UNIT V: TRAINING, NEGOTIATION & COUNSELING

Counselling: Definition and Format

 
A counselor is a professionally trained expert who helps people overcome their
issues after a systematic chain of sessions. The types of counselling vary,
depending on the needs of the clients. 
 
counselling is a talking therapy that allows people to discuss their problems
with trained professionals in a peaceful and safe ambiance. The exact meaning
of counselling might vary among individuals. But in general, it is the process
where you talk about your issues in detail either intending to overcome the same
or to explore your thoughts comprehensively. 
 
The role of a counselor doesn’t limit to suggesting you do this or that. Rather
they support you to speak about your problems in detail to identify the primary
cause behind them. Furthermore, they develop an action plan to help you cope
up with the issue or win over it. 
 
There are different formats through which the counselling sessions can take
place, The client is free to choose a format that suits and fits his needs the best.
Below are the popular counselling formats that people mostly favor: 
 

 In-Person: Face-to-face counselling sessions take place in the

counselor’s chamber where you meet them in person after scheduling an
appointment to discuss your problems. It is one of the most popular
counselling formats.

 Group Counselling: Professionals provide group counselling sessions

where you can join to address the issues. Joining such a group will help
you find people with similar problems and you will be able to develop a
strong network of support as well. However, if you wish to focus on your
problem, in-person sessions are better. 

 Telephonic Sessions: A great alternative to in-person counselling

sessions are telephonic rounds that can be scheduled from the comfort of
 your home. Telephonic counselling rounds are best for busy individuals
who might find it difficult to get into the chambers. In this flexible
process, you can discuss the problems with the counselor in a secure
environment from your room. 

 Online Counselling: If you wish not to meet your counselor face to face
and protect your anonymity, you have the option to email the counselor.
In this process, you have the scope to think well and decide which of the
problems you want to discuss with him. The online counselling trend is
becoming much more popular these days. 

 
Counselling Process 
 
When a person seeks counselling, he or she suffers from something serious be it
mental issues, emotional problems, or family problems. The process isn’t
rushed but rather involves a systematic evaluation that includes a detailed
process. 
 
The counselling process involves a step-by-step approach and the counselor
conducts it in a way to make sure that his client is comfortable with the process.
Lets have a look at the five crucial stages of a counselling process. 
 
1: Building a Warm Relationship 
 
When you are hitting up a counselor to discuss your problems, you ought to
suffer from any serious issue concerning academics, relationships, career, or
anything else. The first thing your expert does is to make yourself comfortable
around him/her. He focuses on developing a warm relation and mutual trust first
to make sure you do not hesitate while speaking about the problems you are
facing. 
 
2: Analysis
 
Now comes the second part, which is assessment. In this stage, the professional
encourages you to speak in detail about your problems to grab the roots of the
problem. He observes every minute detail from how you are speaking to your
reactions to certain questions that might come from his end. Once he assesses
the problem, the goal is fixed. 
 
3: Setting the Goal
 
After a thorough evaluation of your problems, now comes the significant
section of goal setting. Considering the issues you are facing the counselor sets
a goal. That can be either you overcoming the problem or reconciling with it. 
 
4: Plan of Action 
 
The counselor plans an action for you to practice to see the results. Suppose
someone has public speaking fear, The expert might ask him to practice
speaking in front of the mirror. This is just an instance. Once you go through the
plan for the desired tenure, he assesses your improvement. If things seem
normal, you are at the final stage! If not, he might design something different. 
 
5: Overcoming the Problem 
 
As I mentioned in the previous point after you follow the plan of action the
consequent results are taken into consideration. If things seem to go in the right
direction and you start feeling relaxed, yes! You have achieved your goal. 
 
Counselling Skills
 
 Being a professional counselor requires some core skills to be able to handle
client queries and drive the best results for them. The vital skills that a
professional counselor must have are as follows: 
 

 Effective Listening: A counselor must be a patient listener who not only

listens to the clients queries but can handle them intricately. Without
hearing the issues minutely, it is impossible to get ahead with the next
counselling steps. Therefore, the counselor has to be someone with good
listening skills who gives full attention to the client and their details. 

