GRADE: HUMSS- 12

SUBJECT TITLE: Disciplines and Ideas in the Applied Social Sciences

SEMESTER: First Semester, S.Y. 2020- 2021

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MODULE 2

LESSON 2: THE DISCIPLINE OF COUNSELING

The Discipline of Counseling is a relationship characterized by the application of

one or more psychological theories and a recognized set of communication skills
appropriate to a client’s intimate concerns, problems, or aspirations (Feltham & Dryden
1993). These clients are individuals or a group in a demoralized, distressed, or in a
negative state of mind about their situation oor context. Therefore, counseling can be for
one person or a group and may be delivered through a number of methods such as
through face-to-face dialog, group work, telephone, email, or other written materials.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES:

 Identify the principles of counseling

 Clarify how different factors contribute to successful counseling based on
the concepts and principles of counseling
 Determine life situations that are within the goals and scope of
professional counseling

2.1. Definition of Counseling

The Collins Dictionary of Sociology defines counseling as “the process of guiding

a person during a stage of life when reassessments or decisions have to be made
about himself or herself and his or her life course.” Counselors are professionally
trained and certified to perform counseling. Their job is to provide advice or guidance in
decision-making in emotionally significant situations by helping clients explore and
understand their worlds and discover better ways and well-informed choices in resolving
an emotional or interpersonal problem.
 As a discipline, it is allied to psychology and deals with normal responses to
normal life events, which may sometimes create stress for some people who, in turn,
choose to ask for help and support. Counseling is generally a non-clinical intervention.
Traditionally in many societies, counseling is provided by family, friends, and wise
elderly. When these providers prove insufficient, counselors become the choice.
Counselors exist in a wide range of areas of expertise: marriage, family, youth, student
and other life transitions dealing with managing of issues of loss and death, retirement,
divorce, parenting, and bankruptcy.
Counseling is widely considered the heart of the guidance services in schools. In
the school context, counseling is usually done as individual or group intervention
designed to facilitate positive change in student behavior, feelings, and attitudes. As a
process, it involves two sides: an individual or group who needs help and a mature
professionally trained counselor. Through methods adapted to the needs of the client(s),
the trained counselor helps in defining a problem and acquires initiative, determination,
courage, and efficiency to solve that problem. It helps clients understand and clarify
their views of their life space and to learn to reach their self-determined goals through
meaningful, well-informed choices and through resolution or problems of an emotional
or interpersonal nature (Burks & Steffire 1979).
Counseling also utilizes appraisal and assessment to aid counseling by gathering
information about clients thru the use of psychological tests and non-psychometric
devices. Psychometrics is a branch of psychology that deals with the design,
administration, and interpretation of quantitative tests for the measurement of
psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, interests, and personality traits.
The underlying assumption is that the variable being measured is a fixed and
unchanging attribute of a person. The intent of psychometric testing is to use a number
of carefully calibrated short or multiple choice questions to accurately measure an
individual’s aptitude or potential in a particular area, for example, reading or arithmetic.
Tests employed are strictly standardized and administered by a professionally trained
psychometrician.
Counseling is not to be confused with psychiatry, which is a branch of general
medicine that deals with the treatment of the mentally ill by medically-trained
professionals using clinical interventions including drugs, surgical procedures, and non-
physical approaches.

