Basic Helping Skills
Prepared by: Nerisa T. Gonzalo, RGC
Empathy: Higit pa sa malasakit
“If you judge people, you have
no time to love them”-Mother
Theresa
Empathy is the ability to enter
into and understand the world of
another person and to
communicate this understanding
to him/her.
Three Important points to
consider to be good at being
Empathic:
“True Empathy The Core Message- What is the
requires that you “message” being expressed.
step outside your Feelings – How clients talk about
own emotions to their feelings and what they
view things entirely express in the encounter.
from the Experiences and Behavior -
specific experiences and
perspective of the
behaviors that underlie a
other person.” person’s feeling.
Anonymous
Some Hints to Improve the
quality of Empathy:
1. Give yourself time to think
Basic Helping Skill: Active Listening
“The one who truly listens is the
one who listens with the heart”
Listening is being silent
with another person in
an active way.
Listening is participating.
Why Listen?
It is a basic human need.
How to Listen Effectively
2. Use short responses
3. Gear your response to the
person.
Empathy in Action: Creating a
Mattering climate.
Visibility
Ensure that you are there and
that help is visible and
available.
Valuing
Make the person feel that they
matter and that you value
helping him/her.
Offering Help
A simple “how may I help
you?” can give a person in
distress a certain sense of
assurance.
Establishing Professional and
Personal relationship
Make the person feel that you
are there as a professional and
a person.
1. Listen with the EYES and
EARS to the non-verbal.
Certain emotions are conveyed
through the tone of voice or
gestures, active listening
requires that we are sensitive
to these.
2. Listen with the mind.
because people will often talk
about three things;
experiences, behaviors, affect.
 Basic Helping Skills
How to listen effectively (continuation)
3. Identify and handle
DEFECTIVE
LISTENING.
Principal Forms of defective
listening:
a) Inadequate Listening
Check on these factors that
contribute to defective listening
such as attraction, physical
condition, concerns, over-
eagerness, and similarity of
problems
b) Evaluative Listening –
judgment
Having a judgmental attitude
while listening will let you miss
out on an accurate understanding
of the person’s situation.
c) Sympathetic Listening –
distortion/blinded
Becoming too emotional over
what the person is sharing can
also hinder one’s focus on what
the person is saying.

Final words on listening

“Listening is an art
Skilled helpers ask themselves from time to time during
that requires conversations/encounter whether there is anything affecting their ability
attention over to be with and listen to their clients.
talent, spirit over The ability to focus almost exclusively on a client while forgetting yourself
ego, others over and then to return to productive self-consciousness comes with both
Next, establish how much time and
experience and maturity. money you can spend on your
self.”
newsletter. These factors will help
determine how frequently you publish
the newsletter and its length.
Use the body of your school newsletter
to keep parents apprised of major
assignments and class events, as well as
of any school district news.