Counselling Skills I

Develop your ability to support or counsel others through the processes of personal growth and change. The skills and knowledge gained from this course can help you help others overcome limiting thinking and replace feelings of helplessness with productive behaviours such as goal-setting.

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course is divided into eight lessons as follows:

1.  Learning Specific Skills - Learning methods; the counselling rold

2.  Listening and Bonding -  Meeting and greeting; helping the client relax; listening with intent

3.  Reflection:  Paraphrasing - Reflection of feeling; client responses to reflection of feelings; reflection of content and feeling

4.  Questioning - Open and closed questions; other types of questions; goals of questioning

5.  Interview Techniques - Summarising; confrontation; reframing

6.  Changing Beliefs and Normalising - Changing self-destructive beliefs; irrational beliefs; normalising

7.  Finding Solutions - Making choices; facilitating actions; gestalt awareness; psychological blocks

8.  Ending the Counselling -  Terminating the session; closure; further meetings; dependency, confronting dependency.

AIMS

• Explain the processes involved in the training of counsellors in micro skills. 
• Demonstrate the skills involved in commencing the counselling process and evaluation of non-verbal responses and minimal responses.
• Demonstrate reflection of content, feeling, both content and feeling, and its appropriateness to the counselling process.
• Develop different questioning techniques and to understand risks involved with some types of questioning.
• Show how to use various micro-skills including summarising, confrontation, and reframing.
• Demonstrate self-destructive beliefs and show methods of challenging them, including normalising.
• Explain how counselling a client can improve their psychological well-being through making choices, overcoming psychological blocks and facilitating actions.
• Demonstrate effective ways of terminating a counselling session and to explain ways of addressing dependency.

WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE

• Report on an observed counselling session, simulated or real.
• Identify the learning methods available to the trainee counsellor.
• Demonstrate difficulties that might arise when first learning and applying micro skills.
• Identify why trainee counsellors might be unwilling to disclose personal problems during training.
• Identify risks that can arise for trainee counsellors not willing to disclose personal problems.
• Discuss different approaches to modelling, as a form of counselling
• Evaluate verbal and non-verbal communication in an observed interview.
• Identify the counsellor’s primary role (in a generic sense).
• Show how to use minimal responses as an important means of listening with intent.
• Explain the importance of different types of non-verbal response in the counselling procedure.
• Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person experiencing that problem. 
• Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
• Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
• Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
• Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase.
• Demonstrate/observe varying responses to a variety of closed and open questions in a simulated counselling situation.
• Evaluate your use of open and closed questions in a counselling role play.
• Identify the main risks involved in asking too many questions
• Explain the importance of avoiding questions beginning with ‘why’ in counselling.
• Explain how the application of different micro-skills would be useful in counselling in observed communication (written or oral).
• Give examples of situtions when it would be appropriate for the counsellor to use confrontation
• Discuss appropriate use of confrontation, in case studies.
• Show how reframing can be used to change a client’s perspective on things.
• Develop a method for identifying the existence of self-destructive beliefs (SDB’s).
• Identify self-destructive beliefs (SDB’s) amongst individuals within a group.
• List methods that can be used to challenge SDB’s.
• Explain what is meant by normalising, in a case study.
• Demonstrate precautions that should be observed when using normalizing.
• Determine and evaluate optional responses to different dilemmas.
• Explain how the ‘circle of awareness’ can be applied to assist a client, in a case study.
• Explain why psychological blockages may arise, and how a counsellor might help a client overcome them.
• Describe the process through which a counsellor would take a client to reach a desired goal, in a case study.
• Identify inter-dependency in observed relationships.
• Explain why good time management is an important part of the counselling process.
• Compare terminating a session with terminating the counselling process.
• Demonstrate dangers posed by client-counsellor inter-dependency, and how dependency can be addressed.
• Explain any negative aspects of dependency in a case study

Some Sample Course Notes

Counselling?

Counsellors provide guidance for clients and a support system, rather than working with the deeper levels of the psyche. However, there are other therapists who work with people with difficulties. A psychoanalyst is someone who has been trained in the theory and techniques of psychoanalysis. Initially they would be trained as a physician, psychiatric social worker or psychologist. Their training will involve personal analysis. Psychoanalysis is the term used for Freud’s set of theories about human behaviour and the form of treatment of mental disorders he devised. Although psychoanalysis has developed more since Freud’s time.

A psychotherapist is a practitioner of psychotherapy. S/he is usually a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist or a psychiatric social worker. Psychotherapy is the use of psychological techniques to treat psychological disturbances. The four main forms of psychotherapy are behavioural, cognitive, humanistic and psychoanalysis. There are many variations of the four approaches.

A clinical psychologist is a practitioner of clinical psychology. They may also be psychotherapists, but this is not essential. They may work in hospitals or clinics or may have a private practice. Clinical psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the application of psychological theory and research to the treatment and diagnosis of mental, emotional and behavioural problems.

A Psychiatrist is a person who specialises in psychiatry. Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that covers mental illness. The subject matter of psychiatry overlaps to a great extent with clinical psychology, the main difference being in the training of the psychiatrist and the clinical psychologist. A psychiatrist has no training in psychology, other than psychopathology and uses the medical model to deal with mental disorders. The clinical psychologist is not medically trained, cannot prescribe drugs and tends to view normal and abnormal behaviour as on the same continuum.

We offer a wide range of counselling courses that you may be interested in -

The role of the counsellor is to facilitate the person’s resolution of these issues, whilst respect their values, personal resources, culture and capacity for choice. Counselling can provide people with a regular time and space to talk about their problems and explore difficult feelings in a confidential and dependable environment.

Counsellors do not usually offer advice, but instead give insight into the client’s feelings and behaviour and help the client change their behaviour if necessary. They do this by listening to what the client has to say and commenting on it from a professional perspective. Counselling covers a wide spectrum from the highly trained counsellor to some one who uses counselling skills as part of their role, for example, a nurse or teacher.

Many people use counselling skills in their daily lives. However, sometimes it may be inappropriate for people to use their usual methods of support. They may not want to discuss their problems with a friend or family member. They may feel that the person is too close, that they don’t want them to know their confidential problems or the person they would usually confide in might be part of the problem. Counsellors are trained to be effective helpers in difficult or sensitive situations. They should be independent, neutral and professional, as well as respecting our privacy. Counselling can help people to clarify their problems, identify changes they would like to make, get a fresh perspective, consider other options and look at the impact that life events have made on their emotional wellbeing.

Develop your ability to support or counsel others through the processes of personal growth and change.
This course introduces you to the kinds of  problems and issues that a person might face in overcoming stresses and limiting attitudes. You will learn about the counsellor's role and the counselling process, and gain basic practical counselling skills; these can also be effectively applied to many situations. 

Pre-requisite:    "Introduction to Psychology" or the equivalent.