Table of Contents
Abstract
While reflecting on my experiences from this course, I can truly say my growth and development have highly emerged in reference to my personal styles of counseling. Looking back on my experiences in this course, I cannot even believe that it was me in those beginning counseling sessions. My growth and progress related to the development of my personal style as a counselor from the beginning of the semester to now is expressed in the remainder of the paper.
Reflection of My Own Personal Style and Development
Throughout this course, we studied the strategies of the helping relationship, as well as, being able to practice, demonstrate, and discuss the methods and techniques as they correspond to individual counseling.
What Works in Counseling
From my experience in this course, I can say that the basic skills in combination with the advanced skills are the most important to utilize in counseling. These skills were taught throughout the semester and I feel my ability to utilize them correctly in session has improved drastically. However, I still feel my development of these skills needs practice. According to our textbook, Learning the Art of Helping: Building Blocks and Techniques, the author, Mark E. Young, suggests the basic helping skills are known as the therapeutic building blocks of the helping relationship (Young, 2017). Specifically, the book states, “these are the most fundamental components of the helping interview, the therapeutic building blocks represent the foundational intervention used to create change” (Young, 2017, p. 22). Based on my experiences, I am confident this statement is accurate, due to seeing these skills in action and ability to guide clients towards becoming more self-aware of their mental health issues.
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In regard to the literature which evaluates the skills that work in counseling, the journal, Developing the Four-Stage Supervision Model for Counselor Trainees suggests, “a counselor should be able to use different counseling skills, ranging from basic and simple to more advanced and complex levels in the counseling profession” (Eryılmaz & Mutlu, 2017, p. 598). For instance, when I reflect back on my experiences in terms of learning, practicing, and demonstrating these basic skills as a counselor, I noticed that the skills of actively listening, reflecting, challenging, and goal setting are the skills that work for me as a counselor in training. The combination of these skills that I mentioned all range from basic to more advanced to complex. Therefore, this evidence is sufficient at explaining what counseling skills should be conveyed to help clients in sessions.
In the beginning of this course, my ability to demonstrate actively listening was really lacking. The noise inside my head, along with nerves of what to say to my client in our initial first sessions was hindering me from establishing a relationship with my client. The skill of active listening is extremely important and crucial to the development of change in the counseling setting. According to the article, The Active- Empathic Listening Scale (AELS): Conceptualization and Evidence of Validity Within the Interpersonal Domain states,
“listening is considered a core competency for successful interaction not only by the self-proclaimed self-help gurus, but also by scholars of human communication” (Bodie, 2011, p. 291). Thus, as a counselor in training, if I am not actively listening to my client than I may miss key components of my client’s story. As a result, the client may assume that I do not care due to my poor listening. Consequently, this can have an effect on the development of my therapeutic relationship with my client. For instance, failing to utilize this skill with my client in our initial counseling sessions was impacting the outcome of me establishing a genuine relationship with my client. After becoming aware of the importance of this skill and the way I was utilizing it was negatively impacting the progression I had with my client. I reconstructed my attitude and started to take risks by demonstrating and practicing the use of this skill more in my counseling sessions. The feedback I received from using this skill productively helped towards my development of establishing a better therapeutic relationship with my client. As well as, providing me with a better interpretation and understanding of my client’s story to guide her towards healthier functioning.
In addition to active listening, the advanced skills of reflecting and challenging also work for me as the counselor. The skill of reflecting really works for me because it helps me determine if I am understanding my client’s story correctly. For instance, I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), therefore, it affects my ability to be able to concentrate and process what my client is disclosing to me at certain times. To further explain this, there have been times where I have been actively listening to my client during the session, but they may say a certain word, phrase, or statement and it completely shifts my focus of concentration and ability to listen or understand what they are disclosing. Thus, the skill of reflecting alleviates this tendency for me by allowing me to regain focus and repeat a condensed version of my client’s story back to them, in order, to establish if I heard them correctly. Therefore, if I didn’t hear or understand my client’s story accurately, my client is able to intervene and sense the genuineness that I am trying to precisely understand them. Correspondingly, when my client feels understood, they feel safe to disclose at a deeper level and the underlying issues begin to surface and our relationship progresses. The skill of reflecting provides a foundation toward getting my client to identify their beliefs and meanings related to specific experiences or events within their life. Hence, the use of this skill provides me the ability to work with my client towards identifying a deeper underlying meaning associated with my client’s story.
