Counselling Skills

The three concepts I have chosen to identify for this book report assignment are, basic empathy, motivation, and reframing. I feel that those concepts are important for counsellors to have as skils.

The first concept i will be discussing is empthy, which is discussed in Chapter six (Shebib, 2003). Empathy is the ability to correctly interpret another person’s feelings to show them you understand. So, empathy is not something we have, but something we do. Empathy is a skill and an attitude and not a feeling (sympathy is a feeling). It is about being able and willing to understand another person from their own point of view, without your own thoughts, feelings, opinions and judgements getting in the way of this understanding. This can be difficult if you have a strong reaction to someone, or if you disagree with what they are saying, or if you have had a similar experience and feel you could give some helpful advice. Empathy is essential in counselling because it helps to build a relationship between the client and counsellor, it helps clients to label their own feelings, and helps the counsellor to understand how their client is thinking or feeling. Therefore, empathy plays a very important role in counselling relationships. There are three types of empathy: basic, inferred, and invitational. Basic empathy is when the counsellor says back to the client what their client is feeling. According to Shebib (1993) "With basic empathy, no attempt is made to interpret, judge, or promote greater awareness or insight beyond that which the client has already articulated" (p. 170). The example listed below shows basic empathy:

CLIENT: I dont understand why my friend has been ignorning my phone calls for the past three months. We have been best friends for years.

COUNSELLOR: So you are frustrated that your friend doesn't

value your relationship.

CLIENT: Yeah very frustrated and mad that she's hiding from me.

COUNSELLOR: It sounds like you would like this frienship to work out. (In triad quote, 2006)

As you can see from this example, the counsellor has summarized expressed feelings from the client.

The second concept I will be discussing is motivation, which is one of the five empowering activities

discussed in chapter seven (Shebib, 2003). Motivation is an important concept when it comes to counselling because it can lead into change for the client. A counsellor is key for inhibiting change in a client, but most importantly the client has to involve their commitment in the change they would like to see. According to Shebib (1993) "Change is stressful because it requires giving up established patterns of behaviour or thinking, and clients will differ in the extent to which they have the skill or energy to take the associated risks" (p.196). Also, there are many problems associated with movitating clients such as: "lazy" clients, clients in denial, involuntary, ambivalent, energized, and burnt-out clients. Counsellors need to be aware of those problems because counsellors need to apply a variety of skills to help the different types of problem clients when the time arises. An example of how I, the helper, used motivation within a session is shown below. My client at the time of this session would be considered a "engergized client" because the client is already motivated and are wanting to see change.

CLIENT: I'm excited to quit smoking, and stop this bad habit of mine.

COUNSELLOR: I can see that your happy about wanting to quit, good for you!

CLIENT: Thanks. I am worried that it will only last a couple of days though.

COUNSELLOR: I am very confidant and believe you can quit, let's think of activities you can do to keep