 A Good Communicator: A counselor is someone who listens to his

clients, analyses the problems, and develops a plan of action to achieve a
target. It is indeed critical to be a very good communicator to help the
person feel comfortable around him and make sure the client is not
 hesitating while speaking in front of him about his problems. Developing
a good relationship is very important. 

 Analysis: A successful counselor is someone who is not only a good

listener but a good analyzer too, who uses his skills and expertise to reach
the root of the problem and analyze it. Without analysis, the entire
process is in vain as no goals can be set and the client will not be able to
undergo any plan of action.

 
Types of Counselling 
 
The counselling types are numerous and here we will be discussing a few of
them. 
 
Mental Health Counselling
 
A mental health counselor is responsible for providing the people with support
who are going through any emotional distress like fear of something, anxiety,
depression, or frustration. There are different causes when people need mental
health counselling that may include, extensive grief, supreme anger issues,
addiction to something, family issues, eating disorders, and so on. After talking
to the clients about the problems, mental health counselors try and provide them
ways to overcome this situation and nurture their well-being.
 
Career Counselling 
 
A little different from the traditional counselling processes, career counselling
means providing aspirants with career guidance and showing them the right
path towards a bright career according to their areas of interest and skills. The
career counselling curriculum is designed to guide people in selecting,
changing, or leaving a career and can be availed at any stage of life. A career
counselling expert assesses your aptitude, personality, and interests to suggest
you the best career option. 
 
Certified career analyst is a leading course  to become a career counsellor in India.
 
Rehabilitation Counselling 
 
The rehabilitation counselling process helps people with disabilities fulfill their
goals and lead an independent life with complete participation in the
community. This is a systematic method to help people with emotional,
physical, cognitive, and mental disabilities accomplish their life goals and live a
cherishable life. The rehabilitation counselors support the concerned people to
overcome psychological disabilities. 
 
Relationship Counselling 
 
Also known as couples therapy, people seek such counselling when something
serious affects their love life. People choose to go for relationship counselling
for various reasons including the desire to have a stronger relationship with the
partner or spouse, issues emerging from disagreement, unhealthy abuses,
something hectic that affected their lives, etc. A relationship therapist helps the
couple to overcome the problems they are facing and enter into a long-term
commitment. 
 
The list of counselling types isn’t limited to these and the numbers are vast. I
think I could make the definition and types of counselling clear to you folks.
See you again on the next blog with something more interesting. 

Carl Rogers' Humanistic Theory: Overview

Carl Rogers lived from 1902-1987 and was a pioneer of humanistic theory in
the psychology field. He developed the major dominant theories of humanistic
psychology practices still in use today with like-minded colleagues. Rogers'
approach to psychotherapy, or talk therapy, included nondirective, client-
centered approaches instead of the more directed and therapist-led practices
that dominated the early 20th century and prior. He stressed that the relationship
between client/patient and therapist to be important in the overall context of
actually helping the client. A humanistic psychologist, in other words, believes
that people need an overall positive and nurturing environment, as well as their
needs met by the counselor, in order for true growth to take place. Carl Rogers,
overall, is considered by many to be one of the most significant psychologists of
the 20th century.

The Development of Humanistic Psychotherapy

The practice of humanistic psychotherapy in psychology was not widely used
until the latter half of the 20th century. Prior to its use, behaviorism and
traditional therapist-led psychoanalysis dominated talk therapy. Behaviorism
stressed that individuals' reactions to external stimuli/environmental factors are
the main value of study; critics of behaviorism thought the theory to be too
narrow in the scope of a person's whole experience. Meanwhile, typical
psychoanalysis was marked by therapists who led clients to do or talk about
certain things, which was also viewed as limited when it came to the whole of a
person's existence. Some mid-20th-century psychologists noted the
shortcomings of the traditional approaches to psychotherapy, so they created
new theories that would come to dominate the field of psychology.
Humanistic psychology stresses the value of a whole person and concludes that
people have a conscious ability to choose their life experiences. In other words,
people are not just their past and are not just the effects of their external stimuli.
Self-perception plays a huge role in understanding and changing oneself, as
does awareness of one's own thoughts and feelings. A significant difference in
humanistic theory is that it also stresses the importance of therapists forming a
positive connection with the patient. By the 1950s, some psychologists began
using humanistic approaches, as they believed there was great value in its
changes to psychotherapy. Psychologists Abraham Maslow and Clark
Moustakas gathered meetings in 1957 and 1958 for psychology professionals
about forming a humanistic psychology organization. In 1961, they helped
create the American Association for Humanistic Psychology, and the first
invitational conference of theirs was held in 1964, which included Carl Rogers.
Rogers, Maslow, and fellow psychologist Rollo May became leaders of the
humanistic psychology movement.

