The Many Approaches to Counselling - Essay Example

Counseling Practice and Development Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Counselling Practice and Development A challenging but interesting career, counselling is very rewarding. Counselling involves being heart-to-heart with people every day, empowering them and helping to make decisions a multiplicity of matters affecting them in their lives. A counsellor’s development in his or her practice has a direct benefit in the society, which will benefit from the improved services delivered by the counsellor. In developing as a counsellor, one needs to have an understanding of two or more theories of counselling. This will enable the practitioner to articulately critique his or her practice, and be able to read, comprehend and critique other counselling practices, research and proposals in the counselling field. Hawkings and Shohet (2001) explain that development and growth is both personal and professional. A counsellor should be able to demonstrate genuineness, respect to others, and plenty of empathy. Understanding of different cultural values and how they affect the counselling practice is also paramount in the development of this treasured career. It involves having enhanced and deep understanding and knowledge of social, cultural and legal aspects of the counselling profession. Among the many approaches to counselling, an integratively compiled approach has been proposed. It encapsulates varied approaches so a produce a unique solution for every individual to suit his or her problem. Personal development in counselling is widely known to be important. Moon (1999) emphasises and enumerates an array of advantages accruing due to personal developments. He further explains that it provides an opportunity to adress personal aspects, suchs as trauma, defence mechanisms, and beliefs, etc. This certainly accords the counselling practitioner more professionalism. Additionally, it is clear that it is for the benefit of the client since the practitioner understands the needs of the client better and offers tailor-made solutions. When personal development provides the practitioner an opportunity to be professional, this shows a link between personal development and professional development. Professional development is key to satisfactory service delivery, and it has also evidently shown that it incorporates personal development. An ethical framework spells that self respect in professional development is crucial. Self knowledge and own personal care are items in professional development, which are very fundamental. There exists an ethical responsibility to employ supervision for proper individual as well as professional help and development, and to search for training as well as other chances for progressing professional development (Lapworth & Sills, 2010). To be thorough and effective, the practitioners need to care about their professional levels and standards. They should therefore continually engage in educational activities. In a nutshell, all practitioners in a bid to achieve continued professional development should look for and crave for opportunities, which are going to further their ambitions for developing. There is a multiplicity of theories of counselling today, which are applied by the practitioners. The person cantered approach is very popular. This philosophy is based, first of all, on a fundamental attitude that emphasizes the dignity and worth of each individual human being. Secondly, it is based on the belief that people are rational beings who possess within themselves the capacity for truth and goodness. The humanistic concept of the person is based on a model of growth, in which the person is seen as always striving to create, achieve or become. The need for self-fulfillment or self-actualization is regarded as a fundamental human drive. From a humanistic point of view, fulfillment and growth are achieved through the search for meaning in life and not through supernatural claims. Sigmund Feud came up with the psychoanalytical theory. This theory looks at the nature of human beings as full of energy, dynamic and vibrant, so they engage in exchanging. The theory splits a person into three: the ego, the id and the superego. The ego is the second system to develop and it functions primarily in the conscious mind and in the preconscious mind. The superego sets the high standards. The development stages in this theory are the oral scale, anal stage, latent stage, and the genital stage. All these stages of development attempt to explain the source of pleasure where the genital starts at the onset of puberty. It is important to understand the age of the prospective client that the advice is tailor made for the individual. The defence method, which enables sublimation, is a positive displacement which is called whereby the frustrating target is replaced with a positive target. Rationalizing is a method in this category. It involves finding and explaining an illogical event in a logical manner. Denial is also commonly expressed where an individual refuses to recognize a displeasing occurrence. The counsellor should then seek to encourage the client and make them comfortable and make them feel accepted. The client is guided into studying case studies of solved problems in the past. This theory helps the client to bring out all what is at the back of his/her mind for analysis and solution brainstorming. It provides sound bite solutions and helps the practitioners adjust to the demands of the society. The techniques here include free association and dream analysis. These two methods enable the counsellor to gain deep insight in to what the client is going through. Transference analysis encourages clients to bring out those issues which have caused them conflicts with leadership figures. Analysis resistance enables the counsellor know and let the client know the possible matters, which may cause the client to be resistant to the therapy. Therapeutic alliance calls for therapists to be genuine, warm, and offering emotional support to the family of the client. It is also characterized by intelligently managing conflicts and negative emotions within the family or couple of the client such that no one is feeling dissatisfied during and after the session. The therapist may also develop negative emotions against the client or his/her family. Positive therapeutic alliance involves regulating such feelings. Many of the family therapy approaches give little or no importance to the intimacy between the client and the counsellor. Therapy cannot be successful without positive contact with the client (Green, 2010). With the diversity and different races, cultures and behaviours, a counsellor should still be able to connect very well with the client, which may involve the use of non verbal cues. These cues may involve conveying warmth, inspiring confidence, comfort, directness, engagement, and showing genuine interest in the matters affecting the client and his or her life history. Clients should perceive that the therapist is kind, honest, knowledgeable, dependable and interested in them. Failure or breakdown of therapy is mainly attributable to irreparable emotional breakdown between the client and the counsellor, or