I was a student counsellor in my second year first semester of my bachelor in social science

This nervousness made me breeze over asking the client if they had any questions about the confidentiality agreement. It is crucial to make sure you give the clients an opportunity to ask questions. Still, if this is not done it can discourage the client from opening up and potentially set a bad stage for the session. Additionally, I found myself unable to maintain eye contact at times with my client, due to uneasiness and a loss for words. When stuck on what to say next, I more often than not would look away from the client to collect my thoughts. Yet, this seemed to create some discomfort within the situation toward the client themselves. Eye contact is important to make sure the client realizes you are in the moment with them, making them a top priority. A loss in this concept can create animosity towards the goals of the session. Likewise, without affirmation there can be negative consequences to your session and the emotional state of the client. Often clients are coming to social workers in crisis and are emotionally unbalanced. Therefore, affirmations of the client’s strengths help them grow in confidence in figuring out a treatment plan for their situation. This attribute is something I almost completely disregarded because I was so focused on analyzing the situation that I forgot to acknowledge the strengths within the client. I was very intent on trying to find the root of the

In my opinion the beginning of the counselling session is one of the most important stage of the process, the client will be very nervous and will not fully trust the process they are about to embark on, their unknown journey they will be nervous. The Client may hold back what they are feeling until they have gained the trust of the counsellor, and know they are safe and in a confidential environment.

She clearly showed empathy by saying “oh that’s great news” then let silence do the rest of the work as I quickly filled the gaps then promptly responded (DeVito, 2009, p. 140-141). It also made me think about the positive things I have going in my life at the moment and the slight realisation that its not all that bad.

Allowing for our ethical codes of conduct, if the client is someone we feel we can proceed with, then as always, the first stage would be to develop a good rapport and gain the clients trust to develop an honest and open relationship with them. The client centred approach as always is the best method for this – to put the client at ease in a non-judgemental space where they can express their emotions and explore what it is they want to achieve with therapy. In giving the therapist an

During the session I communicated to the client by saying things such as ''mmm'' and ''yes I hear you''. Minimal encourager's were used to demonstrate that I was listening to the client, without disturbing her flow too much. I nodded my head on a couple of occasions which again showed the client that she still had my attention. There was a brief moment of silence which I managed by acknowledging that the silence provided a space for the client to think about what she had just said. At this point my attention was on the client and I felt I gave her respect by not interrupting her thinking time as I waited for her to begin talking again.

Due to Marks very depressed state, the initial interaction required a great deal of empathy and high degrees of compassion. When first engaging a client, it is important to be compassionate and empathetic and listen without interrupting, prompting or advising (Berg-Weger, 2013). Reflecting and summarizing content delivered in the session is a valuable way to let the client know that you are actively listening to what they are saying

I Demonstrated empathic by letting her know thatis okey to feel ashamed and that we all are humans . showing empathy to the individual have a deep understanding of anothers person point of view they can

I found that I need to make improvements in many respects. First, I need to improve my opening statement to make it more clearly and smoothly and give my client an open question to encourage her to talk about her issue. Moreover, I need to make an improvement on identifying specific emotions that clients are feeling. In this session, I failed to use “feeling” vocabulary to reflect her feelings and create an empathic environment. In addition, I need to learn not to let my own experience and judgement influence the helping process. For example, when my client was talking about how smoking habit took away her studying time, I was thinking, “exactly, bad habits always influence many students’ academic performance in a negative way.” Although I did not say it, I wanted to say this to help her feel accepted and understood. This may not what she was thinking, but I was thinking it because I have experienced it before. To effectively help people explore themselves, I should make an improvement in these

The therapeutic alliance also known as a therapeutic relationship is about how I as a clinician/therapist connects, behave and engage with a client and also how a client relates to the therapist (Harely Therapy, 2016). This relationship is collaborative. I remember going into the first session nervous and incompetent. In our first meeting, Sarah asked me, you are just a student and how can you help her. I remember telling her, I am being trained at university and also, I am working under the supervision of J*. I let her know that I will be transparent about things I don't know, and I will come back with answers in the next session or sessions. As Sarah shared her fears of

Another counseling skill I used during the demonstration was use of open ended questions. I used these types of questions throughout the counseling session in order to encourage my client to elaborate on what his thoughts were and how he was feeling. I believe that this increased the potential space throughout the session. While I used many open ended questions, there was one question that stood out to me when I was reviewing the video of the demonstration. At one point I asked the client if he could think of a time when he had had a similar situation to what he was currently experiencing and how he handled this situation (see Appendix B). I believe this was an excellent example of an open ended question because it encouraged the client to think about how he had solved a problem in his past and how he could use his experience to solve the current problem he was having. This question may have empowered the client and have helped him realize that he is capable of handling the issue with his friend.

I focus my attention by filtering out my own “noise” (physiological and psychological) and “tuning in” to the client.

I mentioned to my client that our conversation is confidential because he needed to be assured that whatever he discloses remains private (Bond 2010). Confidentiality is very important and can be broken if the client or somebody else involved may be in danger (Hough 2012). Based on Pearson Centred Approach (Teater 2014), I created a nice environment so the client can feel relaxed and confident in the hope that he will open-up about his feelings. We had a good body language and connection which lead to a deep discussion, but my anxiety made me interrupt him many times which affected our conversation negatively.

As the client was struggling to tell his story, I offered the suggestion of working collaboratively on a timeline (Appendix A) which might help us gain a shared understanding of what was going on for him and would help to formulate goals and highlight his strengths and resources, which he willingly agreed to (McLeod & McLeod, 2016). This process evolved over a couple of sessions and I remained empathic, curious, open-minded and respectful whilst continually monitoring the client's verbal and non-verbal communication (Cooper & McLeod, 2011). I used Socratic and open-ended questioning which elicited a collaborative discussion and allowed the client’s story to unfold. The client never felt loved or wanted by his parents and their constant verbal

Well, I'm Kavi from India. I did my post graduate in social work specialized in medical and psychiatric. Recently I did bachelor of special education also did two post graduate diploma courses, post graduate diploma in hospital management and post graduate diploma in guidance and counseling. My graduation I completed bachelor of rehabilitation science from holy cross college. I'm carrying a work experience of 9 years. Past 6 years I worked as a district coordinator in chief minister health insurance. Also, had 3 years I worked a special educator in a hearing impaired school. If I talk about my family I'm married and I have a daughter. I have coupled of hobbies. I'm fond of reading spiritual books and interested in making crafts. That all

Understanding the counseling session from the client’s perspective is a very important aspect in the development of a therapeutic relationship. A clinician must be an excellent listener, while being to pay attention to the client’s body language, affect and tone. The dynamics in the counseling session that is beneficial to the client include the recognition of the pain that the client is feeling. The detrimental part of this includes a misunderstanding of the real issues, a lack of consideration of the cultural aspects of the client, and a lack of clinical experience or listening skills. In this presentation, we will discuss the positive and negative aspects of the counseling session from the client’s perspective which