THE CORE CONDITIONS OF COUNSELING – INTRODUCTION

Many beginning counselors are able to accomplish the first steps of verbal encouragement and sending the appropriate non verbal messages across to the client with ease. Difficulty arises when they have to respond and say things to the client after they begin to disclose information. As the information being disclosed is important to the client, it becomes crucial that the counselor convey respect and understanding for the problem to the client.

3 purposes of disclosure:

1. Articulation or speaking of his or her experience.

2. To offer a safe place for the client to release pent up feeling in the process of telling the experience.

3. Clarifying the true nature of the problem.

The counselor’s goal is to understand the client’s experience as clearly and personally as possible, to lay the foundation for change and to cement the therapeutic alliance with the client.

New counselor’s often focus on finding the solution to a client’s problem themselves and forget that ultimately it is the client’s responsibility to solve the problems. The single most important thing that counselors offer to their clients is a good relationship that energizes the clients themselves to use existing resources and assists them in developing new skills to solve their problems. The last thing that client’s want from professional counselor’s are premature suggestions for change, as advice can even be provided by well intentioned people around the client. Providing premature suggestions and solutions to resolve a client’s problem demeans the client’s ability to be self-directing.

Carl Rogers described three core conditions of counseling; empathy, positive regard and genuineness. He described there as the necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Concreteness is the fourth core condition of counseling. It is the counselor’s skill by which he/she channelizes the client’s discussion on specific events and diverts away from small talk or excessive storytelling.

Primary empathy is most often communicated through an interchangeable verbal response. These are statements that capture the essential themes in a client’s statements but do not go deeper than the transparent material. Paraphrasing and restatements play a role as they convey to the client that the counselor has understood what the client is trying to convey. A paraphrase like, “you felt angry and degraded as your girlfriend criticized you in front of your friends” is a fairly typical response. It captures the meaning and the feeling of the client’s previous disclosure in simple language that the client can understand. It is likely that the client will continue to elaborate on the meaning of that or related experiences.

Statements such as “I know just how you felt” do not communicate empathy because they contain nothing of what the client’s have shared.

Advanced empathy is communicated through additive verbal responses, where the counselor adds perceptions that the client implied but did not state directly. The ability to hear these implied meanings grows with experience and with the quality of the counselor’s diagnostic thinking.

Study:

Client and counselor perceptions of empathy at different stages in the counseling process were examined in relation to the verbal response modes used by counselors. Each of 6 counselors (aged 32-58 yrs) at college counseling centers was studied in counseling with 4 clients, of whom 2 were in initial sessions and 2 were in sessions drawn from ongoing counseling relationships. Clients perceived counselors as showing significantly greater empathy during ongoing than during initial sessions, and counselors perceived themselves as showing significantly greater empathy during initial sessions than did clients rating the same sessions. Clients rated counselors using fewer general advisements as more empathic, whereas counselors who rated themselves more empathic used more explorations and fewer reassurances. It was found that exploration was the only category strongly associated with both client and counselor experiences of empathic communication in both initial and ongoing sessions.

Primary empathy is used in the first stage because:

The client may feel threatened that the counselor can see through his/her defenses too quickly.

Limited knowledge about the unique experience of the client.

Let’s now look at some Empathic Listening Techniques:

Encouragers

They can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mixture. They communicate to the client: "I am listening", "I want to listen", and "I want to understand more about your experience"

Non-verbal "encourager" behaviors include nodding your head, leaning forward, making sounds like "umm, ahh, etc. Facial expressions are used like smiles and grimaces.

All of these non-verbal expression convey "I am with you."

Verbally, encouragers give permission, request additional information, and provide direction.

Examples include statements like "Can you tell me more

about that"? Or "I'm curious about ......

Reflections

Reflective listening can be a powerful tool of communication. In reflective listening you simply reflect to the client what you think you heard, making sine to reflect their feelings

Power of Reflective Listening

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct forces:

As the counselor processes what the client is saying through the counselor's own experience and reflects it to the client in the counselor's own words, it lets the client know that the counselor has not only heard the client but has understood what has been said.

