The document provides guidance on basic counseling techniques for initial client visits. It recommends greeting clients warmly, explaining the process, and making them feel at ease to open up. Counselors should actively listen without judgment, understand the client's perspective through empathy, and check their understanding with paraphrasing and probing questions. The goal is to help clients feel heard while counseling gathers useful information through open-ended questions and addresses the key issues and emotions through empathic highlights and summaries.
The document provides guidance on basic counseling techniques for initial client visits. It recommends greeting clients warmly, explaining the process, and making them feel at ease to open up. Counselors should actively listen without judgment, understand the client's perspective through empathy, and check their understanding with paraphrasing and probing questions. The goal is to help clients feel heard while counseling gathers useful information through open-ended questions and addresses the key issues and emotions through empathic highlights and summaries.
The document provides guidance on basic counseling techniques for initial client visits. It recommends greeting clients warmly, explaining the process, and making them feel at ease to open up. Counselors should actively listen without judgment, understand the client's perspective through empathy, and check their understanding with paraphrasing and probing questions. The goal is to help clients feel heard while counseling gathers useful information through open-ended questions and addresses the key issues and emotions through empathic highlights and summaries.
The document provides guidance on basic counseling techniques for initial client visits. It recommends greeting clients warmly, explaining the process, and making them feel at ease to open up. Counselors should actively listen without judgment, understand the client's perspective through empathy, and check their understanding with paraphrasing and probing questions. The goal is to help clients feel heard while counseling gathers useful information through open-ended questions and addresses the key issues and emotions through empathic highlights and summaries.
journey "Getting to Know You" •Feeling anxious? Don't worry, the client is more afraid of you than you are of the client! :) •What matters most of all is the client gets to talk and talk and talk and be truly heard! Initial Visit Pattern: Introduction • It is important to be timely and friendly. • Greet the client warmly – smile and shake hands. Escort to the counseling room. • Your client will be nervous – not knowing what to expect. So explain to her or him right away your credentials, the assurance of confidentiality, the duration of the visit, etc. Information Gathering •Ask the client, “So what brings you in here today?!”, or “What can I do for you?!” •If the person doesn’t know where to start, tell the client to “start anywhere.” Visibly “Tuning in” and “Active listening”
• The importance of “Empathic
Presence.” • Simply being with…Paying attention • Intensity of presence; quality of presence • Non-verbal behavior • Face and body are extremely communicative Active Listening • This happens when you "listen for meaning". The counselor says very little but conveys much interest, empathy, acceptance, and genuineness. • Full listening; deep listening • Focused listening; Unbiased listening • Empathic listening Watch your Body language! • takes into account our facial expressions, angle of our body, proximity of ourselves to another, placement of arms and legs, and so much more. Notice how much can be expressed by raising and lowering your eyebrows! • We all have our favorite stance, our “default position.” At the same time, communication is 55% body language, 38% tone and 7% words. So, remember that your client may not remember what was said, but they will remember how you made them feel. •We can use the SOLER method: •S - Squarely face person • O - use Open posture • L - Lean a little toward the person •E - use Eye contact •R - Relax, keep it natural tone of your voice • You need to monitor the tone of your voice- in the same way that you monitor your body language. Remember, the person may not remember what was said, but they will remember how you made them feel! Tone of your voice • Be watchful of whether it is… • • High / low • • Loud / soft • • Fast / slow • • Accommodating / demanding • • Light-hearted / gloomy Listening for Core Messages • Core messages are the main points of a client’s story. • The ingredients of core messages are: • A.) Key experiences • B.) Key behaviors • C.) Key feelings or emotions associated with these experiences and behaviors.
• LISTENING TO YOUR OWN FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS.pptx
Communicating Empathy - working hard at understanding clients. • Empathy - a disposition to feel what other people feel, or to understand others “from the inside,” as it were. • It is understanding another person’s experiences. • Sensing the client’s inner world – and communicating that sensing. Communicating Empathy • Helpers listen to clients both: • A.) to understand them and their concerns. • B.) to respond to them in constructive ways. • Listening, then, is a very active process – that serves understanding. • But helpers don’t just listen; they also respond to clients in a variety of ways. They respond by: • a.) sharing their understanding • b.) checking to make sure they’ve got things right • c.) asking questions • d.) probing for clarity • e.) summarizing the issues being discussed • f.) challenging client’s in a variety of ways Empathic Highlights- Formula • Focus on the client’s key messages plus the feelings and emotions they generate. • “You feel…(emotion+intensity)… because…(key experiences and/or behaviors that give rise to the emotion). Prompts and Probes • Prompts – brief verbal and non-verbal interventions – designed to let clients know that you are with them to encourage them to talk further. • Nonverbal - bodily movements, gestures, nods, eye movement. • Verbal - “hmm,” “uh-huh,” “sure,” “yes,” “I see,” “ah,” “okay,” and “ok.” Probes • Help clients name, take notice of, explore, clarify, or further define any issue at any stage of the helping process. • They are designed to provide clarity and to move things forward. Different forms of Probes: • a.) statements – e.g. “It’s not clear to me… • b.) request – e.g. “tell me… • c.) questions – e.g. “What keeps you from..? • d.) single word or phrases – e.g. “Move forward to…?“ • If possible ask open-ended questions. Open and Closed questions • An open question is one that is used in order to gather lots of information - you ask it with the intent of getting a longer answer. • A closed question is one used to gather specific information – it can normally be answered with either “yes or no” or a single word or short phrase. Example of open questions • What brought you in here today? • Do you have an idea about why this keeps happening? • What is your Plan B? • How does that make you feel? Example of closed questions • What is your name and date of birth? • Where do you work? Occupation? • Are you ready to stop doing that? • Did you go to the doctor for a check-up? • Paraphrasing is when you restate briefly what the client said in your own words to communicate understanding, empathy, acceptance, and genuineness. • that this is what we think the client has said. • Summarizing is focusing on the main points of a conversation in order to highlight them; at the same time you are giving the essence; you are checking to see if you are accurate in your understanding. • Use summaries: • a.) at the beginning of a new session • b.) when a session seems to be going nowhere • c.) when the client needs a new perspective. • In a beginning summary you are recalling what happened at the last meeting. • In an ending one, you are attempting to condense what has happened over 40 minutes into a few minutes worth of material. Getting the Client to Provide the Summary
• N.B. The counselor does not always have
to provide the summary. • Often, it is better to ask the client to pull together the salient points, and move on. • But the counselor can always provide the client whatever help they need to stitch the summary together. Basic Counseling Skills or Basic Communication Skills • 1.) Tuning in • 2.) Active Listening • 3.) Sharing Empathic Highlights • 4.) Probing • 5.) Paraphrasing • 6.) Summarizing The End