2.2. Context and the Basic of Counseling

Counseling is affected by the context and the surrounding factors. They are
explored here as part of the basic concepts of counseling that are very important to
consider. The National Institute of Health presents a very comprehensive understanding
of the context of counseling as follows
(http://archives.drugabuse.gov/TXManuals/BSFT/BSFT.html), includes the peers, the
culture, the neighborhoods, the counseling, client, the counselor, and the contextual and
the process factors. Much influence though is within the family as being the primary
context in which the child learns and develops and likewise for socializing of children
and adolescents.
Peers as Context. Friends’ attitudes, norms, and behaviors have a strong
influence on adolescents. Many personal issues are often introduced to the individual by
their peers. Parents can have much influence over their adolescent children. Critical
family issues involve family roles, both positively and negatively. In most cases, the
impact of parent influence can help counter the negative influence that peers have on
the adolescents’ issues.
Neighborhood as Context. The interactions between the family and its
neighborhood as immediate context are also important to consider. A family functions
within a particular neighborhood. The behavioral problems in this particular
neighborhood require that families work against crime and social isolation that may
impact them. This is much easier in countryside communities where a community
network of parents, teachers, grandparents, and civic leaders exist and where a sense
of collaboration in raising the children of the community forms part of shared ethos. For
this reason, neighborhood context is an important consideration in counseling. It can
both introduce additional strengths or challenges to parenting and resources that should
be considered when working with families.
Culture as Context. Culture provided meaning and coherence of life to any
orderly life such as community or organization. Various sectors of community families,
peers, and neighborhoods are all bound together by a cultural context that influences
them all as individual members. Therefore, the cultural context is a major consideration
in counseling. Extensive research on culture and the family has demonstrated that so
much influence on the individual child and family is exerted by the cultural contexts
(Santisteban et al. 2003; Szapocznik & Kurtines 1993). Culture is the source of norms,
values, symbols, and language which provide the basis for the normal functioning of an
individual. Understanding the cultural context of a client makes it easier for a counselor
to appreciate the nature of their struggles as well as their cultural conditioning that
informs certain personal characteristics such as degree of openness to share personal
concerns, self-revealing, making choices, and personal determination for independence
(Corey 1991). Therefore, effective counseling has to take into full consideration the
culture of both the counselor and the client especially in multicultural situations. The
cultures of the client and that of the counselor and other stakeholders can all affect the
nature of counseling.
Counseling as Context. The National Institute of Health recognizes counseling
itself as a context. Regardless of a therapeutic approach in use, the counseling situation
in itself is a context. There is a deliberate specific focus, a set of procedures, rules,
expectations, experiences, and a way of monitoring progress and determining results in
any therapeutic approach (Corey 1991). Counseling can therefore be affected by the
counseling context.
From the counseling context, other success factors such as client factors,
counselor factors, contextual factors, and process factors should be managed well so
as to contribute toward the success of the engagement.
1. Client Factors. The client factors are everything that a client brings to the
counseling context. He or she is not a passive object receiving treatment in the
manner of a traditional doctor-patient situation. The clients bring so much to the
counseling context and therefore it remains imperative that they are considered as
an active part of the process. Very often, the expectations and attitude of the client
define the result of a counseling process and experience. The success or failure of
the counseling process depends so much on the client.
2. Counselor Factors. The personality, skills, and personal qualities of a counselor
can significantly impact the outcomes of the counseling relationship (Velleman
2001). The counselor’s personal style and qualities can make the interventions
successful. The conditions for self-restoration or experience of self-empowerment in
a client are some qualities that a counselor usually brings about. The experience of
positive or negative conditions can be attributed to the counselor. This may be
amplified or aggravated by the choice of counseling methods that the counselor
uses in his or her practice; this makes counseling both a science and also an art.
3. Contextual Factors. The context in which counseling takes place can define the
outcomes. Counselors are therefore concerned with the environment and
atmosphere where to conduct a sessions. There are ideal context and not ideal
ones. For example, physical noise and distance trigger the feeling of emotional
safety of the client. A noisy place can be a distraction that prevents healing. A place
where a client feels strongly fearful can provide a blockage from genuine
engagement with counseling process and procedure. A client has to feel comfortable
and positive. Ideally, counseling should take place in a quiet, warm, and comfortable
place away from any distraction. Unless the counselor and client talk in comfort and
safety, there is no way steps of healing can commence and yield desirable
outcomes.
4. Process Factors. The process factors constitute the actual counseling undertaking.
Velleman (2001) presents the following six stages, which for him apply to all problem
areas in the process of counseling.
a. Developing trust. This involves providing warmth, genuineness, and empathy.
b. Exploring problem areas. This involves providing a clear and deep analysis of
what the problem is, where it comes from, its triggers, and why it may have
developed.
c. Helping to set goals. This involves setting and managing goal-directed
interventions.
d. Empowering into action. This means fostering action to achieve set goals.
 e. Helping to maintain change. This means providing support and other
techniques to enable the client to maintain changes.
f. Agreeing when to end the helping relationship. This implies that assurances
are there that guarantee the process is being directed by the client and
toward independence.

2.3. Goals and Scope of Counseling

Counseling is aimed at empowering a client. The general goal is to lead an

individual client or group to self-emancipation in relation to a felt problem. At some
stage in the process, the client should attain insight and understanding of oneself,
achieve better self-awareness and look at oneself with increased self-acceptance and
appreciation, and be able to manage oneself positively. Client empowerment means
that they develop skills and abilities that require self-management and improved
motivation toward actions that are good for one’s self and develop a positive outlook
toward the past leading to some sense of closure and attainment of relative inner and
outer harmony resulting to improvement in relationships with family, friends, colleagues,
and others.
The scope of counseling is wide. Essentially, it involves application of some
psychological theories and recognized communication skills. It does not deal with
clinical cases such as mental illness. It is a professional relationship that requires an
eventual closure and termination of the counselee-counselor relationship.

