PSYCHOLOGY CORNER

COUNSELING STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

AMY L. CHAVES

Feb. 28, 2000

(Based from the book COUNSELING IN PERSPECTIVE:

THEORY, PROCESS, SKILLS

BY:  LILY ROSQUETA-ROSALES)

CONTEXT:

            An important factor which greatly influences and affects the effectiveness of any form of counseling is the skill of the counselor.  Thus, there is necessity in learning the science and art of counseling through various strategies and techniques.  The following are the summaries of each of the counseling strategies and techniques:

I.  The General Counseling Strategies:

            Relationship Strategies = counselor attends, accepts, empathizes,  being genuine and transparent, respects, listens, responds, cares, and ensures emotional security of the client

            Interviewing Strategies= counselor responds to verbal and non-verbal messages, silence, clarifies, reflects, inquires, summarizes

            Assessment Strategies = counselor evaluates client’s situation, assesses coping levels, explores suitable alternatives, determines appropriate resources and referrals

            Insight Strategies= counselor facilitates the discovery of conflicts, understands cognitions, deals with client’s conscious, unconscious, and altered thoughts

            Listening Strategies= counselor notes verbal and non-verbal behaviors, responds to basic messages, clarifies content and emotions, checks perceptions for accuracy

            Leading Skills= counselor leads counseling interviews, discussions, controls confusion or diffusion that may arise, conducts open and closed inquiries through unstructured questioning

            Reflecting Skills= counselor reflects on feelings, emotions contents, ideas, messages, and experiences of the client

              Summarizing Skills= counselor puts the client’s messages and emotions together to make a total picture

              Confronting Skills= counselor recognizes and describes feelings, reacts to client’s emotions, screens and pinpoints feelings, promotes self-confrontation, facilitates loosening of client’s feelings

             Interpretative Skills= counselor facilitates awareness as he symbolizes client’s messages  for a wider understanding

              Informing Skills= counselor gives valid information based on research and expertise and discusses with client alternatives for possible solution of problems

              Perceptual Skills= counselor guides the client to see problematic situations clearly with the end-view that there are solutions to the problems

              Cognitive Change Skills= counselor helps the client restructure his thoughts and alter any self-defeating thinking

              Support Networking Skills= counselor helps the client assess, strengthen, and diversify environmental sources of support

              Stress Management and Wellness Skills= counselor reduces the client’s tensions through self and environmental procedures

              Problem-Solving Skills= counselor introduces and increases problem-solving competence through the application of problem-solving models

              Description and Expression of Feelings Skills= counselor enduces articulation of the client’s emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, love and joy

            Through the different strategies above, it is expected that the counselor will encourage his client to learn effective ways of solving his problems.  The strategies that the counselor will choose will enable his client to use his own (client’s) resources in coping with life’s difficulties.  The counselor is tasked in helping his client become aware of his unlimited potentials.

II.   Selected Skills:

            Living and Learning Through Loss:  information-based and experiential, this technique is best for adolescents who are in the midst of coping with the loss of a loved one or family member.  A Minimum of eight weeks, two hours each session is recommended.

            Life Style Approach:  this techniques is traditionally used with adolescents and adults with eight avenues of consideration:  Case History, Psychological Interviewing, Expressive Behavior, Psychological Testing, Family Constellation, Early Recollections, Grouping, and Symptomatic Behavior.  The life style counselor believes that there are no chance memories.  The Client’s recollections are those which has bearing with his outlook on his self, others, or life.  This approach emphasizes the interrelatedness of man and personal problems are regarded as social problems.  

            Life Review: this is the process of evaluating one’s life including one’s accomplishments, failures, regrets and goals.  The transition periods in one’s life such as aging, retirement, loss of a loved one or one’s approaching death are considered the critical changes that need to be considered.  This process is helpful particularly to older patients who face critical developmental issues such as poor self-concept, low self-esteem, lack of purpose in life, the feelings of bereavement, ill health or approaching death.  The four main parts of the life review are: lecture, sensitizing exercises, exploring time, and final self-introspection and evaluation.

            Fantasy Therapy:  this form of therapy is used to bring into surface unavailable persons, unfinished events, feelings that are resisted and the unknown.  The counselor guides the client into the world of fantasy through verbal instructions.  The client is encouraged to express his feelings like guilt, regrets, suffering and the like.  However, counselors are cautioned in the use of fantasy therapy since the counselor must first have the professional training and have mastered the techniques of the contract and withdrawal aspects of this approach before using  it.

            Imagery:  this is a form of therapy which uses mental device in the form of imagery or dreamwold to interpret and analyze unsettled energies, hidden meanings, internal deep feelings and thoughts.  The counselor must have a high sense of sensitivity, an advanced training in psychoanalysis, a working knowledge of depth psychological symbolism and many years of counseling.  The client must be put in a relaxed state and sessions be done in a quiet environment.  The task of the counselor is to evaluate the imagery chosen by the client for symbolic meanings, metaphors and linguistic interpretations.  In this context, experiencing an imagery is essentially the same as experiencing in actuality.

           Metaphor:  metaphor is the language of the right brain hemisphere.  This area of the brain includes poetry, stories, anecdotes, parables, proverbs and non-verbal language.  The power of this therapy is found in its ability to reach an affective component of one’s personality, that part that wishes to know something about the self but at the same time  is protected by the client.  Metaphors are less threatening because they are chosen  with care by the counselor and resemble that of projective tests.  This therapy is useful if the client needs to be motivated, if the client thinks he will not be able to solve his problem or when the client appears to be upset or bored.

