How Does Communication Differ in Helping Relationships - Essay Example

 How Does Communication Differ In Helping Relationships? : A. Introduction: Man is a social animal. With time, the definition of social life has changed to the extent that technology has taken over the minds and thinking of men and women whom we see around us. Every person in the urban society is addicted to web based social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, through which he can easily find new friends and social contacts who share common interests. In this case study, we study how definitely such lifestyle changes have caused young men and women to change their behavior and communication with the real people they have to deal with on a daily basis. The school and college going population is the one that has experienced maximum influence of social media. And then, there are family issues and friend betrayals that play their role in shaping up a personality and determining his or her behavior. Counseling is a society friendly word that is being used extensively these days. However, with different counseling and communication methodologies around, it can be tough to define their best applications. In fact, there are suitable methodologies which refute the traditional or conventional approach to setting things straight within the human mind (Hough, 2006: 32). Trying new approaches will only help prune up the existing methodologies. Treating an alcoholic or a drug addict is strikingly different from psychological treatment meted out to suppressed teenagers with boyfriend or family issues. If knowledge has to form the basis of all the counseling methodologies developed till now, then with our study of specific cases of depression and underperformance, we try to develop a new set of easy methodologies that can be applied to all cases of depression and counseling. B. Background: It does not take much effort to make a man or woman smile, take control of the problems he or she is facing and instill the conviction that the outcome is going to be all positive. This is precisely what psychological counselors need to do on a daily basis. Counseling is an art in itself that has been rightly defined by Burkes and Stefflre in their book ‘Theories of Counseling’ as, “Counseling denotes a professional relationship between a trained counselor and a client. This relationship is usually person-to-person, although it may sometimes involve more than two people. It is designed to help clients to understand and clarify their views of their lifespace, and to learn to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well-informed choices and through resolution of problems of an emotional or interpersonal nature.” (Burks and Stefflre 1979: 14). The professional touch to the art of counseling is important to ensure that there are no adverse effects of deep understanding of a subject’s case. The counselor has to track the progress of his subject by following pre-set and well defined psychological counseling methodologies. This keeps him safe from the effects of intimate interactions with sensitive patients. A service that was earlier only needed by old and people with advanced age, counseling sessions are becoming increasingly common with teenagers these days. (Taylor, 2003: 14). The Aspen Education Group quoted the National Sleep Foundation saying that “only 20% of adolescents get the recommended nine hours of sleep on school nights, and 45% sleep less than eight hours on school nights.” (AEG, 2006). 97% of this teenage population is downright busy with gadgets like phone or music systems, all of which are connected to the internet. New friends and friends made over the internet, social and professional connections, and newer mobile apps that make navigating through the mobile web easy, have contributed to children growing busier in their own world of randomly increasing number of contacts. Social media activities seem to take the front seat in distracting these teenagers from regular activities like eating, sleeping, or understanding the simple basics of life around them. In such a scenario of reckless and random communication, the ever increasing generation gap seems to only get wider and wider. One-to-one sessions have helped many families get rid of this communication gap, especially between the ones between teenagers or young adults and their parents. The need to keep thinking steady and ensure that the subject undergoing the counseling is comfortable during each of the sessions, is important of these psychological workers. “Mass modern society places great value on rationality, self-control and ‘cool’. For many people, the counseling room is the only place in which they have permission to allow themselves fully to feel. (McLeod, 2006: 521) Instilling this level of comfort to subjects is what brings back in them the feeling that they are living, breathing, and feeling human beings. More often than not, adults and teenagers face depression, underperformance and peer issues due to accumulation of suppressed emotions. The need to keep the emotions flowing out is what is most important for the health of these subjects. This is in fact, listed as one of the main aims of counseling according to John McLeod in his book An Introduction To Counseling. Youth workers and counselors have been handling such cases in different ways. But with the increasing number of social care campaigns, we are definitely witnessing a need to use regular counseling methodologies in our daily lives. In the absence of this, most cases, unwittingly, end up in the counselor’s chamber. Take for example, the case of this young girl of grade 9 from London. She was the only child of her parents who lived with her mother, a person with whom she never got along very well. With an older brother who had shifted away to be with his own family, she was referred into a counseling project in school because she was found to have promiscuous behavior. She was considered to be a part of a large peer group of boys and girls, most of whom she had acquired contact of through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter and did not actually know much about. In due course of the project, she took a round-about look at the whole scenario and ended up removing all these unwanted contacts from her Facebook and Twitter friend lists (Jackson, 2014). The rumors created by these friends soon turned out to be rubbish, and her ex-boyfriend was no more linked to her after that. If rumors were all that which did the damage, then the project revealed that it was not all. Her distance with her mother kept the basic moral of the girl low. She failed to impress her peer group and felt low about herself too. The counseling project in Rushcroft soon developed a set of one-to-one sessions with her mother and her, separately. These sessions had a favorable impact on her relationship with her mother. While she found her mother more patient and attentive towards her problems, the mother developed a better understanding of situations that she was facing while interacting with her peer group. She stopped losing her temper as often as she would previously do. And the girl found renewed vigor and confidence in handling friends and members of the peer group. She specifically benefitted from the deep understanding of peer psychology that the project taught her. If this case looks like a story straight out of a school diary, then well, this is not new. The impact of the counseling project brought out the need to refine our communication to improve relationships that we handle in daily life. Neither was the girl wise in suppressing her emotions from her friends and peers, nor was the mother wise in leaving her child all alone to face the brutalities of the teenage minds her daughter was having to deal with. On the outset, keeping to what we know would not have worked well if the practitioners of the project did not take all the details of her life into consideration. In the next section we talk about the methodologies used and what we feel about the approach that was used and how we could better the story of the girl regaining the lost confidence in herself. C. Skills and methodologies The case study of this London girl is different from the rest of the counseling cases that we see amongst teenagers. In the rest of the cases, most of us come across drug addiction and alcoholism at the core of the psychological problems that the student and his/her family is facing. In this particular case, these elements were totally absent. Studying the case for key communication and methodology aims was easy since the subject was in a normal state of health and responded to our questions easy and straight, although she was disturbed mentally. There were two main counseling aims in this case. Firstly, getting her morale to its original high, wherein she could express herself well amongst members of the peer group was upmost in the list of aims. Secondly, repairing her relationship with her mother, and people whom she considered unimportant, her ex-boyfriend and her older brother. Communication skills which helped her realize these aims were to be incorporated into the subject and I learnt a great lesson in how a few days of careful attention and tension free lifestyle can pep up the spirits of an adolescent girl (Briggs, 2008: 45) who was left talked about and harassed by the attention of the world she did not want to be a part of. As the case moved through its different stages, I could see a definite change come over in the girl. There were three main stages of development in this particular case. The first stage required me to talk to the girl attentively and patiently and get her to unload her emotional baggage. As it was revealed in due course of time, the girl had been carrying emotional baggage since she had relocated to the place in her sixth grade. Sessions during this stage involve crying bouts, hysteria, and occasional vomiting. The second stage involved the rebuilding of the girl’s confidence by training her in expressing herself well to her friends and peer group. Communication skills that are based on confident talking, attentive listening to peers, positive outlook and optimism, and self-respect were to be inculcated in her. She gradually found her way back to the original chirpy self, a journey that involved three group or team sessions with her own set of close and distant friends. The third stage was the one that was most difficult since it involved her mother. One-to-one sessions with the girl and her mother separately gave me a complete idea of what was actually going on in their minds. While there was not much to find, teaching both acceptance of each other’s situations was one of the chief aims of this stage. Improving relationship and communication was the other important aim that turned out to be easy, once they learnt to listen to each other. They say that acceptance of truth is one of the greatest factors that helps in sorting out psychological issues. In this case, getting the main character to accept what is happening all around her and believe that she can make an impact in spite of the negativity that she perceives pouring out of the people surrounding her as the first hurdle that we needed to overcome. The skills and methods I used at this stage were mainly people skills wherein a soft tone of conversation was used to bring her into a comfortable of conversation. She was asked questions repeatedly to ensure that the whole emotional baggage was gotten out of her. Therapists all over the world of psychology have agreed that this step can be emotionally taxing. While many have considered hypnosis as a convenient way to get the subject to reveal all the suppressed emotions that exist within her, I feel simply subjecting the patient to soft