Modern Trends In Counseling Counseling in its widest connotation existed in

one form or the other from time immemorial. In all cultures the elders not only
set the norms of behavior within that culture but also counseled the youngsters
to follow the norms. In India, elders especially parents and teachers thought that
imparting counseling in the form of advice and guidance was one of their
fundamental, and seared duty. The oft repeated adage; "Mata, Pita, Guru,
Deivam" (Mother, Father, Teacher, God) reminded the youngsters not only of
the agents of counseling but also of the priority as to who should impart
counseling at various stages of life. Ancient epics of India are replete with
depictions of counselling. Elders were only too ready to take up the role of
counselors and youngsters sought counselling with prompt compliance. Many
such incidents could be explained away as mere acts of 'giving advice'. But in
most of those ancient transactions it is not difficult to see the scientific practice
and ethics of modern counselling techniques. The most widely acknowledges
counselling situation in the epics is that of the dialogue between Krishna and
Arjuna in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Whether this dialogue had all the
characteristics of modern counseling may have to be answered by committed
researchers in this area. Counselling as Others See It Counselling is a much-
misunderstood concept. To the laymen it is an occasion where an expert solves
the problems of others. Laymen believe that the expert has ready-made
solutions for all the problems of human beings. Most counsellors know that this
is far from truth.

Characteristics of Counselling
1. Counselling is usually for normal people with problems.

2. It is essentially a dynamic interaction between the client and the counsellor.

3. Client is expected to be frank and forthright in his approach.

4. It is the duty of the counsellor to keep confidentiality regarding the client.

5. Counsellor is to show warmth and sympathy while listening to the client’s

problems.

6. Counsellor is expected to be non judgmental and non critical.

7. The relationship between the client and the counsellor is expected to be

genuine.

8. Counselling usually works at the level of rapport and not at the level of
transference.

Prospective counsellors should be aware of major approaches to counselling so

as to enable them to acquire a sound basis for developing their own personal
brand of counselling. The current trends in this area can be broadly classified
into three approaches.

They are: • Cognitive approaches • Affective approaches. • Behavioural

approaches.

Cognitive Approaches

As Feorge and Cristiani (1981) have pointed out, in the cognitive approaches,
the process of counselling is the curing of unreason by reason; i.e., to help
clients eliminate most emotional disturbances by learning to think rationally, to
help them get rid of illogical, irrational ideas and attitudes and substitute logical,
rational ideas and attitudes. It is believed that this process helps the client to
attain rational behaviour, happiness, and self actualization. For example
Transactional Analysis (TA) aims at the internal dialogues of individuals, which
occurs between the various ego states and the struggles between the real parts of
their behavior and the behaviour of others by identifying which ego state is in
power at any given time. TA thus gives the clients information about the various
types of transactions that occur among individuals and to help them identify the
kinds of behaviour in which they are involved. The goal of TA is to help clients
review their past decisions and make new decisions about their present
behaviour. It is assumed that this would change their life direction into
developing an autonomous life style characterized by awareness, spontaneity.
This, it is believed that would, eliminate a life style characterized by
manipulative game – playing a self-defeating neurotic tendencies.

Affective Approaches

As the term suggests the affective approaches in counselling focus their

attention to what is going on inside the individual, and particularly what the
individual is experiencing at a given time. Client-centered counselling of
Rogers is perhaps the most well-defined technique in the affective approaches.
It also highlights an issue in counselling; namely, how much responsibility can
be placed on the client for his own problem solving. The 'self-theory' of Rogers
also assumes a perspective called 'phenomenology'. According to this
perspective, people's 'reality' is that which they perceive. The way to understand
individuals is to infer the 'phenomenological field' from their behaviour. In
other words, the 'internal frame of reference' of the client is used in counselling
with the implication that counsellors must attempt to perceive client's perceptual
worlds as closely as they can. This is known as the empathic skill of the
counsellor. Individual client's need to strive for wholeness is the focus in Gestalt
therapy and counselling. This school of counselling gives importance to the
internal world of the individual. Striving for the gestalt or the wholeness is
actually a striving for an integration of thinking, feeling, and behaving. The key
concept here is awareness. It is believed that the counsellors help the clients
work toward a total awareness of his experiences. Gestalt psychologists point
out that such awareness permits self-regulation and self-control in the direction
of increased integration and creativity.