Another advanced skill that works for me is the use of challenging skills. According to my beliefs, I favor the Cognitive Behavioral theory. The perspective of this theory states that the role of one’s environment influences a person’s beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts about specific experiences or events contributes to their unhealthy thinking and functioning. Therefore, relating to this theory and to experience change with clients, I believe it is a matter of making clients aware of the inconsistencies and distortions with their thinking. When using the skill of challenging with a client, it can either be beneficial or strain the therapeutic relationship. Honestly, I think these skills are a beneficial to use because essentially, clients are coming to counseling because they are unaware of how to overcome their presenting issues alone. Thus, through the use of challenging strategies it enables and guides the client to identify and become more aware of the inconsistencies or blind spots associated to their perceptions of certain situations. Essentially, challenging skills help clients to become more self-aware to be able to explore their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to make better decisions towards achieving their goals.
How do these skills and techniques define your personal style as a counselor?
Practicing and demonstrating these skills has really made me more aware of my personal style as a counselor. While conducting my sessions, I noticed that I like to use a positive tone, sense of humor, passive and active stance as well as establishing a comfortable setting for my client. Depending on the presenting issue and personality of my client, I think this plays a huge role in my style as a counselor. For instance, if my client was shy and resistant towards exploring their presenting issues, I am not going to use my passive style of helping with this client because I don’t think it would be effective. Therefore, as a counselor I think a big determining factor of what style you convey depends on your presenting client. In addition to this, I also think my personal style is unique based on the way I articulate my disclosures to my client. Since, I am only a beginner, the way I interact and execute the skills and techniques we have learned in class is going to be very different when compared to a further, more advanced level counselor. Also, by taking risks and learning these skills, I was able to identify what works and doesn’t work for me as a counselor. The notion of what works for me or what does not work relates to my individualistic style as a counselor. For instance, certain skills or techniques that are favorable for me may not be for other counselors in this field. Evidently, every individual is different and has a different way of doing things which contributes to their particular style as a counselor.
How will you continue to develop your style and build upon skills?
I will continue to develop my style and build upon these skills by continuing to educate myself and advance my knowledge on this subject matter. I am hopeful that through this program I will be provided with the necessary tools and guidance to be able to achieve this. By using the resources of this program, I can attend conferences or presentations that demonstrate these facets which will contribute to me continuing to build upon these skills. Additionally, I think practicing these skills, taking risks, and being open minded will assist in my development towards becoming a professional counselor. For instance, I refer to the common saying “practice makes perfect.” In my perspective, this saying relies on the notion that the more you practice something the better you will become at it. Therefore, the more I practice and demonstrate my counseling skills the more effective I will become at utilizing them. I am hopeful that my practicum and internship sites will be able to teach me effective strategies, in order to demonstrate these techniques appropriately when working with future clients. Furthermore, I think receiving feedback from colleagues and professors will also help me towards developing my style and building on these skills. The feedback I received from you in this course helped me to become more aware of the things I needed to work on and resulted in positive progression of me employing these skills.
Given what you currently do in counseling, what theories appear to fit with your style?
In regard to what I currently do in counseling, I can say that Cognitive theory appears to fit with my style the most. I have a fascination with cognitive theory and feel that it relates to my theoretical orientation the most. According to the book, Theoretical models of counseling and psychotherapy, the cognitive theory developed by Aaron Beck states it “is an active, problem-focused approach to psychotherapy in which mental health practitioners target the cognitive aspect of the personality to affect constructive change in all aspects: emotional, behavioral, motivational, and physical” (Fall, Holden, & Marquis, 2017, p. 307). For instance, when I was transcribing my session for our final transcript, I saw that I incorporated certain aspects of the cognitive theory with my client. Specifically, my role as a counselor suggests similarities when compared to a cognitive counselor’s role. The role of a cognitive counselor states to be “warm, empathetic, and genuine, observant, flexible, able to respond to client’s needs, as well as teaching a client about how to identify cognitions and test their validity” (Fall, Holden, & Marquis, 2017). My demonstration of these abilities was shown in my counseling sessions throughout the course of this semester. Some of my responses to my client also suggest elements of this theoretical model. Overall, looking back on my sessions and my development over the course of this semester, I can say that this theory appears to fit with my style and be effective during my journey towards becoming a counselor.
Conclusion
Reflecting back on my experiences related to the development of my personal style as a beginning counselor, I can say my involvement in this course really enhanced my self-awareness. Being able to look at my progress, in regard to, the emergence of my development was extremely interesting for me because it allowed me to see myself in a different perspective.
The exploration of the topics I mentioned above, allowed me to gain a better understanding of how I emerged as a counselor throughout this semester. I look forward to continuing to advance my knowledge and gain insight related to these skills and techniques. I think this assignment was extremely helpful because it allowed me to see the bigger picture of the journey that lies ahead for me as a counselor. Overall, I am excited to continue to emerge and develop through this program, as well as, hoping to achieve my goals and aspirations of becoming a professional counselor. Captivated to see what the future holds for me in this profession!