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct forces:

The counselor is telling the client what he is saying in an accurate way, it is clear the counselor has been listening and not distorting what the client has told the counselor.

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct forces:

As the counselor reflects to the client what the counselor's understanding is, the client has an opportunity to hear him or herself in a new way.

Empathic Comments

Rogers wrote: "To be with another in this way (empathetic) means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another's world without prejudice. In some ways it means you lay aside your self'.

Empathic comments include using a running commentary while the client is talking, this would include encouragers and reflective listening. Another approach is to wait until the client finishes speaking and then summarize with reflective statements.

Why Do We Use Empathic Listening?

To show an interest in the client

To encourage the client to gain a better understanding of himself

To support the client in his attempts to resolve conflict

It is therapeutic in and of itself

It leads to an increase in client satisfaction

To discover the client's needs and concerns

The most important reason we use empathic listening is because it maintains the client as the primary problem solver, which is essentially the essence of the counseling process.

Barriers to Empathic Listening

Cultural differences

Seeing the client as an object

Your inner-world (inscape)

Your preconceived ideas and beliefs

You may be uncomfortable in the presence of the client's strong emotions---grief, anger or pain

To elaborate on cultural sensitivity and diversity, and also to explain how a counselor can tackle a situation like that, I will be using the example of Rob, an African-American adolescent. Rob lived in the inner city and was a middle school student participating in a diversity program. In the first two sessions with the counselor, communication was limited and strained, with the exception of a derogatory comment toward the counselor or the school. Even when the counselor would follow up these derogatory statements, Rob refused to talk further. The counselor and Rob had reached a therapeutic impasse. It then occurred to the counselor that he has to address the obvious differences between the two that were left unstated. With some hesitation and unease, the counselor said to rob that as an older white guy living outside of the city, he probably did not have much of an idea. Almost immediately, Rob began to scornfully point out the differences between them. He expressed the view that the counselor would never be able to understand to be under the constant fear of being assaulted. After this, he began to talk about personal issues, and a therapeutic relationship began to develop.

Thus, from this we see that demonstrating an interest in a client by learning more about his or her culture can promote empathic understanding. From a clinical perspective, cultural differences have been shown to bias the accuracy of a therapists diagnostic impressions of clients from diverse cultures.

IMPORTANCE OF EMPATHY

Expresses caring and affirmation to the client. “I care enough for you that I want to work hard to understand you clearly.

Feedback makes the client see his or her own themes more clearly.

Positive expectations about the whole counseling experience. Explore, search and perceive oneself more clearly. Active engagemet of all participants. Not simply conversation. Self discovery. Nothing bad

will happen as a result of communication, something helpful is likely to occur.

Communicates to the client that the counselor has special expertise to offer. A counselor who can make empathetic contact establishes himself or herself as having some special skill. Optimism about future. For client success in counseling, empathy is the most important counselor quality.

EMPATHY V/S SYMPATHY

I would now like to give u a very brief distinction of empathetic and sympathetic statements.

Empathy is, "I recognize how you feel."

ALTERNATE VIEW

While researching the internet I came across a very interesting website, which gave me an entirely different perspective on empathy. I will be giving u the website address when I am done but I would like to first share with you what caught my eye the most. The author says:

In human-speak, if you say that you are sad and I empathize with you it means that we have an agreement. I regard you as my object. You communicate to me a property of yours ("sadness"). This triggers in me a recollection of "what is sadness" or "what is to be sad". I say that I know what you mean, I have been sad before, I know what it is like to be sad. I empathize with you. We agree about being sad. We have an intersubjective agreement.

Alas, such an agreement is meaningless. We cannot (yet) measure sadness, quantify it, crystallize it, access it in any way from the outside. We are totally and absolutely reliant on your introspection and on my introspection. There is no way anyone can prove that my "sadness" is even remotely similar to your sadness. I may be feeling or experiencing something that you might find hilarious and not sad at all. Still, I call it "sadness" and I empathize with you. Sympathy is, "I'm sorry for your sadness, I wish to help."

