BASIC COUNSELLING SKILLS

The core counselling skills are described below:-

1. Attending
Attending in counselling means being in the company of someone else and giving that person
your full attention, to what they are saying or doing, valuing them as worthy individuals.
Minimal Attending
1. Eye Contact
a. Look at the person most of the time.
b. Communicate caring: “I am with you, I’m listening.”

2. Body Posture
a. Be comfortable, he relaxed, lean forward slightly.
b. Be aware of personal distance.
c. Avoid distracting gestures or fidgeting.

3. Facial Expressions
a. Don’t be a brick wall!
b. Display appropriate empathy.

4. Following the Person’s Lead

a. Don’t interrupt, don’t change the subject.
b. Listen, don’t talk.
c. Don’t share experiences (‘Oh, I’ve been there...”

2. Silence
Silence in counselling gives the client control of the content, pace and objectives.This
includes the counsellor listening to silences as well as words, sitting with them and
recognising that the silences may facilitate the counselling process.

3. Simple reinforcers
These are sounds or phrases that encourage the client to speak e.g.” um-hmm”.
4. Invitation/Tack:
This is a very useful tool. It may be used when a counsellor deems it important to explore
details. Thus, he may say “Can you tell me more about that?”
5. Restatement:
This is the occasional verbatim repeating of some brief statement by the client. It may serve
to convey to the client that the counsellor is attending to them.

6. Reflecting and Paraphrasing

Reflecting in counselling is part of the ‘art of listening’. It is making sure that the client
knows their story is being listened to.This is achieved by the helper/counsellor by
both repeating and feeding a shorter version of their story back to the client. This is known as
'paraphrasing'.

7. Clarifying and the Use of Questions

In this lead, the counsellor puts together ideas that go beyond those stated by the client, ideas
shading upon interpretation. This lead also brings clients to face and comprehend the

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significance of the details and experiences that have recently been related by tying them
together in a way they may not have seen.

Questions in counselling are classed as a basic skill. The counsellor uses open questions to
clarify his or her understanding of what the client is feeling.
Open questions are best asked when listening as they allow the speaker to recount their story
in their own words and will provide you with the information you need to give the
appropriate advice. Open questions also keep the speaker talking, as it is important they speak
more than you. For example:
“How do you feel about ____________?” is an open question and encourages a much longer
answer than “Are you happy with ________?”, which would prompt a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer
and halt the conversation.
Other examples of open questions are:
 What made you come here today?
 What do you think caused the situation?

Closed questions can be used to stop the conversation if the speaker is going off at a tangent.

8. Focusing
Focusing in counselling involves making decisions about what issues the client wants to deal
with.The client may have mentioned a range of issues and problems and focusing allows the
counsellor and client together to clear away some of the less important surrounding material
and concentrate on the central issues of concern.

9. Building Rapport
Building rapport with clients in counselling is important, whatever model of counselling the
counsellor is working with.Rapport means a sense of having a connection with the person.

10. Summarising
Summaries in counselling are longer paraphrases. They condense or crystallise the essence of
what the client is saying and feeling.The summary 'sums up' the main themes that are
emerging.
The counsellor draws together sequentially several discussion topics that have been covered.
This is normally done towards the end of the interview. This lead provides clients with
insight and a grasp of the connections of the parts of their problem which they may have
missed.
11. Immediacy
Using immediacy means that the therapist reveals how they themselves are feeling in
response to the client.According to Feltham and Dryden (1993: 88), immediacy is ‘the key
skill of focusing attention on the here and now relationship of counsellor and client with
helpful timing, in order to challenge defensiveness and/or heighten awareness.

12. Reflecting on Feeling.

Reflection of feeling is vital in creating the therapeutic relationship on which counselling
success largely rests. Rather than ritually repeating “You feel” use alternative phrases for
empathically acknowledging clients’ affective states.

Working with feeling is an essential part of counseling. It is difficult to explore alternative

solutions to problems until the feelings surrounding the problem are clarified, vented, and
dealt with.

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1. Identify the feelings
a. Ask feelings questions “How do you feel about that?” “How do you feel?” “What feelings
does that bring up in you?”
b. Paraphrase spoken feelings “So you are feeling ____, is that right?” “Sounds like you are
really_____." “You must feel pretty _____."

2. Define and clarify feelings

a. Elicit feelings that accompany the one that is primarily expressed
h. Discover the individual’s personal experience of a given feeling (what does the person
mean when he or she says, “I feel X”?)

3. Acknowledge the feelings

a. Assist clients in taking responsibility for their feelings
b. Reinforce them for stating feelings in a direct, personal way (e.g., “I feel X” rather than “I
feel that one should feel X in this situation, don’t you?”)

4. Deal with feelings

a. Relate thoughts to feelings
b. Further express feelings
c. Help people express hidden feelings through best/worst fantasizing and other open
questions

13. Integrating Skills

1. Using open questions to encourage talking or to direct the conversation
2. Using paraphrase to slow down the conversational flow and focus the conversation
3. Explore feelings before solving problems
4. Summarizing to help wrap things up

14. Approval: Approval is a strong reinforcement of something reported by the client. If the
client recounts having taken a new and desirable action, the counselor should strengthen the
likelihood that the new action will be permanent.

15. Confrontation: There are times when the client needs to be aware of the contradictions
that he is making. The counselor confronts the client with this contradiction, so as to cause
the client to become aware of and the deal with them resolutely if possible and painfully if
need be.

16. Information Giving, Interpretation and Planning: In the advanced stages of

counselling the communication tone becomes cognitive and counsellor dominated:
i. Questions are asked and answered
ii. The counselor expresses his or her views with the client and the counselor proposes steps
the client can take to achieve his objectives and suggests how to implement those steps.