Counseling Theories - Research Paper Example

There are a few ideas relative to experiential approaches that have the potential to blend excellently with behavioral and cognitive approaches. The main advantage of the experiential approach is that it focuses on here and now awareness, which is very effective while counseling families. Children are most benefited with this approach because the counseling is directed to address their psychological condition at the given time. The experiential approach is also useful in therapeutic relationships as also in exploring feelings, which are all ideas that can be effectively included in action oriented processes.

While counseling children and parents, they can be asked as to what they feel about current awareness in the context of making behavioral changes. For counseling to be successful it is important for the therapist that excellent rapport is established with the client and the process will not be fruitful if a good working relationship is not present. Children will particularly cooperate with the therapist if they feel that he or she is genuinely working towards their welfare. Experiential approaches such as existential therapy focus on exploring the feelings during the counseling process although the process can be associated with the need to explore behavior and thought patterns relative to such feelings.

Essentially, existential therapy aimed at integrating the major concepts and themes into all therapeutic schools. Some theorists hold that there are possibilities of creative integration of conceptual proposals in regard to existential therapies by using psychodynamic processes. Psychodynamic techniques are used whereby the subject is made to rethink of the past or about what he or she anticipates about his or her roles and life situations. This allows deeper understanding by exploring feelings and achieving emotional comfort.

In a typical scenario of children’s counseling, events are enacted in keeping with the prevailing culture so that the client relates with unexpressed feelings, which makes him to open up with his problems. This provides children and parents a means to express their attitudes and feelings. This psychodynamic approach is integrated into other systems in offering an enhanced experiential process by including action and explicit inter-personal encounters. For example, this technique is best used when children are in a difficult emotional state because of fear of attending school or of being reprimanded for perceived inadequacies in studies.

The presence of parents during these sessions adds to the emotional strength of children. Gerald Corey (2009) presented elements of integrated strategies of counseling by referring to existential therapies, which he believed is the foundation of his process. Concepts and techniques are used from a number of theoretical concepts to create an integrate approach. Existential therapy is very helpful because it incorporates basic techniques and processes in conceiving counseling as a life changing process.

Given that counseling is a journey whereby counselors facilitate client exploration, many themes relative to the existential process have the potential to impact the therapeutic efforts amongst children and pare