L2/LR - Week 1

Learning Review Week 1

750-1000 words

CSK - L2

February 2015

What Is Counselling? Criteria: 3.1 – Define Empathy

What Is Counselling?

Counselling offers a support service to help and guide a person referred to as the client who may often end up going to seek help at a time in their life when they are experiencing stress, distress or other problems that they may find over whelming to cope with alone.

Counselling is a two way contract and is freely entered into by the person seeking help.  It isn’t for the counsellor to be giving advice, or to be the parent, or the friend, and the counsellor is not there to fix problems but to help the client to come to thought processes and solutions themselves with guidance which otherwise they may have found troubling or confusing to come to on their own.

The counsellor is bound by a code of ethical practice and carries a set of professional responsibilities and there must be an agreement and contract made between them with set boundaries at the beginning of the relationship so expectations are met, limits are respected and the client knows what the rules are so that both parties are on the same page and the counsellor is working to the clients agenda. 

The counselling sessions aim is for the client to be set on to a process or path enabling them to then go on and live a more satisfactory and resourceful life being autonomous without this support at some point in the future. At is the belief of counsellors that all human beings have the resources within themselves to grow and recover but sometimes need guidance from a skilled helper to be able to delve into their own inner resources and gain a healthier self-esteem and feelings of self-worth/reach a good sense of condition of worth if given the right conditions of therapy.

Because a counselling service is something where the well-being of a client is extremely important It is very important for a counsellor to have the right training, skills, knowledgeable about theories and follow correct ethical practice and have a lot of moral and personal qualities common sense would expect but also these qualities are defined on the BACP ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy such as sincerity, integrity, resilience, respect, humility, competence, fairness, wisdom, courage and empathy.  

All counsellors are expected to use the three core conditions congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard when dealing with clients which is a way of creating a non-judgemental, accepting, honest, genuine trusting relationship and environment where the client can reach their true potential and flourish.

3.1

All good counsellors should show empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, the awareness of another’s feelings and concerns, but from their point of reference, what it’s like for them. So for a counsellor it means they must have this virtue or skill developed and finely tuned so they can relate to a particular issue or issues their clients are going through by being able to walk in their shoes and understand others.

The BACP states certain ethical codes of conducts/behaviours it expects from counsellors and six important ones are:

1)      Fidelity - (Being trustworthy) honouring the clients trust surrounding confidentiality as trust in the basic foundation of the counselling relationship.

2)      Autonomy - the respect for the client’s right to be self- governing

3)      Benevolence – acting in best interest of the client based on professional assessment.

4)      Non-maleficence - a commitment to not doing harm to the client whether sexual, emotional, financial or any other form of client exploitation avoiding incompetence of malpractice.

It is also the duty of others to whistle blow if a colleague behaves unethically for example and there is a duty to report them to the BACP as it’s a responsibility to challenge malpractice of others and contribute to investigation where discredit to the profession has occurred. 

5)      Justice - strive to provide services that are fair and respect s person’s human rights and dignity. Be fair and just too all clients – meaning understanding differences and diversity so regardless of gender, race, sex, sexuality, age, ability, disability, religion and avoid discrimination.

6)      Self-respect – Self-knowledge and Self- care – it is recommended that counsellors self- care and do life enhancing activities with means not just look after other people but also themselves by using supervision for support, seeking additional training for further development where there is a gap in their knowledge. Having relationships independent of their profession, and engage in life enhancing activities such as hobbies and sports.

How Does Counselling Differ From Other Helping Activities?

Margaret Hough’s – Counselling Skills and Theory defines key principles of counselling as:

Counselling:

·        a special form of communication with an explicit contract

·        a confidential and non- judgmental form of helping

·         based on the principle of empowerment

·         a relationship in which one person helps another

·         a process that entails ‘active listening’

·         a process which helps people to clarify and address problems

·         a process that recognises each person as unique with unique experiences

·         guided by theories about the causes of the problems and methods needed to help

·         an activity carried out by a trained person

                                                   (Hough 2014:  11)

Margaret Hough’s – Counselling Skills and Theory defines how counselling differs from other helping activities as:

Other Helping Activities In Relation To Counselling:

·         some helping relationships involve giving advice, counselling does not

·         other relationships may not have the same kind of boundaries

·         there may or could be a conflict of interests in other helping relationships and there should not be in counselling

·         there are other helping relationships where the helper might be judgemental

·         other helpers may offer sympathy rather than empathy

·         other helpers may not be objective, they may not be trained to be self-aware and  understand that to walk in another shoes does not mean losing one’s own identity and becoming too personally involved which is not helpful to the client.

·         there is an absence of mutual expectation in counselling which means the counsellor is there to help the client and does not expect help from the client in return.

·         counsellors do not impose conditions or expectations upon clients while other helpers may expect their clients to behave in certain ways.

                                                                   (Hough 2014:  12)

Personal Experiences With Counselling Sessions?

If you were to ask me personally what qualities I would like to find in a counsellor then I would say I would want someone trustworthy, honest but with tact and diplomacy who could challenge if need be, someone supportive, and a place you’d have to feel safe.  If you are going to open up to someone and tell them things that maybe you haven’t told anyone else before that might make you feel very vulnerable, then it would be very damaging if under those circumstances the counsellor did not make you feel safe and allow you to be able to do this and explore these feelings and processes.  Non-judgemental as nobody goes along to a counsellor and expects to be judged.  People go to see counsellors because they have problems.  It could be because they are finding life overwhelming or because they are having relationship problems or difficult situations they can’t deal with and they are putting themselves in a vulnerable position by saying they need help and are going wrong somewhere so they need a non-judgemental helper.  Possibly someone they see as a bit of a role model but human with flaws so they can be inspired, someone with integrity, emotionally intelligent with sound moral values and someone they know isn’t going to abandon them so therefore commitment to the relationship would be important for me.

                                                               

*I only had one counselling session myself at the point of doing my first learning review so would not be able to give much reflection on my own personal account of my own experience seeing a counsellor, although at the time I went I was too confused and had too many things going on to be able to talk or for anyone else to be able to help me and bring clarity to my confusion which is why it wasn’t off any value to me. So I think a person does have to have a certain amount of self-awareness first and some idea of clarity before going for help, and it didn’t help that I wasn’t used to or able to communicate or express personal things. So therefore the session didn’t really go anywhere.

So the moral of the tale is, the client has to be ready and able too for it to be a successful process I guess.

Bibliography

Hough, M. (2014). Counselling Skills and Theory (4th ed.) Italy: Hodder Education.