failure to establish them at all in the beginning (Green, 2010). This means that negative emotions between these two patters is central to the success of the therapy and leads to failure. Negative emotions even when they are not shown can easily predict failure of the whole therapy program. The negative feeling will somehow come out indirectly e.g. absence or little mutual warmth, failure to return each others’ calls, reduced follow up by the counsellor. The natural humour, friendliness, and warm treatment of client’s family may show signs of fading away. In practice, most therapists struggle to maintain the warm relation with the client but sometimes the client may challenge the counsellors’ efforts and relationship skills. This could be affected by very many factors including the client’s background. A good therapist is one who can maintain positive therapeutic relations with clients from many different backgrounds, and be able to undo negative emotions. In training to become a therapist, weight should be mounted on how trainees can use their emotions to achieve positive therapeutic relations maintain those which are on the verge of breaking. They should also be able to repair broken relationships. This is important given the usefulness of maintaining positive therapeutic relations. Training may focus on how to establish compatibility among different races, education level, cultures, traditions, status, sexual orientation, and religion, etc. These differences are mainly the cause of the loss of the relationship and ills of one party oppressing the other. Green (2010) reiterates that the whole training program should mainly focus on the alliance-making skills of the therapist. If this is achieved, in Greens opinion, the other items in the training will easily fall in to place. These skills are best achieved by observing the trainees behaviour and establishing their relationship skills. They are later guided and their weaknesses pointed out. Self evaluation in counselling should be done periodically so that the counsellor can track his progress and appraise his or her performance. The nature of the counselling and administering of therapy makes it inseparable from the person. The practitioner is engaged into the life of the client during sessions, and certainly, he is affected by what is happening in the professional life (Hubby, Dankun & Miller, 1999). In my professional life, I had several challenges, most of them common to most of the counselling practitioners. I have seen myself developing profoundly. I have become more confident, bold, reassuring, and knowledgeable. Meeting people from different backgrounds, races, and cultures has taught me how to appreciate diversity. Ability to apply different theories of counselling is also a sign of growth. However, the challenge of trickling of what happened in the sessions has severally affected me. Being genuinely interested in solving the client’s problem may mean that you indeed get in to the bottom of the matter. This exposes one to the problems people are going through, and it may not easily be left in the sessions. One at times carries it along to wherever he is going. Therefore, it is not strange for a counsellor to find him or herself crying. It can further cause the effects to trickle to the family. Counselling practitioners usually fight a wide array of issues limiting their practice. Some practitioners are faced with the limitation of culture, race, language and geographical barriers. It is at times very hard to maintain relations due to clients being hardliners in whom they are. Some clients may not corporate well; they may even fail to open up well making it difficult for the practitioner to find the best solution. Harsh or temperamental clients may at times discharge the burden of their anger on the practitioners. A good practitioner should be there on call and should be able to solve the problem called for. He should help immediately with problems of anxiety or fear. Such problems may have fatal effects on the person. Some clients have complained that one of the reasons why they are dissatisfied with their practitioners is their tendency to dwell in the past. When the past is hurting or displeasing, sometimes it is better to be left hardly touched. In such a situation, however, there are balances to strike because one of the ways to discharge past pains to talk about them. Therefore the point here is that the practitioner should not dwell unduly in the past. Effective counselling also entails using a wide variety of techniques to arrive at the solution. This is the application of the integrative model as an approach to counselling. In their duties, counsellors use a treatment plan. It is a document in written form documenting how the client is progressing in his treatment and therapy. The document contains important information. A therapeutic plan is unique for every client. Sometimes the information in the plans, or which need to be written in the plans is complex depending on the situation the client is in. A plan should be made appropriate to the client. It depends on the planned goals to be achieved, the type of goals, and method to achieve the goals. The document should also be time specific, so included in the plan is the estimated time to achieve the goals. For example, different clients will require different methods of achieving the treatment plan. That makes the treatment plan unique for every client (Bond, 2000). The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) have been instrumental in the counselling sector. Values like protecting human rights, ensuring the uprightness of practitioner-client associations, promoting knowledge, fairness, as well as improving individual effectiveness are clearly for the benefit of the client and as well not disadvantageous to the practitioner. The emerging integrative model is a new approach to counselling where many approaches have been summed up to arrive at a comprehensive model. It is common knowledge that for better service delivery, practitioners have to use several techniques together (Pinsof, 1995). This model’s interpretation involves using behavioural, cognitive, therapeutic alliance and has psycho-dynamic aspects. This model is realistic and properly considers the contemporary working condition of the practitioner. Even though I acknowledge the person cantered approach as a plausible one, considering its emphasis on an individual trying to find his/her own solution, I want to adopt the CBT approach in my practice. References Bond, T. (2000). Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action London. London: Sage. Green, R. (2010). Therapeutic Alliance, Focus, and Formulation: Thinking Beyond the Traditional Therapy Orientations. Retrieved from Therapeutic Alliance. Hawkins, P. (2001). Supervision in the Helping Professions Milton Keynes (2nd ed.). OU Press. Hubby, M., Dankun, B., & Miller, S. (1999). The heart and soul of change: What works in therapy. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Lapworth, C., & Sills, C. (2010). Integration in Counselling & Psychotherapy: Developing a Personal Approach. London: Sage. Moon, J. (1999). Learning journals. 12. Pinsof, W. (1995). Integrative problem-centered therapy. NY: Basic Books. Read More