Counselling Cheat Sheet PDF

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Contents Lecture 1: What is Counselling?.....................................................................................................................................2 Lecture 2: The Structure of Counselling.........................................................................................................................3 Lecture 3: Psychodynamic Approaches..........................................................................................................................4 Lecture 4a: Humanistic Approaches...............................................................................................................................5 Lecture 4b: Existential Approaches................................................................................................................................6 Lecture 5: Developmental Tasks.....................................................................................................................................7 Lecture 6: Counselling & Responses to Loss...................................................................................................................8 Lecture 7: Cognitive-Behavioural Approaches...............................................................................................................9 Lecture 8: The Counselling Relationship & Research...................................................................................................10 Lecture 9: New Perspectives.........................................................................................................................................11 Lecture 10: Professional Issues.....................................................................................................................................12 Lecture 11: Integrating Theory & Practice: Growth, transformation & change...........................................................13

Lecture 1: What is Counselling based on idea it is good to talk and to be listened to. Counselling is subtle and powerful form of helping. Counselling? Introduction

Ways of defining counselling practice o o o

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Counselling = way of helping people to help themselves. Counselling = working alliance of two or more where resources of one person used to explore, clarify, identify, activate and express available resources of another. Counselling = process where one person helps another via purposeful conversation to understand them. Seeks to establish helping relationship where client can express thoughts + feelings to clarify own situation, come to term with new experiences, see difficulty objectively and face problem with less anxiety + tension. Assists individual to make own decision from choices made available. People engage in counselling when counsellor offers/agrees to offer time + attention + respect to client. Task of counsellor to give client opportunity to explore, discover + clarify ways of living resourcefully and toward greater wellbeing.

What is a human being? Rollo May proposes basic nature of human being = “psyche” or “soul” or “personality”, which is characterised by freedom, individuality, social integration and spiritual tension. May formulates 4 principles of personality as guide for counselling: 1) 2) 3)

It is the function of counsellor to lead client to acceptance of responsibility for conduct and outcome of their life. It is the function of counsellor to assist client to find their true self and then help them have courage to be this self. It is the counsellor’s function to assist client to cheerful acceptance of social responsibility, to give courage which releases client from compulsion of feeling inferior, guiding them to strive towards socially constructive ends. 4) It is the counsellor’s function while helping client to free themselves from guilt feeling, to assist client to accept + affirm spiritual tension inherent in human nature. Models of helping Egan’s model (1986) – 3-step model: identification, goal setting and action Heron’s six categories (1990) – Authoritative (prescriptive, information, confronting), Facilitative (cathartic, catalytic, supportive) Hopson’s model of Ways of Helping (1981) Direct action – acting to provide another’s immediate needs, acting on their behalf (e.g., providing a meal, lending money) Giving advice – offering someone opinion of best course of action based on view of situation (e.g., “if I was you…”) Giving information – giving person information they need (e.g., legal rights, address of an agency, available help) Providing instruction – enabling someone to acquire knowledge and skill (e.g., teaching, training, demonstration) Systems change – influencing + altering systems and context surrounding person’s problem (e.g., family therapy, working with groups) Counselling – helping person explore problem, clarify issues, re-evaluate experiences, explore choices (i.e., helping people to help themselves) Role of Counsellor o o o o o o

To listen Empathise Be non-judgemental Open to experience Strive towards authentic relationship Generate opportunities for growth

Client’s perceptions of counselling (Berzon) Increased awareness, recognition of similarity, core conditions, self/other perception, expressiveness, communication, warmth, ventilation. The client’s needs o o o o o

To “speak” their mind To tell their “story” To avoid betrayal of personal meaning To experience themselves as “whole” To an authentic relationship with “another”

Counsellor qualities and training Qualities of person who becomes counsellor, qualities counsellor draws in their work.

Lecture 2: The Structure Hough (2006) proposes counselling = requires coherent framework/structure that can serve as map in counselling. of Counselling Counselling skills o Listening o Non-verbal communication o Gestures and touch o Silence (so clients can gather thoughts otherwise seen as intrusive + insensitive) o Dress and appearance

Verbal communication skills o Paraphrasing + summarising o Asking questions + challenging o Immediacy (what is happening now in counselling situation) o Counsellor self-disclosure e.g., “I know that feeling… but when I…” o Giving information to the client o Identifying patterns and themes

Action phase o Goal setting (helps client plan changes, tend to react positively to goal chosen themselves) o Choosing programmes o Creative thinking (idea storming, visualisation, imagery) o Giving encouragement o Evaluating goals + progression

Active listening Franklands & Sanders (1995) = active listening is skill emphasised by all counselling methods. They propose active listening has two phases: 1) 2)

Discrimination = observation part, what is beneath words i.e., body language, feelings, meanings, what is not being said Communication = responding part , includes responding back to person so they are heard and accurately understood i.e., non-verbal gestures, eye-contact, reflection, clarifying, para-phrasing

Rogers’ “Core Conditions” of how counsellor should be when helping another: o o o

Empathy Unconditional positive regard Congruence

Empathy is openness to feeling in another. Ability to perceive accurately the feelings of another person and ability to communicate understanding. Empathy = an attitude + activity. Being empathic is effort to see, feel and understand world from other’s POV. Pity and sympathy lack objectivity, they encourage over-identification and lead to inappropriate rescue fantasies . Basch (1988) gives 5 steps for empathic understanding: 1) Awakened affect reaction in the counsellor 2) Viewing the affective reaction objectively 3) Identifying client’s affective state 4) Discerning meaning/significance of client’s message 5) Communication/response

Empathy depends on human intersubjectivity + focuses on client’s inner experience. Counsellor mustn’t take client’s words at face value but looks for deep meanings of what is/not said and un/conscious communication. Heron (1990) stresses discerning process and classifies empathy as a catalytic intervention  client says something with implicit feeling, thought or intention between lines not fully expressed.

Egan (1986) distinguishes basic empathy which reflects back relevant surface feelings and meanings, and advanced accurate empathy which goes beyond expressed to partially expressed and implied to buried feeling and meanings. Suggests 5 ways to communicate this to client: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

Expressing only what is implied Identifying themes Connecting islands Helping clients draw conclusions from premises From less to the more

Tolan (2003) suggests at its most basic, empathy is reinstatement of someone’s words to show they are heard + understood. Frankland & Sanders (1995) propose essential skill element of empathising are (i) imagination rather than identification, (ii) perception + thought of world of other and (iii) resonance of feeling.

Unconditional positive regard is openness to individuality of another. Involves respect/acceptance for client, avoiding judgement + possessiveness. Involves recognising worth of client not for status, achievements, material success but themselves and courage. Acceptance expressed through active warmth to client. Frankland & Sanders (1995) propose 3 elements involved: (i) acceptance of humanity of people in helping relationship, (ii) acceptance it is made of light and shade and (iii) acceptance of (counsellors) self which helps adopt non-judgemental approach when helping. Congruence is openness of “self”. Counselling involved overlap of 2 frames of reference, the client’s “felt self” and counsellors “felt self”. Congruence = outcome of tension between 2 references. Congruence involves maintaining basic honesty + authenticity. Involves counsellor being true to themselves. Can involve skills of confrontation, being frank of issue, challenging client. Tolan (2003) describes counselling to create distortion-free zone. Congruence helps client learn to trust counsellor’s experience. Developing a framework for counselling practice Counselling practice seen to rest on these perspectives: o o o o o o

Importance of active listening Establishing a therapeutic alliance (working relationship) Recognising human existential givens Exploring individual qualities of the client Identifying client’s resources, capacities and skills Facing challenge of growth and change

Lecture 3: Focuses on givens of human experience,Psychodynami what we bring to the world, how personality develops in relation to its interaction with outside world. Psychodynamic perspective in counselling c Approaches o o o

Circumstances – focus on unconscious component of our experience + consequent unconscious conflicts. Unconscious memories from past/early life experiences contribute to our lived experience like present circumstances we find ourselves. Support/Growth – emphasis on support than growth or, on insight arising from interminable self-exploration. In post-Freudian psychodynamic approaches more emphasis placed on personal growth and transformation. Self – notion of self has little contribution to traditional Freudian approach, but it does feature in later developments. Freud’s model of psyche is fragmentary “self”, with id-ego-superego in conflict with each other. But, notion of self = central to Carl Jung’s psychodynamic approach where goal of development is fulfilment + wellbeing rather than resolution of conflict.

Freud’s contribution: Psychodynamic counselling Freud offered new language for mental event discussions + clinical work seriously took anxieties + disturbances client’s experienced. He observed how people experience phenomena as happening to them rather than under conscious control including dreams, free associations, slips of tongue, mistakes, re-emergent feelings of anger, fear + despair, neurotic symptoms + changes in bodily states. Key concepts include preconscious and unconscious, Oedipus complex, trauma theory, libido, pleasure principle, Thanatos, dreams, free association, transference, resistance, defences. Object relations (OR) Concerned with development of interpersonal relationships from early infancy to maturity, with emphasis on child-mother relationship. Object designates the thing (usually person/part-person) through which instinctual drive is able to achieve its aim. OR = system of psychological explanation based on premise that mind is comprised on elements taken in from outside. This occurs in process of internalisation (of objects). In OR theory psyche seen as object-seeking instead of pleasure seeking. For infants, first object is part object e.g., breast. Infant doesn’t respond to mother as whole but as supplier of its needs. Ego strengthened by finding of good objects. Internalisation (introjection + identification) important for development of psychic structure + mental functioning. The psyche through projection attributes/places feelings onto objects + through splitting, can distinguish between pleasurable and non-pleasurable aspects of same object. Psychodynamic: The basics Major contribution = understanding subtlety of working alliance between client + counsellor. Greatest insight = past is implicated in our livedexperience of present but we are not aware of this. Everything we experience = simultaneous product of what is in front of us and unconscious projections of minds generated by earlier experiences. Transference = projection of past meanings/experiences onto the person of the counsellor who can recognise in transference, unconscious mind is exposed. Psychoanalytical work includes: Techniques used include working with transference, working with dreams, free association, exploring defences + resistance. Projection involves unconsciously attributing one’s own traits, attitudes or subjective feelings to others; ascribing one’s own unacknowledged desires + faults as a defence against guilt; or perceiving objective stimuli in line with personal interests, desires, fears or expectations. Boundaries between self + other become blurred by projections. Transference describes process whereby a client shifts affects/feelings applicable to another person onto counsellor. Client enacts their unconscious in the present moment, leading to insight + self-realisation. Counter-transference concerns arousal of counsellor’s repressed feelings by therapeutic situation. Now viewed as important site of unconscious communication. With right self-awareness the counsellor can gain insight from counter-transference that will help the client. Unconscious resistance involves opposition to any attempt to lay bare content of unconscious material. This takes form of ego defence mechanisms like denial, humour, repression, regression, rationalisation, displacement, sublimation, splitting that enable person to avoid awareness of anything arousing anxiety. With skill of confrontation, counsellor can challenge resistance and explore clients’ defences. Supervision raises issue of who counsels counsellors? Regular supervision, respecting confidentiality is requirement of professional counselling practice. Counsellors can carry burden of unconscious projections from clients or fail to recognise signs of “burn out” without enough supervision. Jung said it’s important to train therapists. Symptoms as signs – it’s our capacity to use signs + symbols that make us human. This capacity mediates human ability to think and communicate, to represent things to ourselves, including representing ourselves to ourselves. Signs + symbols enable transcendence of here + now so human thought not bound by time + space, they enable us to think in terms of possibilities and in turn, enables human consciousness. Through symbols we contact what lies beyond us. Objects become symbols by their ability to reflect back as a feedback mechanism that feelings originally made them the objects of our attention. Symptoms viewed as pointers to next stage of personal growth. Positives include transference as enactment of unconscious processes in present situation, Freud’s model of unconscious primary + secondary thinking, new language to understand mental processes, primary of early experience, observation, attention to detail, idea of symptoms as encoding truths that clients avoid, id-ego-superego, conflict model of neurosis, role of irrational in complex psychodynamic basis of experience

Negatives include theory seen as clumsy, over-deterministic, dogmatic, drawing on limited narrative, infantile sexuality over-stressed, skills of therapist emphasised at expense of client’s experience, intrapersonal emphasised at expense of interpersonal. Freud’s concept of unconscious limited compared to Jung’s, focus of psychopathology is on neurosis at expense of psychosis.

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Lecture 4a: and now” , upon conscious awareness, present lived experience + relationships. Emphasis on Circumstances – focus on “hereHumanistic phenomenological approach (“pure” contents of our experience). Existential perspective stresses “givens” of human life. Approaches Support/Growth – personal growth = core humanistic theme. Rogers tried to identify basic conditions that optimise human growth +

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he stresses as humans; we are in continuous process of “becoming”. Client is supported through crisis with aim of helping them to take responsibility for self. Maslow stresses need to study goals of human growth, self-actualisation + personal transformation. Self – notion of self fundamental to humanistic-existential approach. Emphasis on whole person + human fulfilment.

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Rogers’ Psychology of Becoming Maslow focuses on goals of human growth. Roger focuses on process of becoming a person, a self and actualising tendency. Rogers developed a self-theory. These ideas based on Rogers’ person-centred approach. In Rogers’ theory, the phenomenal field organised like: o o o

Self – conscious organised + consistent set of beliefs about one-self. Organism – sum of all experiences, unconscious feelings, perceptions, wishes. Congruence/genuineness – harmony of self + organism – flexible/realistic.

Rogers argues process of becoming person requires conditions for psychological growth. Primary requirement is experience of unconditional positive regard, acceptance + consequent positive self-regard/acceptance of self. Argued psychological growth becomes blocked by imposition of conditions of self-worth from others. Conditions of self-worth lead to feelings of incongruence that are experienced as conflict between self + reality/self + ideal-self = low self-esteem, confusion, defensiveness, vulnerability. Basic ideas behind person-centred counselling approach involves: i) ii) iii)

An attitude on the part of the counsellor A particular way of relating with client Optimistic view of human potential + growth

Counsellor = trained to actively listen in empathic way + respond to client by reflecting back to client their thoughts/feelings. Approach is phenomenological i.e., client’s view of themselves + of world is validated. Approach is non-directive, resisting imposition of interpretation. Emphasis centred on relationship between client and therapist + healing dialogue that unfolds. Counselling focuses on what client is becoming. 1)

Humanistic view of personality recognising uniqueness of individual together with accepting validity of individual’s lived experience + phenomenal field. Human personality seen as dynamic, responsive to changes in awareness + consciousness. 2) Like Jung’s theory of individuation, human development is not limited to growth throughout childhood/adolescence but continues across lifespan. Through middle + old age, individual develops in response to life events + crises to actualise, unfolding transpersonally + spiritually. 3) Importance of personal meaning emphasised. While acknowledging historical basis of meanings that circulate + offer themselves + inevitable cultural embeddedness of human experience 4) Existential givens of freedom, choice + agency is honoured. We are all agents of life jou...