Building your foundation
as a helper
----Understanding yourself
and interpersonal patterns
Does Psychotherapy Work?
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Empirically Supported Treatment (EST)
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Division 12 Clinical Psychology
Empirically Supported Relationship (ESR)
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Division 29 Psychotherapy
The Effective Counselor
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The most important instrument you have is YOU
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Be authentic
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Your life experience, who you are, and how you
struggle to live up to your potential, are powerful
tools
Serve as models for our clients
Your own genuineness can touch your clients
Be a therapeutic person and be clear about who
you are
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Be willing to grow, to risk, to care, and to be involved
Effective counselors
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Warm, accepting, caring
Know who they are
Open to change
Sincere, honest, & authentic
Invested, willing to take risks
Good boundaries
Live in the present
Sensitive to culture…………..more
Interpersonal patterns (see handout)
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Intimacy needs
Need for approval from others
Importance of relationships in life
Preoccupation with relationships
Need for relationships
Level of trust
Level of trustworthiness in relationships
Level of confidence in relationships
Dependency Needs
Self-versus-other orientation in relationships
Comfort with asking for help
Importance given to feedback from others
Interpersonal patterns (see handout)
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Level of self-versus-other absorption
Approach-avoidance behaviors
Level of value granted to relationships
Social skills
Comfort in new relationships
Center of attention
Self-disclosure in relationship
Emotional expressiveness in relationships
Identification with others
Conflict with authority figures
Stance toward equality in relationships
Source: Basic Skills in Psychotherapy and Counseling, by C. Brems (3rd), 2001
Interpersonal Patterns
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Circle your interpersonal patterns from each
theme.
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Highlight the top two significant patterns.
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Discuss how the above interpersonal patterns
could impact the helping process.
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Examples? Sharing?
Counseling for the Counselor
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Being a client, you can:
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Think about our motivation for wanting to be a counselor
Understand the feelings of being a client
Find support as we struggle to be a professional
Deal with personal issues, increase your self-awareness,
and know the impacts for being a counselor
Be aware of and be assisted in managing the countertransferences
Therapists can help their client no further than they
have been willing to go in their own life.
The Counselor’s Values
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Be aware of how your values influence your
interventions
Recognize that you are not value-neutral
Your job is to assist clients in finding answers
that are most congruent with their own
values
Find ways to manage value conflicts between
you and your clients
Begin therapy by exploring the client’s goals
Multicultural Counseling
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Become aware of your biases and values
Attempt to understand the world from your
client’s standpoint
Gain a knowledge of the dynamics of
oppression, racism, discrimination, and
stereotyping
Study the historical background, traditions,
and values of your client
Be open to learning from your client
Multicultural counseling Competence
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Awareness of one’s own assumptions, values,
and biases (awareness of self)
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Understanding the worldview of culturally diverse
clients (understand others)
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Developing appropriate intervention strategies
and techniques (appropriate Skills)
*Adapted from Sue, D. R., & Sue, D. (2004).Counseling the culturally diverse:
Theory and practice (4th Edition). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Defensive Racial Dynamics
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Freud (1926, 1989) believed that people use
defenses to protect themselves when they feel
threatened.
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Clark (1991) defines a defense mechanism as
an “unconscious distortion of reality that
reduces painful affect and conflict through
automatic and habitual responses.” (see
handout)
Source: Ridley, C. R. (1995). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy:
A practitioner’s guide to intentional intervention. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Defensive Racial Dynamics
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There are four important characteristics
common to all defenses mechanisms.
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Unconscious motivation.
Distortion or denial of reality.
Reduction of emotional pain.
Automatic and habitual responsiveness.
Eight Racial Related Defenses
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Color Blindness
Color Consciousness
Cultural Transference (client)
Cultural Counter transference (counselor)
Cultural Ambivalence
Pseudo-transference
Over-identification (minority therapist)
Identification with the Oppressor (minority
therapist) (see handout)
Issues Faced by Beginning Therapists
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Common concerns:
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Anxiety and self-doubts
Skills vs. being ourselves
Carry clients issues in our daily life
Unrealistic beliefs:
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no rooms for mistakes (perfectionism)
Unselfishly giving (please others)
Worry no answers or solutions (need in control)
Every client should get better (personalizing)
Be effective all the times (need to be valued)