Running Head: COU104A APPLIED COUNSELLING
Assessment 2 – Essay
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COU104A APPLIED COUNSELLING
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Introduction
Counselling micro skills are very crucial in assisting the clients to access their deepest
thoughts as well as clarify their future dreams. The micro skills is defined as “a set of verbal and
behavioral responses that facilitate the process of counseling and alliance formation regardless of
the professional counselors’ theoretical orientation” (Geldard & Geldard, 2001). These micro
skills form the basic foundational skills needed to build effective helping relationships. In
essence, they are the foundational tools on which the success of interventions with clients may
depend.
The micro skills are organized and categorized into hierarchy within a systematic
framework. The basic attending skills such as tone of voice, body language as well as patterns of
eye contact sits at the bottom of the hierarchy. While reflection of feelings, summarizing,
paraphrasing and questioning sits at the top of the hierarchy. Studies have showed that
communication skill is the fundamental skills in counselling session (MacDougall, 2002).
Therefore, micro skills provide the client with such alliance building constructs as empathic
understanding, genuineness and acceptance, and will greatly facilitate the development of safe
therapeutic environment (ErlinaYaumas, et al., 2018). However, this paper discussed how to use
demonstrating empathy, reflecting on content, reflecting on feelings, clarifying and asking openended questions to facilitate effective counselling session.
How are they utilized in facilitating effective counseling session?
Demonstrating empathy
Demonstrating empathy is a behavioral aspect that involves building rapport with the
client. The first expression of the counselor towards the client is very critical because the
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COU104A APPLIED COUNSELLING
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counselor must demonstrate to the client that he/she is very interested in listening to him/her and
offer help. By building good rapport with the client in the first meeting, the counselor would be
able to encourage the client to open up and talk about their issues (Cicco, 2011). For example,
when engaging the client, it is important for the counselor to maintain eye contact because it is a
depiction of politeness especially when listening and speaking. The normal eye contact portrays
the counselor to be genuinely interested in what the client is saying.
According to Geldard and Geldard (2001), the counsellor can help the client to relax by
including in their repertoire the matching of non-verbal behavior. This is one of the skills that
takes time to learn and master, but it starts with the counselor sitting in the same positions as the
client. For instance, when the counselor meets the client and he/she sit on the edge of the chair at
first with arms outstretched resting on the knees, the counselor can imitate or mirror that sitting
position (Nugent & Jones, 2009). As he/she engages the client, the counselor can lean forward
which is a demonstration of understanding and empathy. Alternatively, the counselor can slight
backwards to a more relaxing sitting position and if the rapport has begun to be built between the
counsellor and client, the client is likely to mirror the same sitting position, thus minimizing the
anxiety level for the client.
Although counseling involves listening and talking, it is important to sometime use
silence depending with the prevailing condition. It is not a must that counselor always rush to fill
the gaps when the silence comes in between the counseling session. Studies have showed that
silence another skill of demonstrating empathy and it has profound effects on the client in the
counseling session (Hackey & Cormier, 2009). Counsellors with limited experience tend to feel
awkward sometimes when the room become silence in the counselling session and they find any
excuse to cut the silence, in the process, they make the client to perceive that there should be
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continuous talking and listening. But the experienced counsellor understands how to use silence
to the advantages of their clients. Such counsellor has learned to be more comfortable with the
concept of simply ‘being’ with the client.
Reflecting on content
Reflecting on content means deeply held thoughts and meaning underlying life
experience. This is the micro skill that counsellors use to make the client to search more deeply
into the aspects of their own life experience. For instance, two individuals decided to go on
holiday on the same Island. They book the same resort the same time of the year. One started
complaining of the boredom, sunburns and heat they experience (Geldard & Geldard, 2001). On
the hand, the other is very enthusiastic about the wonders of sunset and always walk along the
beach and leisurely life style. The essence of this illustration is to show how the same
environment can make two individuals to express totally different opinions. Therefore, the skill
of reflecting on content is to help the client to explore their value and goals in life, by
understanding the deeper aspects of their experience.
Reflecting on feeling
The experienced counsellor uses reflecting on feelings to assist the client to be aware of
the emotions experienced in relations to the issue at hand. This micro skill is comparable to
paraphrasing, but reflecting on feeling focus on capturing the emotional tones and phrases. It is
very important for the counsellor to accurately understand client’s feelings by reflecting on
feelings (Nugent & Jones, 2009). This way the counsellor will appreciate how an issue or event
may be affecting the client. For example, when the counsellor is listening to a client, he/she can
reflect on the feeling by making compliments such as “that experience saddened me”. Reflecting
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on feelings is intended to promote the development of accurate empathy and assist to create a
safe environment for the client.