2.4. Principles of Counseling

The principles of counseling can be found in the basic process of counseling

since they govern each and every step: developing trust; exploring problem areas;
helping to set goals; empowering into action; helping to maintain change; and agreeing
when to end (Velleman 2001). Counselors are to set aside their own value system in
order to empathize with their clients. Since the objective of counseling is to provide
support in dealing with issues of concern, counseling is effective when it is performed
with clear objectives that include providing some degree of advice, reassurance, release
of emotional tension, clarified thinking, and reorientation. Counselors must try to keep
this principle in mind at all times in order to be effective.
Advice. Counseling may involve advice-giving as one of the several functions
that counselors perform. When this is done, the requirement is that a counselor makes
judgments about a counselee’s problems and lay out options for a course of action.
Advice-giving has to avoid breeding a relationship in which the counselee feels inferior
and emotionally dependent on the counselor.
Reassurance. Counseling involves providing clients with reassurance, which is a
way of giving them courage to face a problem or confidence that they are pursuing a
suitable course of action. Reassurance is a valuable principle because it can bring
about a sense of relief that may empower a client to function normally again.
Release of emotional tension. Counseling provides clients the opportunity to
get emotional release from their pent-up frustrations and other personal issues.
Counseling experience shows that as persons begin to explain their concerns to a
sympathetic listener, their tensions begin to subside. They become more relaxed and
tend to become more coherent and rational. The release of tensions helps remove
mental blocks by providing a solution to the problem.
Clarified thinking. Clarified thinking tends to take place while the counselor and
counselee are talking and therefore becomes a logical emotional release. As this
relationship goes on, other self-empowering results may take place later as a result of
developments during the counseling relationships. Clarified thinking encourages a client
to accept responsibility for problems and to be more realistic in solving them.
Reorientation. Reorientation involves a change in the client’s emotional self
through a change in basic goals and aspirations. This requires a revision of the client’s
level of aspiration to bring it more in line with actual and realistic attainment. It enables
clients to recognize those in need of orientation and facilitate appropriate interventions.
Listening skills. Listening attentively to clients is the counselor’s attempt
understand both the content of the clients’ problem as they see it, and the emotions
they are experiencing related to the problem. Counselors do not make interpretations of
the client’s problem or offer any premature suggestions as to how to deal with them, or
solve the issues presented. Good listening helps counselors to understand the concerns
being presented.
Respect. In all circumstances, clients must be treated with respect, no matter
how peculiar, strange, disturbed, weird, utterly different from the counselor. Without this
basic element, successful counseling is impossible. Counselors do not have to like the
client, or their values, or their behavior, but they have to put their personal feelings
aside and treat the client with respect.
Empathy and positive regard. Carl Rogers combined empathy and positive
regard as two principles that should go along with respect and effective listening skills.
Empathy requires the counselor to listen and understand the feeling and perspective of
the client and positive regard is an aspect of respect. For Rogers, clients have to be
given both “unconditional positive regard” and be treated with respect.
Clarification, confrontation, and interpretation. Clarification is an attempt by
the counselor to restate what the client is either saying or feeling, so the client may
learn something or understand the issue better. Confrontation and interpretation are
other more advanced principles used by counselors in their interventions.
Transference and countertransference. Other advanced principles deal with
transference and countertransference. When clients are helped to understand
transference reactions, they are empowered to gain understanding of important aspects
of their emotional life. Countertransference helps both clients and counselors to
understand the emotional and perceptional reactions and how to effectively manage
them.

2.5. Core Values of Counseling

Certain values are considered core to counseling and are reflected and
expressed in the practice of counseling. All counselors are expected to embrace these
and similar set of core values as essential and integral to their work. These values are:
1. Respect for human dignity. This means that the counselor must provide a
client unconditional positive regard, compassion, non-judgmental attitude,
empathy, and trust.
2. Partnership. A counselor has to foster partnerships with the various
disciplines that come together to support an integrated healing that
encompasses various aspects such as physical, emotional, spiritual, and
intellectual. These relationships should be integrity, sensitivity, and openness
to ensure health, healing, and growth of clients.
3. Autonomy. This entails respect for confidentiality and trust in a relationship of
counseling and ensuring a safe environment that is needed for healing. It also
means that healing or any advice cannot be imposed on a client.
4. Responsible caring. This primarily means respecting the potential of every
human being to change and to continue learning throughout his/her life, and
especially in the environment of counseling.
5. Personal integrity. Counselors must reflect personal integrity, honesty, and
truthfulness with clients.
6. Social justice. This means accepting and respecting the diversity of the
clients, the diversity of individuals, their cultures, languages, lifestyles,
identities, ideologies, intellectual capacities, personalities, and capabilities
regardless of the presented issues.
From such core values, Ethical Principles of Counseling are broadened. The
following principles contextualize the core values in action. They form the
foundation for ethical practice as expressed by The New Zealand Association of
Counselors (Ethical Principles for Counselors at
http://www.nzac.org.nz/code_of_ethics.cfm).
 Counselors shall:
1. Act with care and respect for individual and cultural differences and the
diversity of human experience.
2. Avoid doing harm in all their professional work. Actively support the
principles embodied in the Treaty of Waitangi ( a formal agreement
between the British Crown and Maori signed on February 6, 1840 at
Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, which technically made over 500 Maori
chiefs to become a British Colony starting with the initial 43 Northland
Chiefs, see http://www.newzealand.com/int/feature/treaty-of-waitangi/ )
3. Respect the confidences with which they are entrusted.
4. Promote the safety and well-being of individuals, families, and
communities.
5. Seek to increase the range of choices and opportunities for clients.
6. Be honest and trustworthy in all their professional relationships.
7. Practice within the scope of their competence.
8. Treat colleagues and other professionals with respect.

EVALUATE YOUR SELF:

I. Whip-it

1. Name different life situations or life events when a person might

need to seek the help of a professional counselor. List down as
many as you can.
II. Test Your Knowledge

A. Write the definition of counseling as an applied social science.

___________________________________________________________
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B. Briefly describe each counseling context:
1. Peers
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2. Neighborhood
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3. Culture
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4. Counseling
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 ________________________________________________________
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C. Based on the concepts of counseling, how do the following factors

contribute to the success of counseling? Write at least two
significant points for each.
Factors in Counseling
Client Counselor Contextual Process

D. Review the principles of counseling. Complete the statements below

by supplying the principle being referred to. Choices are given in the
word bank on the left.

Principles of Counseling 1. ______________is a valuable principle that can

bring about a sense of relief that may empower
Advice-giving
a client to function normally again.
Clarification
2. ______________ encourages a client to accept
Emotional release
responsibility for problems and to be more
Empathy
realistic in solving them.
Positive regard
3. _______________ has to avoid breeding a
Listening skills
relationship in which the counselee feels inferior
Reassurance
and emotionally dependent on the counselor.
Reorientation
4. ________________ involves a change in the
Respect
client’s emotional self through a change in basic
Transference
goals and aspirations.

5. Counseling provides clients the opportunity to get ___________ from their pent-up
frustrations and other personal issues.
6. ___________requires the counselor to listen and understand the feelings and
perspective of the client, while __________ is an aspect of respect.
7. In all circumstances, clients must be treated with ___________ , no matter how
peculiar or utterly different they are from the counselor.
8. ___________ is an attempt by the counselor to restate what the client is either saying
or feeling, so the client may learn something or understand the issue better.
9. Good __________ help counselors to understand the client’s concerns without
 III. Check Your Understanding

Based on what you learned as the goals and scope of counseling,

analyze each situation below and put a check mark ( ) if it
is reasonably within a counselor’s
jurisdiction, and put a cross mark ( ) if it is not. Justify your
answers using what you learned in this lesson.

_____________ 1. Katy feels insecure and an outcast in school because she

thinks her classmates talk negatively about her.

_____________ 2. Mike needs to raise funds for his college tuition next year.

_____________ 3. Abigail keeps questioning herself if she is in the right job

because she seems to be getting more unmotivated as time goes. Her spirit
for doing her job well has gone down these past few months.

_____________ 4. Bobbie thinks he is addicted to video games and wants to

control it to become more productive with his schoolwork.

_____________ 5. Grace was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive

Disorder (OCD) when she was a teenager. As a young adult now, she wants
to be helped again in controlling her OCD symptoms.

_____________ 6. Allan is overly jealous when it comes to the friends of his

girlfriend. He cannot seem to accept the fact that his girlfriend enjoys very
much the company of others.

_____________ 7. Rita is overly scared of men because of a traumatic

experience she had as a little girl. She witnessed how three men robbed and
stabbed her father to death.

Additional learning videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q89zF3QRBA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW2Fadfbz5s
Reference:
Sampa (2019). DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN THE APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES. REX
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