Behavioural Approaches

While the dynamically oriented theorists try to understand conscious and

unconscious through inference, the behavioural counsellors concentrate on
objective study of client behaviour and the learning process. As the emphasis is
primarily on overt behaviour, the first emphasis is to discover how the
behaviour was acquired and how it can be changed. The second emphasis,
which is a later addition, is on precondition for behaviour change. This
approach is characterized by (1) a focus on overt and specified behaviour; (2) a
precise and well spelt out target behaviours called goals; (3) a formulation of a
specific and objective treatment procedure to the problem at hand; and (4) an
objective assessment of the outcome of counselling in terms of the degree of
approximation to the target behaviour. In the behavioural approaches well
defined counselling goals are of central importance. The much talked about
counsellor-counselee relationship in other approaches is of secondary
importance only. The main aim of this relationship to the behaviourist
counsellor is to facilitate greater understanding of the client's view of the
problem. This helps to formulate a more successful behavioural plan for
bringing about change in the client's maladaptive behaviour to one of adaptive
behaviour (target behaviour)

Professional preparation and Training For Counselling

Evaluation
It is for reasons such as these that counsellor educators need to be aware of, and
sensitive to, the multiplicity of needs of the counsellor trainee. In addressing the
issue of how counsellor training programs can provide a beneficial learning
experience, the following five-stage model may be useful to consider: Selection,
Induction, Training, Supervision, and Evaluation (SITSE).

Stage 1:

Selection Faculty make decisions as to the most effective ways of attracting,

recruiting and selecting students. While flexibility may inherently be the rule in
the process of selecting applicants, it is important that selection procedures
reflect a clear purpose as to what qualities and abilities are being sought (Pope,
1998). Admission criteria should be established to reflect appropriate ways of
screening prospective students and to determine who will have the greatest
likelihood of making a valuable contribution to the program and the profession.
Counsellor educators must remember that legally, ethically and morally they are
gatekeepers to the profession (Frame &Stevens-Smith, 1995).

Stage 2:
Induction It is useful for counsellor educators to incorporate methods that
ensure students from a range of backgrounds develop a sense of the uniqueness
of the counselling profession. The orientation of students toward counselling as
a vocation clearly consists of more than a course in history or counselling
foundations. There is a need for a comprehensive way faculty can assess how
well students have grasped the content and practical application of introductory
courses, prior to practicum or an internship being undertaken. The use of
mentors, student–faculty relationships (Hazler & Carney, 1993), and
involvement by the professional associations are significantly additive to this
process.

Stage 3:

Training The critical components of counsellor training include coursework,

research, and clinical practice. Classes, independent work, clinical consultation
and practical should focus on the development of professionally appropriate
knowledge, skills and attitudes. These experiences may be supplemented by
involvement in ancillary professional activities that aim to develop the trainee
and thereby maximise personal and professional learning.

Stage 4:

Supervision As the trainee moves through the program of studies, clinical and
administrative supervisors (at university and in agencies) in evaluative and
supportive positions guide the novice counsellor. With appropriate consultation
and well-planned feedback, the trainee is fostered in developmental growth and
professional awareness. This growth can occur via individual supervision, or
within groups and with peers.

Stage 5:

Evaluation The final stage brings with it the potential for the most challenges
and controversy, as it deals with the issue of review and retention. This stage is
an indication of the Counselling Trainees expectations of the profession that are
reflected by the beliefs of the faculty. This stage cautions that the subjectivity of
the process should be recognised and minimised (Baldo, Softas-Nall, & Shaw,
1997). It is at this point that trainees pass from the student ranks to become the
emerging professional counsellor.