            Some of the metaphorical objects that the counselor can use are toys for children,  artistic reproduction, drawing, stories, anecdotes and parables for both adults and children.   The stories or parables must be contrived that they almost represent the equivalent to the real life of the client.

            Stress Care: people nowadays are highly-stressed because of the kind of lifestyle they live—populated areas, housing difficulties, packed vehicles and even parks, economic problems.  Child abuse, teenage delinquency, marital problems—these add up to a lot of stress.  The counselor must be aware of the physiological and psychological symptoms of stress so that he can deal better with a tense or stressed client.  The counselor can help his client de-stress by encouraging  his client to engage in a good exercise program, to refrain from some form of destructive vices such as drinking or drugs, a balanced diet, creating a balance in one’s life and positive self-talk.  In addition, the counselor can teach his client these three important techniques: the relaxing refresher exercise, the visualization guide and the deep muscle relaxation.

            Play Therapy:  this form is therapy is best suited for children in order to guide the child into the understanding of some situations and  solution to problems that needs the component of free association.  It is important that the counselor must be somebody who could provide warmth and bonding to the child for this therapy to succeed.  During the therapy the counselor observes the child’s behavior so he could get clues as to how best to help the child.  It has been observed that children are able to cope with their inner conflicts and traumatic environment after having been guided into play therapy by a non-directive counselor.

           Contextual, Structural, Strategic Approaches to Family Therapy:  the contextual approach to family therapy is based on the systems theory, psychoanalysis, and existential philosophy.  The  goal is to establish trustworthiness and fairness among members of the family and to correct object-loss.  The counselor uses the multidirectional process of siding with each member of the family and then guiding each member to see the problem from different vantage points.

            The structural approach focuses on interpersonal communications, the goal of which is the transformation of dysfunctional family structures to make the family dynamic.  The counselor uses the accommodation techniques such as supporting the existing family structure (maintenance), encouraging typical interaction (tracking), and following the pattern of family moods (mimesis), after which he gradually re-structures the family structure.  The interview with the family goes through four stages:  the social stage, the problem stage, the interaction stage and the goal-setting stage.

EXPERIENCE:

            My experience as a teacher is usually that of guiding and counseling.  I have often used several ways of helping students arrive at the most appropriate decision or behavior through their own independent mode of thinking and choosing.  I have used consistently the Relationship  Strategies along with Interviewing, Assessing, Insight, Listening, Leading, Reflecting, Summarizing, Cognitive-change, Problem-solving and Description and Expression of Feelings Strategies or Skills.  When one guides or counsels he makes use of all the available strategies that best suit the type of personality and problems the client has.  I could say that I am a  “natural” in being able to use the different strategies at the most fitting time.  One look at a person or student and I would “know,” by gut feeling, who he is, what type of a person he is, and the extent of his problem.            

            I am very careful though in using the Confrontation Strategy because with teen-agers one has to be gentle yet firm.  This confrontation skills is best for adults who have been “calloused” by some feelings that they try to hide.   A wife-beater may need this confrontation strategy.  I also seldom use the Interpretative Skill because I am yet very cognizant of the symbols of most imageries or dreams.  But some elements are very important for the counselor to have: compassion, the ability to listen, the ability to keep things confidential, and the desire to help.

REFLECTION:

            When I reflect about those times when I was the counselor, I would say that I am tremendously thankful and even touched that some students chose me to be part of their world.  I should say therefore that counselors have, at their disposable, the ability to “heal” broken hearts, broken spirits.  One such very recent case, about two months ago, was about a student who fell in love with another student who is below her stature.  She is rich and exceptionally beautiful, was born into a silver spoon, has not even experienced riding in a jeepney or eating in a “carenderia”.  Know from the very start that their relationship will not survive but she was so intense about the whole thing because for the first time, this guy opened a different world to her, a world which was almost foreign to her—he made her ride jeepneys, made her eat at cheap “carenderia”, even taught her how to scuba—dive with only a snorkel.  At first she was fascinated in this kind of world and in him.  I didn’t confront.  I listened.  I was there whenever she needed to talk via the telephone even  late at night.  I couldn’t say “No’ to her because I sense that if ever her world would collapse I would be there for her.

            Her world did collapse—twice.  The first was when her parents found out their secret relationship and made her choose between her studies or the guy.  She was suicidal at that point.  I  made her think of a lot of options instead of what she wanted—to leave the comfort of her home and stay with the guy who couldn’t even afford to bring her to a decent restaurant for a decent meal.  She was able to keep her head together and continue with her studies even though her parents do not trust her anymore.  But I was there, trusting her.  The second time happened when her boyfriend met a car accident with a car he borrowed.  The car was a total wreck and so was her boyfriend.  She found out that he had been drinking that night and that he is an alcoholic.  To make matters worse, she also found out that he would often go to prostitutes while at the same time, make love to her.  That’s the second time her world collapsed.  She made the decision to break off the relationship.  And I’m so happy that I was with her throughout her ordeal and that she is okay now.

ACTION:

            I would like to know more about the other ways of dealing with clients,  particularly the professional way.   I would  prefer to learn more on how to interpret symbols in dreams and imagery.  Most of all, I would like to be able to help stressed individuals through the Stress Management and Wellness Program.  I  have this dream of opening up a Stress Management and Wellness Program.   This is one of the ways whereby the counselor can help the client in a holistic way—mind and body.  This way, I’ll  be helping my clients in staying healthy in mind and in body.  I would incorporate diet or the proper nutrition, aerobic and strength-training exercises, biofeedback method, guided imagery method, plus, I would be willing to counsel them to assist them make important life changes.

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