May
25
There are a number of listening and reflective skills that a counsellor must develop, in order to begin the therapeutic process with a client. A few of these micro-skills are discussed following.
Reflection of Feeling:
Reflection of Feeling involves the counsellor listening attentively and then repeating back to the client the feelings that have been expressed, either verbatim, or in the counsellor’s own words.
Example:
A client discusses being overwhelmed and the therapist either reflects back this same expression, saying “You are overwhelmed” or by using another descriptive word or expression of the counsellor’s choosing, such as “You are feeling overcome by the events of the last week.” While repeating the same words can sometimes be effective, the selection of similar words and expressions is generally preferred, to keep the client from feeling that the therapist is “parroting” him or her.
Reflection of Content:
Reflection of Content involves listening to a client and then repeating back to the client either verbatim or the essence of the facts that were given to the therapist. When the counsellor reflects back the essence of what has been said, rather than the exact content, it is referred to as “paraphrasing”. While reflection of feeling involves discussing the emotions of the client, reflection of content emphasises facts and statements.
Example:
A client tells his or her therapist about a very stressful week that the client has been having. While never using the word “stressful”, the client goes into great detail about all of the things that had to get accomplished and the feelings that accompanied these tasks. The therapist feels empathy for the client and says “It sounds like you had a very stressful week.” The client nods after hearing this paraphrasing of the content of what s/he just said.
Questions:
Questions are used in counselling, but not as much as some might think. Questions are used to help the client to self-explore or to help the client develop insight, but not simply to satisfy the curiosity of the counsellor.
Summarising:
Summarising involves reflecting back feelings and content and paraphrasing, but rather than dealing with a few brief sentences, summarising covers the important topics that a client discussed over an extended number of client statements. While reflecting and paraphrasing have objectives such as encouraging the client to talk further and to show the client that the therapist hears and understands him or her, summarising is often used to give a client an overview of what has been discussed or, if used at the end of the counselling session, to help wrap up the counselling session.