My Personal Experience As A Helper During A Counselling Session

In this essay I will outline how I make use of counselling skills and knowledge gained by looking at them individually and providing examples of how they have been used working with families and in my personal life. This will be formally and informally and will include skills practice from this course. I will look at the effects the helping have on me and how I deal with them.

When we look at other professions like social workers, housing officers, the emergency services, the police and priests who utilise counselling skills we realise that some of the key concepts that are fundamental to the counselling profession are not their main priority. If such people were to introduce themselves as counsellors their clients may be under the impression that such things as confidentiality will be upheld. An example is the work of doctors, social workers, nurses and carers, in these types of professions advise is given to the client as to what to do and what not to do, medication is administered to the client whereas in the case of counselling especially with

The way the counsellor approaches the client in this infant stage is vital for the client to gain trust and has the willingness to open up in later sessions. Some clients may just rush into what is troubling them or say nothing, in both cases the counsellor will need to be patient, observe and listen to what is being said as there will be vital information given and without understanding this it could damage

I understand counselling to be a helping practice that differs from other helping activities, such as teaching for example. Counselling requires professional training and is specifically contracted or explicitly agreed. It has a theoretical base and uses specific methods within an ethical framework. The relationship between the counsellor and the client is built upon mutual expectation and is central to the process of the client under-going significant change in their lives.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy is widely short-term and concentrates on enabling clients to deal with very particular problems. Often six weeks to six months sessions of course depending upon the problem it is pacifically goal directed and places great weight upon self-help as a long term coping tool that the client can take away with them and successfully use. Cognitive-behavioural therapy believes that clients can learn the wrong ways of developing and making sense of information during their cognitive development. This can often lead to distortions in the way they identify reality, it’s the job of the therapist to enable them to work this out.

In this assignment I intend to define ‘counselling skills and knowledge’ and then show how I actively employ these qualities during my everyday life. These include informal helping interactions with family and friends, in a supervisory capacity at work and during skills practice sessions as part of my counselling course. Finally I’ll analyse the effects that these helping interactions have on me personally and the various ways in which I deal with those effects.

Carl Rogers, Born in Chicago in 1902 as the 4th of 6 children in a strict Fundamentalist Christian household.

For this part of the assignment I am using examples from a 50 minute session recorded within the learning environment. I play the role of the counsellor, and another student plays the role of the client. In order for me to answer the learning outcomes, I have watched the DVD recording.

A counselling relationship is likened to being on a journey - a beginning, middle and end (Smallwood, 2013). During the beginning phase the client develops sufficient trust in the counsellor and the relationship ‘to explore the previously feared edges of his awareness’ (Mearns and Thorne, 1988, p.126).

The counselling process is based on the exchange of emotions between the client and the counsellor which aims to form an alliance (Hough, 1998). It involves the counsellor using skills in which they possess in order to communicate effectively with clients (Hough, 1998). This reflective essay clearly articulates my application of counselling skills used in this practice session and suggestions for improvement. It will provide a summary of the session, identification of a range of skills used and a brief explanation of the reasons for using the skill. It will also provide an evaluation of my application of the skills chosen, including verbatim examples, suggestions for improvement, also including verbatim examples to demonstrate what could

Modern day counselling is equipped with a wide variety of therapies, techniques and approaches. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast two approaches of therapy. Also in this essay the views of the person and the Therapeutic process will be discussed. The two models that are going to be compared are Gerald Egan’s The Skilled Helper model and Steve De-Shazer’s Solution Focused Brief therapy (SFBT).

He decides it best to go their separate ways after attempting to work their relationship out by receiving counseling and going on relationship retreats, but he feels it will never be same regardless of what they do. He can no longer trust her after the situation.

Within this assignment I will explore the ways in which I relate to others. I will identify any barriers or difficulties which could affect my ability to relate to others and therefore have an adverse effect on my role as a helper. Egan (1994) states that to be a fully developed helper, a key component is self awareness. He also suggests that there can be a “shadow side” to helping, which can adversely affect the outcome of the helping process.

Counseling skills has provided me with a valuable insight into the helping relationship and how it is both created and maintained in order to encourage growth and development in the client. The factors involved within the helping relationship include considering Roger’s core conditions, congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy as the three main characteristics necessary in a helping relationship. In order to fully incorporate all three of Roger’s core conditions, I as the counselor must be self-aware, as a lack of self-awareness may inhibit truly listening and understanding the client; self-awareness can be enhanced through exercises such as Johari’s window. Counseling skills such as body language and active listening also

Let your client know you are listening: Listening is absolutely necessary for counselling, but not sufficient. You could listen intently but the client needs is to know that they are being heard to assure them that telling you their deepest thoughts is safe. To let them know you are listening: