SOME THEORIES OF COUNSELLING
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s point of view and to share their emotions, almost “to stand in their shoes”. Empathy is a centrally important ingredient of any therapeutic situation. Without empathy, the client is unlikely to trust the therapist, and without trust, will be unlikely to explore deeper levels of problems and effect changes.
To practice empathy, a therapist must continually be in touch with the client’s feelings and values, without intruding their own set of values. The therapist must in a sense imagine being in the “client’s shoes”.
Part of empathy is the practice of reflection.
The therapist becomes like a mirror, constantly reflecting the client’s attitudes back to him/her; for example:
| Client: |
He makes me mad. I just want to lash out at him. |
| Therapist: |
You feel angry and frustrated. |
| Client: |
Yes, and I don’t know what to do -how to end it |
| Therapist: |
It’s confusing for you and you don’t know how to end the frustration. |
One might ask why reflection can help a person -the therapist doesn’t appear to be adding anything to the clients understanding. The client however, in this way learns to accept their feelings. They then find it easier to express their feelings.
They are making sense of a confused world through verbal articulation. All of these factors form a basis for problem solving.
Transference
Although the concept of transference originated in psychoanalysis, it has been proved to be of profound relevance to any therapeutic situation.
Transference involves the projection of feelings towards people in your life, onto the therapist. If the client perceives her husband of being a cold aloof person, she brings this attitude into the therapeutic situation, and projects it onto the therapist.
Thus she perceives the therapist as being cold and aloof. In this way the therapist acts as a sounding board for the clients feelings. Since people’s problems are often about loved ones, clients often experience feelings of love and attachment toward their therapists.
A good therapist will not encourage OR suppress such feelings. Instead they will work with them during the therapy session to broaden the clients self awareness. He/she will help the client realise that these feelings come from other relationships, for example:
| Client: |
I don’t know what’s wrong with you today. You’re not listening to my silly problems.
You’re not even listening. |
| Therapist: |
You’re mistaken about that. I’m listening very closely. I begin to feel that someone at home perhaps, hasn’t been listening to you. Is that so? |
Transference can be a positive key to finding out what the client’s central hidden problems are.
A client cannot openly admit anger to her husband, who perhaps doesn’t even know that she is angry; but she might project those feelings onto the therapist.
DIRECTIVENESS/NON-DIRECTIVENESS
The use of empathy or reflection might be referred to as a non directive approach.
Here the therapist is not actively leading the client to a solution.
This is a necessary part of therapy as it guides the client to learn to express his/her hidden feelings.
Once the client’s world is opened to the therapist willingly, and the client has trust in the therapist, then a more directive technique can be used.
Directive techniques include:
- Introducing the client to open ended questions which require a greater level of trust & honesty.
E.g. Why do you stay with your husband when he hurts you so much?
- Introducing a level of interpretation
Instead of merely reflecting the client’s feelings, an element of interpretation is added. This is not to say that you will take wild guesses. Your interpretation of the client’s verbalisation must be grounded in your knowledge of their feelings and attitudes.
- Greater Intervention as regards the direction of discussion.
Often when the client has revealed a greater part of his/her experiences in therapy, a new level of defensiveness sets in, and the client might experience mental blocks.
BEHAVIOUR THERAPIES
The basic assumption of behavioural therapy is that maladaptive behaviour is a learned way of coping with stress, and that these learned behaviours can be unlearned and replaced with more efficient forms of behaviour.
According to the behaviourists, it is not enough to simply change a person’s attitude in therapy, for even if one develops healthier mental attitudes, one’s behaviour does not necessarily change.
I might develop the attitude that violence and aggression are abhorrent and counter productive ways of dealing with stress, yet as soon as I am stressed I might still automatically have violent outbursts.
The behaviourist’s main aim therefore is to modify behaviour through therapy.
The therapist’s technique of modifying the client’s behaviour is largely based on learning theory, such as classical and operant conditioning
SYSTEMATIC DESENSITISATION
This is a method used to eliminate fears and phobias. The individual is taught that they cannot be anxious and relaxed at the same time.
Relaxation training is provided and then used by the client whenever they encounter stress. Smaller fears are eliminated before greater fears are tackled.
Since one cannot be anxious and assertive at the same time, the person is also taught how to assert themselves. The individual learns how to act assertively in situations which usually produce passivity and timidity in the client. For instance, a depressive might be trained to overcome learned helplessness
Both relaxation and assertive training are practiced in a therapeutic situation, and then the client is encouraged to employ the learned methods on his/her own, in real life situations.
Role modelling is a particularly important therapeutic tool in this respect (e.g. If a client is having problems with the boss at work; the therapist may pretend to be the boss in a work situation and ask the client to act out the situation in his own role as if he were at work.
This Counselling Skills course is accredited by ACCPH and allows you to join as a professional member after completion. Membership allows you to add the letters MACCPH after your name (post-nominals).
