I Had No Experience Regarding Counseling

Evans, G. ( 2007 ) Counselling skills for dummies. West Sussex. John Wiley and Sons LTD

As a result of this course, it is clear that integration of theories will be necessary at times when working with clients.I have a solid understanding that there is no one fit all theoretical approach to a client’s issues. Each client comes with his or her unique set of issues and challenges, in addressing their issues and how to go about helping them to resolve their issues. Dr. Edwards, as i have been developing my therapeutic orientation, i was so focused in the process of defining that i lost fact of the fact that as you stated our theoretical orientation will change as we continue to growth, and evolve as counselors. I also appreciate the information regarding agencies that have a set theoretical orientation, usually linked to a funding source. This is good information. You mentioned the need to be integrative. Throughout this course with different assignments I have comprehended the need to be intergrative with

My experience in the counseling role has increased my confidence over the current semester. I feel that the extensive practice has paid off tremendously. For example, this course has taught me how to formulate a game plan when starting off my sessions. I now have goals which come with a much improved structure format than I had previously. In addition, I am able to have a much clearer perceptive of my feelings where I previously accepted thoughts as feelings. In this self reflection, I will continue to express how my growth experiences that have

I want to help my clients to become all that they can be and accomplish all that they desire to accomplish. The experiences I have had in the counselor program have guided me to be more confident in myself by giving me tools that I can use for myself as well as the client. The skills class helped me to become a good listener. I know before that class I was not a good listener. I generally had something on my mind that I would respond to instead of responding to what the client was saying.

There is some of the basic counseling skills that I learned in EDCE 505 that I see applied in this application. One basic counseling skill is finding out some background knowledge about the client during the first session. For instance, the counselor, Dr. Anika Warren, asked the client, Erika, about why she wanted career counseling and about her educational past (2006). Erika spoke about her family’s love of education and how she was looking to change career and more on from a nonprofit job. This will aid the counselor in how she should progress in the sessions and any areas they might need to cover. Another skill Anika used is summarizing and paraphrasing what Erika told her as a way to seek clarity and move on to another part of the discussion.

I have been at my site for about 14 to 15 weeks and have been feeling more comfortable in my experience. Although at the same time as I need to do some more studying of interventions and learning more about skills for my client’s well-being. After presenting my second case presentation I decided to reread some of the chapters from our process and procedures course again, since it has been a while since I looked at these intervention skills (as I took this course about 1.5 years ago). It was a while ago and I think now I need to brush up on using these approaches now. I think this presentation was useful because it showed me that I need to continue working on my skills as a practicum student. I received a lot of good feedback and I am taking a step in the right direction to think about the skills I need to be a good counselor.

The counseling skill I choose for my role play was affirming. Affirming was something I was vaguely familiar with. In all honesty, I choose affirming out of panic that all the topics on the syllabus would soon be picked. After some research, I learned affirming was part of motivational interviewing, and was a part of OARS. I thought this was going to be very easy. I was wrong.

After reviewing my second video, I witnessed the growth in me applying counseling techniques. At the beginning of the session, I asked Ashley about her day. I noticed that her answer was a one-word answer, therefore, I asked her to walk me through her day. I am developing different techniques in asking my future students open-ended questions. Another technique I portrayed was recapping the last session to my client and asking her how she felt about completing the task she agreed to accomplish. Recapping shows the client that you do think their concerns and worries are important and how they feel is important. In my opinion, the client will begin to development a sense of trust with the counselor if they believe that the counselor cares about

As an observer, I was able to see that body language as a counselor often gets underappreciated. Lindsay was open in her body posture towards Colleen, her client, and as a result, this helped Colleen become more open with Lindsay. In addition, I learned that certain ways of saying things as a counselor can either hurt or help the process, and with Lindsay taking time to reflect certain points back to Colleen, this helped Colleen understand where her depression stemmed from. In the end, I wondered how exactly the process would have went had Lindsay not taken time to help Colleen discern where her depression stemmed from, as Colleen perhaps would not have come back a second time if she did not feel that Lindsay understood her and could make connections

Counselor role-played with client on how to utilize appropriate social skills with adults, family members, and peers.

Define The first counseling skill definition is Attentive paying close attention to something, the way I will apply this in future counseling is, it is very important to pay attention or be attentive to your client, so I will know as a counselor which route to take with my client. Minimal encouragers I can apply this by encouraging my client to express themselves about what they are talking about, and to keep the conversation going I can ask them what happened next, how you felt about that, that is interesting, and I would like to hear more. And for open ended questions, these mean this cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. When I start my counseling sessions, an opened ended question I will ask my client is what brought you here today,

Another important skill I have learnt is reflective responding. It is a back and forth process between a client and counsellor; which simply aids to clarify meanings, summarise and to help the client to delve deeper into the issue (Egan, 2010). I illustrated this virtuosity during a conversation with Nathan were I respond with “Correct me if I am wrong but are you saying that there is no point to life if you do not have someone”? Responding reflectively allowed him to clarify my understanding of his original statement; and also confide in more depth about his worries. Equally important, Egan has confirmed (2010) that “effective helping is a mixture of support and challenge”, and one with out the other can seem harsh and counterproductive (p. 211). In saying this I felt there was a need to challenge; to test the reality of one

My client had several compounding problems: “care broke down and depending on public transportation, son acting out and feelings of defeat.” For me, my role was to use minimal encouragers and silence to be certain I understood her feelings and needs while actively listening to my client’s verbal and nonverbal messages. I would not consider my experience easy; the environment of the online video presented its own challenges with technical difficulties, background noises and personal external distractions that took away from the counseling environment. A face-to-face mock client session was more straightforward, trouble-free and a smoother counseling session from my perspective.

Coming from prior experience of having to go to counseling as a teenager, being a client in a peer counseling was acceptable and familiar. The experience within the session in class was sufficient enough to help deal with a particular problem I had been going through and wanted to search for a possible resolution or change towards the problem for the near future. Though I did not know the helper personally, I had known the helper through another sports team, and being friends within the class helped with being comfortable talking about an issue within my own respective sport. Going into the session being both athletes at the University of Maryland was comforting due to understanding where we both were coming from. The helper concentrated working through each of the different skills through the 3-stage model learned throughout the entire semester to help with my particular issue within the training staff. I noticed her help and focus of wanting to guide through my initial emotions of the situation, moving towards providing advice and insight about the problem, and lastly providing possible recommendations and solutions towards confronting the issue at hand. It felt good and promising receiving possible solutions on how to work through the problem for any future issues relating towards the initial problem. Listening to the helper coming from a different perspective on the issue helped see from a new perspective outside my own opinions about the problem and understanding the

Coming into this counseling course I had little practice in the counseling role with adults. I was nervous and uncomfortable coming into this class. Knowing that I was to be analyzed and taped during counseling sessions was the source of my nervousness and discomfort. My counseling skills were minimal and I was conscious of the fact that I was a complete novice in the counseling role. I needed to learn basic therapeutic factors (Young, 2013) and gain practice in order to feel comfortable in my counseling skills with adults. Furthermore,