Using Appropriate Silences During A Counselling Session

Silence is okay and at times I should allow it to happen on its own, but I need to work harder to stop myself from filling “the void” in sessions. I should practice what I have preached as a counselor in session and be congruent. One of my new goals is to work towards being okay with silence in my sessions. Slowing down and talking less is more important for the process because in the case of counseling less is definitely more. Silence is a useful skill to have, but I am now realizing how uncomfortable I am with it. I realized when working on my presentation that I feel as though I am not helping if I am not moving the conversation along, but that this is something about me I need to work on. It makes me feel inadequate in the moment as a trainee, but silence is very useful and can help the client to grow too. When looking back at our ced 727 class I remember learning that silence is our friend. Silence helps everyone to reflect and/or compose their thoughts. Being okay with this process is a very important aspect of being a good counselor and something I am going to continue to work on throughout my own

This essay will explore the counselling relationship along with the benefits and limitations as well as discussing other factors that have an important impact in relation to the outcome of counselling. Counselling is an interpersonal relationship between the client and qualified therapist, the relationship involves communicating with the client and using skills to explore the client's feelings. The counselling/ therapeutic relationship can be used in all types of counselling such as psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioural, person centred and cognitive therapy. As mental health disorders increase so does the need to deliver effective counselling, which means that the therapeutic relationship is more crucial than ever. (Miller, Hubble, Duncan and Wampold 2010; Norcross and Lambert 2011).

However, it is not always that simple and there may be some instances when it is not possible to maintain total confidentiality and the counsellor my have to pass on certain information that was revealed. For example, if a crime has been committed or if there is a risk of harm to another person. In this case the counsellor must be clear with the client what information they may have to pass on and to whom.

During this stage, all of these methods are used to check the client’s perception of the event. By the counselor completely understanding the client’s perceptions of the precipitating event and what has caused the stressor, as well as the surrounding influences and causes, they can move into coping methods. By using all of these methods and techniques, we will be able to identify the appropriate items to move on, as mentioned earlier: precipitating event,

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

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).

During this initial session, the client stated she is seeking counseling to "help find herself" due to some concerns she is dealing with in her personal life. When asked "to describe what does finding herself mean" the client was unable to answer. The client struggled to provide her view or a meaning to certain issues she identified as concerns. The counselor then assesses the client's family and her interactions with her family to find a correlation in her family interaction and what changes she wants to make in her personal life. Initial impression from the counselor is the client is aware of herself and her family and what she views as a positive and negative interaction which has or could impact the way she views things now. The client

To be able to help a client to access their deepest thoughts and open up for discussion that is both helpful and meaningful, there are several specific microskills to know about to enhance the communication with the client (Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors, 2009). These communication skills are built through different stages and may feel a little unnatural at the beginning. However, counselling is not about giving advice, but about supporting and helping the client to find his/her own solutions. This makes counselling challenging on many levels as you need to be aware of your own behaviour (Perinatal Mental Health Project, n.d.).

It allows time for the client to collect their thoughts, and process what has happened in the session. The counsellor should let the client be silent but still be attentive, but not try to rush the client or fill in the gaps or silence, as this would be insensitive and could damage the counsellor-client relationship. The counsellor should track the client, if the silence is going on for a long time. Sometimes the client gives a sign, like maybe looking directly at the counsellor, and catching his eye the counsellor could encourage the client to try to continue by being gentle and accepting of what was said before the silence. (Course handout 2013).

Listening is a skill that requires active, rather than passive, participation to advance shared understanding and minimise misinterpretation. Lang, Floyd and Beine (2000) describe active listening as a skill that ‘focuses on attending to patients’ clues, ie, utterances and/or behaviors that are not explicit but may have special meaning and suggest unshared ideas, concerns, and expectations’. This essay will discuss how active listening strategies such as analysing and displaying non-verbal body language, clarifying meaning and accuracy, expressing understanding for the speaker’s feelings through empathy and silence contribute to effective communication by encouraging the speaker to convey his or her thoughts, building trust and

The essay will evaluate the necessity and importance of the development of the core conditions in the counselling process and critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the person-centred approach on the counselling process.

As a counselor I had to observe the reaction of the client. I was nervous with the client but using my hand gesture it make me less nervous. The main things you must use your listening skills. The client must be able to need to improve upon is your leadership skills. The client should explain exactly what is going on with the student without any hesitations. I need to wait sometime for the client to speak before speaking. The counselor will observe the student and making some ways to handle

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).

* Differentiation and elaboration of experience. Clients start back seeing things in a very black and white manner with no grey areas. This change during the counselling process.

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: