INTRODUCTION
What is counselling?
Counselling derived from
the word ‘counsel’. However in recent years, the word acquired its own specific
meaning or technical term to describe a therapeutic interaction between two
people or more.
All of us, maybe at some
point of our time, find ourselves acting as counsellor. Most of us do not have
a true grasp on what are the concepts of counselling or how to play the role as
a professional counsellor.
Professional counsellors
are highly trained and able to use different kinds of counselling theories and
approaches to help their clients. It is a big different to a person who uses
some counselling skills as a role for example a colleague or a friend.
Counselling is sometimes a
complex and confusing term. It carries different meanings for different people.
In the Concise Oxford Dictionary, there are two definitions of counselling:
1)
“to give advice to (a person) on social or personal problems,
especially professionally.”
2)
“the process of assisting and guiding clients especially by a
trained person on a professional basis, to resolve especially personal, social
or psychological problems and difficulties”
From the two meanings
stated above, it appears to be quite conflicting, thus adding to potential
confusion.
So, to define it clearly,
counselling is :
§ A process when a
counsellor and a client make time in order to help review and explore the
client, emotional or stressful feelings.
§ It is an act of helping
the client to view things from a different point of view and clearly. As a
result, clients will be able to focus on their own feelings.
§ To develop a relationship
through trust. The most important thing to counselling is confidentiality.
However it is by law that a counsellor needs to disclose information if they
believe that there is a risk to life.
What counselling is not :
§ Being judgemental
§ Giving advice
§ Sorting out problems for
the client
§ Emotionally involve with
the client
§ Looking at clients problem
from your own point of view.
OBJECTIVES OF COUNSELLING
The main objective of
counselling is to help the client to recognise and clarify their problem. These
problems may vary and also could be many. These people come from different
types of background and educations. It may appear superficial but it may be
deeper and have implications.
As well as trying to solve
the presenting problem, the client will may need to come to terms with the situation
in which the client finds or to want to seek a better adjustment. This is much
more difficult to face, because for most people they secretly hope for some magic
to make the difficulty go away and there is nothing magic about counselling. If
the aim is adjustable then it could be a long term process for both the
counsellor and the client unable to see any immediate results. One of the
points which the counsellor must make clear at the beginning is that he/she is
unable to change the practicalities of the situation.
Another main objective is
to be able to help the client to bring out voluntary changes for and by
themselves. And when undergoing the counselling experience, they are lead to
try to go deeper inside them. This will enable the client to retain or gain
self-dependence. The factor which is common to all forms of counselling is that
it takes place within a relationship and interaction between counsellor and
client which is the most important component.
COUNSELLING GOALS
“ ..in behavioural terms,
3 categories of behavioural can be identified, namely altering maladaptive
behaviour, learning the decision – making process and preventing problems..”
(Krumboltz,
1966)
Goals of counselling are
described as immediate, mediate or process goals and long range. Goal
statements are important and a must, because it provides direction and purpose
of the counselling session. A counsellor’s goal is to understand his client’s feelings,
motivations and behaviour. There are several goals with different functions.
§ Immediate goals – it is
the process of self-exploration and to motivate the client to go through the
counselling process until the mediate or process goals are achieved, and client
needs to understand himself, vis-à-vis his environmental constraints and
personal resource.
§ Process goal is what the
client will go through to realize the ultimate goal of self – realization, self
– actualization and self – understanding.
§ Long term goals are to
make or turn the client into a ‘fully functioning person’
There are also several
major goals that I would like to achieve with Anthony :
1)
Achievement of positive mental health.
·
If he could reach a positive mental health, he could adjust
and response positively towards other people or any situation.
2)
Resolution of problems.
·
To resolve Anthony’s problem that were brought to my
attention. This is important as an outcome of the former goal to imply positive
mental health.
3)
Improving personal effectiveness
·
This is for Anthony to preserve a good mental health and
securing desirable behaviour changes and personal development
4)
To help change
·
To maximize his individual freedom to choose and act within
the conditions wanted by the environment and society
5)
Decision making
·
To enable him to make good decisions. This is to foster
personal growth. I will need to help him clarify his personal goals
6)
Behaviour modification
·
To remove Anthony’s undesirable behaviour and to stress on
the development of his potential within himself.
Research on the situation given
It is essential that
before each counselling session, the counsellor must make sure that the client
is comfortable. The reason being is that, the client will be able to express
himself and not shy away.
Because Anthony does not
understand why he had to go for counselling, I will need to explain to him and
make him comfortable.
Therefore, before a
counselling session starts, I would do a little research on the client. The
reason is:
1)
To get to know the
client and to make him feel comfortable so that he could freely express
himself.
2)
To understand what are the factors that made him behave this
way.
3)
To learn what other effects there is towards himself and also
his behaviour.
4)
To share with the client ways that would help to express his
feelings and emotion during the session.
This mini research is
important for me to get a clearer picture on what the client is going through.
It could also enlighten the parents, siblings and people around the client on
how to understand the client better. So, with that knowledge, they could also
help to correct and improvise the client’s problematic behaviour. The goal is
also for Anthony to be honest and to make changes in his life, for him to
understand and know that this behaviour is wrong and could have dire
consequences if he continues acting like this. The aim is for him to want to
change on his own, for himself and his future.
I would then prepare a set
of questions that I would want to ask the client during our session.
1)
Introduction questions
§ Questions pertaining to
his full name, age, date of birth, hobbies and other questions that will help
me get to know a little bit on his background.
2)
Building a relationship
§ Question that I would put
to him in order for me to gain his trust in me so that he would not shy away
and feel reluctant and or uncomfortable. For example, “how are you today?”,
have you had your lunch?”, “I heard that you like to play video games, what
kind of video games?”.
At the same time,
observations are done towards the client. On how he react to each questions, or
how he is reacting. Nervous?, oblivious?, confused?, afraid? Or anxious?.
The next step would be is
to start an exploration. This step is to understand the problem of the client’s
behaviour through his perspective, so that we could apply the appropriate
theories in order to help the client.
What are counselling theories?
Counsellors use
counselling theories as treatment plan in treating their clients. There are a
lot of counselling theories that they can refer too. Some of them are Gestalt,
Behavioural, Jungian, Family System, Constructivist, cognitive and many more.
During a session,
counsellors would apply several theories to help the client because there is no
one size fits all theory or strategies that could be applied to all
circumstances.
After the assessment that
I had made earlier with Anthony, I have some thoughts that perhaps Anthony is
having trouble with coping with his parent’s divorce. He wants the proper
attention from his parents, which is why he is behaving like the way he is now.
I have come up with several theories in order to help him overcome his
problems.
Theories
that I would apply
Individual psychology (Alfred
Adler)
1) The
main reason of a personality development is not the unconscious behaviour but
their conscious behaviour. Therefore,
the Alderian theory emphasizes on personal responsibility on how a person will
choose to adjust to any situation or a life event and how they interpret them.
2) Adler
also view that we try hard to be successful and along the way, we overcome some
areas that makes us inferior. He refer this phase as our personal growth
towards our goal for perfection. So for people who did not succeed in
overcoming their feelings of inferiority will then develop an inferiority
complex.
3) In
this Adlerian theory, a person might choose the kind of behaviour as a result
of their lack of interest in social or personal growth. A person when are
discouraged when they attempt of making good behaviour had failed to get the
needed results leads to misbehaviours. The best antidote is to encourage their
good behaviour.
4) Early
education starts at home, it is the basic socialization for a child. A child
interpretation of things happening in their life is determined by their
interaction with their family members. Through this interaction, children are
taught on how to accept and interpret events through certain evaluations of
themselves and their surrounding environment. These perceptions are called
fictions. Basic mistakes could be made when it is based on fictions. As for
Anthony’s case, those mistakes are perhaps :
i)
Minimization or denial of one’s
worth results in the individual believing that they cannot be successful in
life.
ii)
Life took over courage and
therefore he is willing to take risks without knowing the outcome.
Intervention strategies
Strategies
that I would take via the Adlerian theory is :
§
To establish rapport
- To
explore his conscious thoughts, logic and beliefs on what sort of his
behaviours that is not within his best and social interests.
- helping
him to gain insight and for him to define his lifestyle
§
Encouragement
- Supporting
him by telling him that I believe that he has the ability to be responsible and
change his behaviour. Therapy is cognitive and also emphasizing on the faulty
logic to encourage him to take responsibility to change
- To
promote a relationship with Anthony as an equal one, with us sharing
impressions, insights, opinions and feelings to promote therapeutic
relationship.
§
Confrontation
- Challenging
his behaviour and private logic.
§
Task setting
- Ask
him to behave as if he is who he wanted to be and provides him with ‘homework’
outside of the session
- Help
him set up short term goals that will head to long term goals.
§
Asking the ‘Questions’, such as :
- “How
would your life would be if you are doing well?” or
- “Don’t
you want to be successful?”
§
‘Spitting
in his soup’
- To
point out to him why he is actually behaving this way. And should after that he
continues with his current behaviour, but he cannot do so, because he is
already made aware of his motivation for engaging in that behaviour.
Goals to achieve through this
theory
§
To focus on helping Anthony to develop
a healthy lifestyle and social interest.
§
To assist him through 4 goals of
the therapeutic process by :
- Establishing
the therapeutic relationship
- Examining
his lifestyle
- To
develop his insights
- To
change his behaviour
Person centered (Carl Rogers)
This theory views human
basically as good. Carl Rogers believed that if given the proper treatment of
empathy, acceptance and warmth, people would move to change.
Intervention strategies
§
To set up an environment where Anthony could explore any
aspect of himself safely.
§
To facilitate this exploration with empathy, positive regard
and warmth.
§
By using Q-Sort to assess.
-
100 different self-descriptions are written on a card.
-
Ask Anthony to sort them into 9 piles from a scale of ‘most
like me’ to ‘least like me’.
-
The stacks are then recorded.
-
Cards are re – sort again by Anthony into how he would like
it to be like.
-
This Q-Sort will give the indications of the incongruence
between his perceived real self and ideal self.
§ To help him through his
real reflections of feelings by keeping him focused on the clarifications of
feelings and information. To use open-ended questions to help him gain insight
into experiences and do necessary changes in life.
Goals to achieve through this
theory
To
facilitate Anthony to :
- Realistic self – perception
- To have greater confidence
- To have the sense of positive warmth
- To have better social skills and adaptive behaviour
- To be fully thinking in all kinds of aspects in life
Behavioural theory (B.F. Skinner)
Skinner
believes that adaptive behaviour can be learned. This theory has a here and now
focus. One of the process is social modelling, whereby client can learn new
behaviour by watching other people rather than having them to engage in that
behaviour and experience consequences.
Intervention strategies
- To not just maintain my role as a counsellor but can vary and act as
a facilitator, reinforce or as a consultant
- To be active and to supervise other people that are within Anthony’s
environments to ensure he achieve his goals. In this case, the divorced
parents.
- To give punishment. This is to deliver stimuli to achieve
elimination of unwanted behaviour as a result.
- Behaviour rehearsals – by repeating and improving his behaviour
until the desired behaviour is accomplished.
Goals to achieve through this
theory
To
achieve Anthony’s life through better adjustments of his life and therefore
achieving his personal goals professionally and or personally.
Reality therapy (William Glasser)
Glasser
believes that human being is a long process and therefore along that, one’s
personality will change at any time by learning on what he needs from what he
sees. He also believes that humans are self – determined. Every person has a
perception about themselves.
Intervention strategies
- To act like a teacher and be a model for Anthony.
- To create a warm environment of acceptance so that he culd focus on
controlling his display of thoughts and actions.
- To show the reality of his behaviour, is unrealistic.
- By using confrontations for him to accept responsibilities of his
act.
- By using humour to point out absurdity without being sarcastic.
Goals to achieve through this
theory
- To help Anthony to become rational and psychologically strong. A
strong and rational person can behave responsibly towards himself and
other people.
- To determine what he wants in life.
- Develop a practical plan for Anthony to accomplish his desires and
needs.
- Helping him to put his past behind and to focus on the present.
- To accept no excuses and to have him eliminate self-punishment from
his life.
Conclusion
Counselling is no magical
solution. Most of us tend to view it as problem resolution, to emphasize goals
or as tension reduction. Counselling is generative in terms of spirit and
essence. Its aim is assisting individual to develop themselves so that he will
become psychologically mature and are capable of realising his potentials.
Through the several theories adopted above, t might help Anthony to resolve his
behaviour into a behaviour accepted by society. All of the theories above have
the same motive and objective, to help Anthony or any other person with
problems like Anthony to gain insight within themselves so that they will be
able to maximized their potentiality and opportunities that he have, present or
in the coming future. And as a result, to become self-actualized,
self-sufficient and self-directed.
REFERENCES
v Types of counselling theories,
viewed at http://www.edb.utexas.edu/faculty/rochlen/TheoriesApp/index.html
accessed on 11th Nov 2013.
v
How
to Use Counseling Theories & Techniques for School Counseling,
viewed at http://www.ehow.com/how_6858434_use-theories-techniques-school-counseling.html accessed on 10th
Nov 2013
v S.Narayana Rao-
Counselling and Guidance,Second edition, (1997)Tata McGraw –Hill Publishing
Company Limited.NewDelhi.(Pg:63-68)
v Cognitive and behavioural
therapy, viewed at http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/behavioural.html
acccessed on 13th Nov 2013.
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