music, and a lot of attentive care is enough to make her feel the healing touch. As always, hypnotherapy ranks last in the list of psychotherapy methodologies. I also ensured that the confidentiality of her utterings was clear to her right at the beginning of the project. I provided her with detailed copies of the ethical guidelines which outlined such details to the participants. For every single stage that we started, I made it a point to take her individual consent. This made her feel better as the respect and attention instilled in her the confidence that I was a friend she could trust with her feelings and thoughts. Failed relationships were what kept her from expressing herself to the fullest. This is true for more than ninety percent of adolescent cases of depression and underperformance. (Taylor, 2004:50) In this case, I could create a positive impact in one person’s life. The outcome was clearly visible. The theories that I chose to use during developing her therapy were based on basics of counseling. I concentrated on her developing her interpersonal skills in the second stage of the therapy. To be able to recreate real life like situations in which she actually interacted with her peers, I started out with props and dummies whom she could interact with (Hare & Blumberg, 1988). While she was distracted in the beginning, subsequent sittings got better. We had more information and feelings coming out of her. Falling in line with what Owen Hargie said in the book ‘The Handbook of Communication Skills’, we got a positive response from her acquired motor skills. (Hargie, 2006: 9) She got used to the sessions and felt comfortable as soon as she saw the dummies ready to talk to her. The sessions would start with practice of deep breathing, an activity that further regulated her system. She was then asked to walk around the chairs and check out their dresses and comment upon them. She would then take her seat and start conversing with one of the dummies. As casual conversation interspersed with humor and other emotions took over, the girl immediately picked up the thread and started relating experiences from her life. As roles of friends were distributed among the dummies, she could easily vent out her feelings towards that particular peer. Cheering and clapping at the end of the outbursts only brought her into the very brightest of her spirits (Axline, 1990:67). The sessions became more serious when she faced her real friends, this time engaged in team work and group projects. However, she had developed the confidence to carry on with any conversation directed towards her without any of those outbursts. This healed relationships to a great extent. My approach was a direct reversal of what Neil Thompson had said in his epic “People Skills”. While he emphasized on the think-feel-do strategy (Thompson, 2008:18), I changed it to a do-feel-think strategy. This way a depressed mind gets all the scope to get out of its hole, is forced to take active participation in exercises, something that refreshes it gradually. The feelings com in instantly when he or she interacts with characters who have caused problems in the recent past. After the entire emotional outburst is complete, the subject feels emotionally light and has all the freshness to consider the entire scene from a new and better defined perspective. The next time the same session is repeated, she was able to control her thoughts and stop them from being too devastating. As a result, she enjoys more control on her communication. It is said that acting often has a direct impact on a person’s thinking. Therapists have always maintained that when you ask a person to act happy, then she automatically recovers from the sadness and starts believing inn being happy. IN turn, her prospects in life become bright. The reverse is also true. An actress of the caliber of Vivien Leigh could not save herself from the effects of playing a rash character in her last award winner A Streetcar Named Desire. In her later days, she confessed that acting paranoid for the role ultimately ‘tipped (her) me over’ (Life, 2013) and let her real bipolar syndrome get the better of her personal and professional life. If this is true, then the strategy of do-feel-think automatically holds good in psychotherapies all round the world. We have also heard of laughter being used as a mode of therapy in clinics in parts of US and elsewhere. In spite of the fact that this approach may be directly reversal of Thompson’s algorithm, we all know that all approaches to effective counseling are based on a few factors like knowledge and focus (McLeod, 2006:14). This approach is also based on the same and this underlying unity makes it an excellent theory that can be used in real life circumstances elsewhere. The do-feel-think strategy is the main propeller in science and media workshops, in group trainings and recreational sport activities like mountaineering and swimming. You talk to the listener with practical suggestions of what he must do, he does them, undergoes the feeling that you want him to experience, and then starts to relate to the line of thought that this feeling follows. I enjoyed the results of the project almost instantly when the mother, when subjected to a few such practical sessions, created using a dummy, was able to understand her position as a mentor and protector in her daughter’s life, almost instantly. This approach actually arouses the inner consciousness of the subject and forces it out of the slumber that it was forced into. As a result, the subject starts relating to her surroundings immediately, and is able to effectively address conflicts of daily life (Alson & Burnett, 2003:14). The case of this girl from London, was more transparent for assessment since other effects of alcoholism and drugs was absent, making her a suitable subject of study for assessing thought processes on young minds