

Aggressive patterns

If we have learned from parents or significant others to deal with conflict of disagreement aggressively, we will develop aggressive communication patterns.

These can involve any or all of the following:

• Putting others down
• Threatening or intimidating others
• Assuming hostile intent from others and responding accordingly
• Not allowing the other to express their thoughts or feelings
• Diverting the topic from the real issue to an already contentious issue
• Standing too close or above the other
• Speaking louder than is necessary
• Showing overt hostility to another’s communication
• Belittling the other’s feelings or ideas
• Insisting that a private disagreement be aired publicly or before an audience
• Enlisting others to support your opinion
• Becoming angry when the other expresses distress
• Blaming others for your distress or anger
• Speaking in general terms e.g. You always… you never…
• Being defensive about your own thoughts, feelings or behaviour patterns
• Avoiding responsibility for your faults or mistakes by bringing up the other person’s.

Victim patterns

Some of the aggressive behaviours listed above can also be part of a victim pattern. Others include:

• Not communicating your thoughts or feelings
• Focusing on your distress rather than issues
• Placing responsibility for change or agreement on the other person
• Blaming
• Not listening to the whole story
• Using mostly victim language e.g. You always… I never… I can’t….
• Complaining to others instead of speaking openly with the relevant person
• Bringing up past injuries instead of focusing on the issue
• Not taking responsibility for your feelings (i.e.. The other person makes you unhappy..)

Avoidance patterns

As well as some of the above behaviours, avoidance behaviours can include:

• Joking about issues that are of concern to others
• Becoming distressed when criticised
• Diverting the conversation onto a less problematic issue
• Not expressing true feelings or concerns
• Using mainly soothing or avoidance strategies in conflict situations
• Including others to avoid speaking for yourself
• Denying feelings or needs
• Acting different to how you really feel
• Expressing hopelessness about change
• Only discussing problems when forced to do so
• Not accepting responsibility for your own feelings or thoughts
• Keeping up pretences to avoid dealing with real feelings.

Counselling Handbook by the Staff of ACS

Full of interesting case studies, this ebook is a wonderful introduction to the complex world of the human psyche. Expand your mind and learn about what makes people tick .

Are you a good listener? Hone your skills...