LACK OF EMPATHY

Some psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists believe that not all humans have an ability to feel empathy or perceive the emotions of others. For instance, Autism and related conditions are often (but not always) characterized by an apparent reduced ability to empathize with others

http://samvak.tripod.com/empathy.html empathy - understanding, sympathy – reaction, sharing. http://www.glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx

EMPATHY

The word "empathy" has been derived from the German word "einfuhlung”, the correct translation would be "in feeling" or "feeling into something". It was used in the context of art. For example, when a person observes a piece of art, he or she may have the urge to be one with that piece of art on a physical level, and lose a sense of self awareness.

Carl Rogers defined empathy as the counselor’s ability to enter the client’s phenomenal world, to experience the client’s world as if it were the counselor’s own, without ever losing the as if quality.

Bohart and Greenberg have described three categories of empathy:

To illustrate further, I will be referring to the three categories in the context of an abandoned pregnant teenager.

1. Empathic rapport – if pregnancy out of wedlock is against the moral beliefs of the counselor, the counselor will still have to maintain kindness towards and understanding of the client’s situation. The counselor must display tolerance and acceptance of the client’s situation and feelings.

2. Experience near understanding of the client’s world – the counselor must be aware and conscious of the client’s life situation; being pregnant at 16 and being abandoned by the father of the baby – he/she should be able to feel what the client is going through, what led to the clients life situation and all in all, what it is to be like her.

3. Communicative attunement – the counselor tries to put him/her self in the situation of the girl at the moment, the highlight of which is being pregnant and being abandoned at 16. The counselor tries to understand the kind of trauma the girl is going through with her family, at school, among her friends, and the reality of possibly bringing up a child single handedly at the age of 16.

An individual’s inscape can be explained as a culmination of a person’s inner reactions which include one’s memories, dreams, hopes, fears and aspirations. Empathy is entering into the other persons inscape. Allowing another to enter your inscape is a great act of trust. With the clients permission and the counselors own will, the counselor enters into the inscape and helps the client to explore more fully.

The counselor must ask him/herself the following questions before beginning the process of client exploration.

Can I step into his private world so completely that I lose all desire to evaluate and judge it?

Can I let myself enter fully the world of the client's feelings and personal meanings and see these as he does?

Can I enter it so sensitively that I can move about it freely, without trampling on meanings that are precious to the client?

Can I sense it so accurately that I can catch not only the meanings of the client's experience which are obvious to him, but those meanings which are only implicit, which he sees only dimly or as confusion?

To stimulate client exploration the level of empathy communicated should match client’s level of readiness.

Empathy involves two major skills, perceiving and communicating. Perceiving involves an intense process of actively listening for themes and issues. Themes are recurring patterns such as, fear of failure, search for personal power. Issues are questions of conflicts with which the client is struggling. If related to the example before, an issue would be a question like, “How will I tell my parents that I'm pregnant?” “How will I take care of my baby alone?”

George Kelly described the perceptual element of empathy as understanding the client’s personal constructs. Personal constructs are the unique set of thoughts a person uses to process information giving meaning to life events explain cause and effect relationships and make decisions.

Beck and Meichenbaum through automatic thoughts and internal dialogue respectively have explained how empathy includes knowing not only what events have occurred in the clients life but also how his or her cognitive structure has led to interpretation of the events and to consequent feelings. Often as the counselor listens to the client’s story the counselor will see errors in the client’s logic, construct, different cause and effect relationships from the clients and identify the basis of the clients distressed feelings. Going back to the example of the APT, if the girl feels that her parents will actually kill her if she tells them about her situation, the statement would reflect on illogical thinking.

The counselor must communicate to the client that their feelings and meanings have been understood. If the counselor listens carefully and understands well but says nothing, the client has no way of knowing what is in the counselors mind and may misinterpret the counselors lack of response as a negative judgment about what they have said. In the case of APT when the girl was communicating hurt about being rejected and abandoned because she was pregnant, if the counselor did not respond, the girl might begin to think that the counselor too, is viewing her in a negative respect and that she is worthy of being rejected and abandoned.

The counselor should use restatements and paraphrasing as often, hearing ones own meanings and feelings helps the client to take another look at life events and perceive them differently.