in today’s society. As her consciousness of the surroundings increased, I found it increasingly easy to mentor and teach her the basic communication skills, both directly and indirectly. The project ensured that she got to pick up self awareness and personal effectiveness skills, the right degree of assertiveness (Thompson, 2008, 38) and the tendency to supervise what and who she is dealing with. As I kept using these communication skills in my interactions with her and her friends, the subject unconsciously picked them up. Translate the same set of communication skills to any random communication scenario that we come across in daily life, you will see that the effectiveness holds good no matter how hard the opponent is. Interaction skills came in with the exercises I have mentioned above. And most importantly her confidence in herself grew to an extent that it translated into optimism in no time. Both mother and daughter performed well in the BASIC-ID (Lazarus, 1989) client assessment tests after the counseling, that was What I learnt from the entire case study is that a person may be left neglected by the society. But in no way does she have any right to let herself hit low. Suicides, accidents and murders result from this self inflicted depression, which is based only on thoughts of low self esteem and the need to either kill or run away from the problem, neither of which is a solution to the malady. Dealing with the problem with a level head on your shoulders is what can really work towards saving you from its derogatory effects. While handling the questions and answer sessions with the subject and her mother, I realized that it was most important to be a listener, than to be a speaker (Geldard & Geldard, 2003:47). I also found myself growing more patient and realized that I had better snap decision making abilities than I knew about. Also, the tendency to fine-tune my voice to suit the needs of the patient seemed natural to me. This can go a long run in ensuring that people I speak to in daily life or during such sessions, feel happy and convinced that I am having a great time listening to them (Tannen, 1992:55). This will help me develop detachment and a systematic approach during all the work I undertake (Farmer, 2013). D. Conclusion The journey of life comes with many ups and downs. We can smoothen out a few ruffles in our daily lives by incorporating suitable communication skills, that leave listeners convinced about what we want to say. During the course of the case study, such communication skills were inculcated in the subject, a girl from London, and she developed these skills with the confidence of using them effectively in daily life. With a little attention to our understanding of the person we are talking to, we can ensure that the right degree of assertiveness and patience, couple with active listening and supervision skills can ensure that we are able to communicate well with the person or people we are speaking to. And as in the case of this girl, whose relationship with her mother improved gradually, we shall see that problems in specific relationships are totally sorted out. This case study works well in convincing the reader that effective and soft communication skills are equally important in maintaining relationships, just the way, assertiveness and self awareness are. With its transparency and do-feel-think theory, the study serves as an example for those looking to find new solutions in counseling and communication theories. This approach can make every common man a therapist (West-Olatunji, 2014) capable of bringing a smile on the face of people around him. References Alson, S and Burnett GB, (2003) Peace in everyday relationships. Resolving conflicts in your personal and work life. Alameda. Hunter House. Axline, M. V. (1990). Dibs in search of self. The moving story of an emotionally lost child who found his own way back. London. Penguin. AEG (2006) “Technology Takes its Toll on Teen Sleep”, Aspen Education Group, available at: http://aspeneducation.crchealth.com/article-teen-sleeping/ (Accessed on : March, 27, 2014) Briggs, S. (2008). Working with adolescents and young adults. A contemporary psychological approach. 2nd ed. Hampshire. Palgrave Macmillan Burks, H. M. and Stefflre, B. (1979) Theories of Counseling, 3rd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. Geldard, K and Geldard, D. (2003) Counselling skills in everyday life. Hampshire. Palgrave Macmillan. Hough, M. (2006) Counselling Skills and Theory. 2nd ed. London Hodder and Stoughton Hargie, O. (2006) The Handbook of Communication Skills. 3rd ed. London. Routeldge Farmer, D. (2013). A Journey of Discovery – Detached Youth Work , YOUTHWORKB98’S BLOG, available at: http://youthworkb98.wordpress.com/category/case-study/ (Accessed on : March 27, 2014)\ Hare, A. & Blumberg, H. (Eds) (1988). Dramaturgical analysis of social interaction.New York: Praeger Jackson, C. (2014), “News feature: Making The World More child-MindEd”, Therapy Today, 25 (2) Life (2013) “Life With Vivien Leigh: Photos of a Film Legend Gone Too Soon”, LIFE available at: http://life.time.com/culture/vivien-leigh-on-her-100th-birthday-portraits-of-a-movie-legend/?iid=lb-gal-viewagn#1 (Accessed on: March 27, 2014) Lazarus, A. A. (1989a) The Practice Of Multimodal Therapy. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. McLeod, J. (2006) An Introduction to Counselling. 3rd ed. Berkshire. Open Univeristy Press Thompson, N. (2008) People Skills. 2nd ed. Hampshire. Palgrave Macmillan Taylor, A. (2003) Helping relationship skills for youth workers, mentors and other advisers, Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing Tannen, D. (1992) That’s not what I meant! How conversational style makes or breaks your relations with others. London. Virago West-Olatunji, C. A. (2014) “How I Became A Therapist: Cirecie A West-Olatunji”, Therapy Today, 25 (2) Read More