Clarifying
Through clarification, the counsellor encourages the clients to perceive their experience
in a more positive fashion. The counsellor achieves this by providing the client with alternative
ways of perceiving its own experience. For example, some clients would complain when they
have to relocate especially away from home (ErlinaYaumas, et al., 2018). This is because they
focus on the loss of familiarity of the community and support network. To assist such clients, the
counsellor should start acknowledging the clients’ experience and then clarify the change for the
client to perceive it as an opportunity to experience new things, people and places as well as an
opportunity for growth.
Asking open-ended questions
The counsellor uses open-ended questions to seek more information from the clients
about their concerns. These are the questions that cannot be answered with few words such as
‘yes’ or ‘no’. Open-ended questions involve the use of terms such as ‘How’ which invites the
client to give more information about their feelings, ‘What’ that seeks information about
emergence of the facts, ‘When’ seeks information about timing of the issues including events,
‘Where’ which seeks information about place, situation and environment, and ‘Why’ seeks the
information about the reasons of the event.
The role of effective counseling skills on the counseling relationship
Analysis indicated that effective counseling skills play a critical role in building good
counseling relationship with is core in delivering successful counselling session and subsequent
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COU104A APPLIED COUNSELLING
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positive outcome, thus becoming beneficial to both counsellor and the client. The essence of
effective counselling skills is to make the client to be cooperative and engageable throughout the
counselling process (Geldard & Geldard, 2001). One of the main roles of effective counseling
skills is to establish trust and rapport with the client. Complete trust compels the clients to likely
follow all the advices given by the counsellor. The effective counselling skills also play crucial
role in creating an environment for understanding goals, perspectives and needs. This allows the
counseling process to prioritize specific aspects and perspectives of patients and parents, hence
enhancing successes.
Further analysis showed that effective counseling skills play a role in enabling the
counselors to adapt the methods to clarify and relay information. This approach eliminates the
confusion that might arises about the relationship between the counselling session practice and
the treatment plan, since the outcome of the sessions largely depends on the full understanding
between the counsellor and the client. It also guides the process of evaluating and fitting clinical
tools to the patients.
Although the counsellors have wide range of techniques to use in counselling session, it
is critical to identify techniques that works well with specific clients based on their situations and
needs. Lastly, effective counselling skills play important role in identifying barriers and findings
solutions (Geldard & Geldard, 2001). Barriers may vary depending with clients needs and the
prevailing situation. However, through effective counselling skills, the counselors have a better
understanding of barriers and skills to find the solutions to these barriers.
The risks and limitation
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There are several risks and limitations that involves the use of counselling micro skills.
The use of eye contact to demonstrate empathy have the risk of client wrongly interpreting it to
mean something else. For example, when the counselor stares at the client for sometime he/she
may feel uncomfortable especially when the counsellor and client are of different genders. Some
clients are shy and eye contact can cause more harm than benefits (ErlinaYaumas, et al., 2018).
Therefore, when the counsellors are engaging with clients exhibiting these characteristics, they
are forced to have limited eye contact with the clients to avoid creating uncomfortable
environment.
In the case of reflecting on content, feeling and clarifying the risks are that the client
may fail to understand the deeper meaning of the content. The misunderstanding of the deeper
aspect of their experience may leads to wrong exploration of their values and goals.
Misunderstanding can negatively impact the outcome of the counselling process (Geldard &
Geldard, 2001). Similarly, the counsellor can wrongly interpret or perceived the feelings of the
client, thus wrongly appreciating how an issue or event may be affecting the client. This means
that the successes of the counselling section is limited to the accurate clarification, interpretation
and understanding of the content and feelings of the client.
The risks of open-ended questions include poor framing and understanding of questions.
This affects the feedback gathered from the clients and subsequent decisions made about the
clients. Failure of the client to comprehend the context of the questions being asked will affect
the outcome of the counselling session.
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References
Cicco, G. (2011). Assessment In Online Courses: How Are Counseling Skills Evaluated? . imanagers' Journal of Education Technology, 8(2).
ErlinaYaumas, N., Syafrimen, S., Noor, M. N., Mahmud, Z., Umar, J., Wekke, S. I. & Rahayu, T.
(2018). The Importance of Counselling Basic Skill for the Counsellors. International
Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 119(18): 1195-1207.
Geldard, D. & Geldard, K. (2001). Basic Personal Counselling: A Training Manual for
Counsellors. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.
Hackey, H. & Cormier, S. (2009). The Professional Counselor: A Process Guide to Helping (6th
Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
MacDougall, C. (2002). Roger's Person-Centered Approach: Considering for Use in
Multicultural Counseling. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 42(2): 48-65.
Nugent, F. A. & Jones, K. D. (2009). Introduction to the Counseling Profession (5th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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