Counselling and Counselling Skills - Research Paper Example

Counselling and counselling skills It is important to clearly understand the meaning of counselling and counselling skills to be in a position to find the similarities and differences of these assertions. Communication skills are services offered to individuals that help them in reorganizing their personalities. These skills do not have to be offered by professional counsellors but by anybody with the capacity to do so. The communication skills also assist individuals to incorporate their insights into everyday traits and behaviours. Despite counselling being viewed as a means of help individuals to overcome their life obstacles to personal growth, they have a deeper meaning of providing emotional support and guidance to individuals with life issues. Both counselling and counselling skills offer wide range social needs. They both provide opportunities for those seeking assistance towards social lives in a bid to satisfy their resourceful ways. Despite the fact that the definitions of counselling and counselling skills put them in the same umbrella, they are different fields of practice. The issue of difference or similarity between counselling and counselling skills brings much debate since some people view them to have been similar and even identical while others view them as totally different aspects of life. It would be appropriate to begin the comparison of the two by differentiating them. These fields of social sciences differ right from their historical nature. The main difference that occurs between a trained and a qualified counsellor and a person who is using counselling skills is that the former is bound by a code of ethics in all their professional dealings. In normal circumstances, counselling takes place when a counsellor offers their services to clients in a confidential venue such as their office. This is usually done to enable the counsellor to explore the client’s difficulty; their dissatisfaction in life, any kind of distress that they may be experiencing that creates impacts in their lives or loss of sense of purpose or direction. The counselling process is initiated by the client’s personal initiative since it is not service that one is referred to take without their individual ascent. The councillor pays keen attention to a client’s point of view and assists them in making things look clearer and maybe with a more perspective to enable the clients to be in a position to tackle them more easily. Counselling is more of a confusion reduction technique that enables change or choice. This process does involve directing of an individual to follow a certain path or the giving of advice (Wilding & O'Driscoll, 2008). Counselling skills are the services offered by members in the society who do not have to be professional counsellors. An example of this services include the teacher or motivational speaker using these counselling skills to address classroom issues that arise on simple things such as guiding students on career options, emotional support, mentoring or more serious issues such as students being disturbed by issues of financial distresses and abuse by guardians. The teacher employs interpersonal skills such as empathy, good communication skills, being supportive and non-judgmental in assisting to resolve these issues. Similarly, nurses and doctors may encounter such problems in their normal course of duty since they may deal with patients that experience emotional problems or have terminal illness. Counselling skills come to much aid when dealing with these patients, their relatives, friends and members of the public. In a bid to provide counselling skills, these health workers incorporate skills such as; empathy, active listening and UPR. In addition to this, they will also need it in the identification of situations where the patients may need their assistance such as requirement of provision of extra service at home by the elderly patients. The services needed mostly relate to house help and consoling at times of depression. Counselling skills are very essential in identifying how the patient feels due to active listening. In counselling, boundaries are put in place to define the relationship between the client and the counsellor. The boundaries set help in maintaining a professional relationship between the parties (Hough, 1996). The counselling contract clearly defines the boundaries of the relationship between the counsellor and the client. These contracts on boundaries cover areas such as confidentiality, referral and supervisions. Confidentiality is a very crucial delicate area in counselling since the entire process is built on trust. Items and facts that a client discloses during a counselling session are never revealed in the outside world. The counsellor can always refer their client to another specialist when they feel that they are not best suited to assist the client. It is required by the law that counsellors are supervised by various codes of practice and ethics such as the counsellors’ code of ethics and practice and the BACP. Counselling skills do not have any boundaries. Their relationship of the individuals who use the skills and those that are gain from the skills is usually open and has a sense of familiarity. No code of ethics is put in place to control the acts of those offering these services (Hodgkinson, 1992). Despite the many assertions explained above, which differentiates counselling and counselling skills, they have many similarities. The most significant similarity of the two is the type of issues that make people come to search for assistance from the two. The aims of the two also seem similar. Both of them intend to help individuals to build their resources to live meaningful, satisfying, healthy lives and to develop a sense of self-awareness. Both counselling and counselling skills respect the different conditions that clients experience and they do not discriminate along these lines. They have the perception that these clients have the potential so all they do is to make them achieve their aims successfully (March-Smith, 2005). Use of basic counselling skills Counselling skills are very essential in today’s life since the complexity of life and expectation of people are increasing rapidly. Copying other people’s way of lives and lifestyles has become the order of the day. People no longer think for themselves due to the societal pressures they receive from their friends and relatives. Due to this, counselling skills have become of great importance as they help these individuals to think for themselves and make personal decisions that best suits them and not want the are influences from their peers. It is usually difficult to think properly and make straight decisions when under strong feelings. The primary objective of counselling skills is to assist an individual to think clearly and make proper decisions without impact from their personals feelings. The feelings that affect individual’s decision-making processes mainly arise due to their experiences. A good example is the negative feelings that arise when individuals get to find out that their job is redundant. Counselling skills tries to establish what an individual is experiencing, their key issues, opportunities and resources. The effective application of counselling skills usually relies on a mutually trusting relationship between the person administering the counselling skills and the client. This enhances the collaboration of the two parties involved (Miller, 2006). A good relationship between a counsellors and a client facilitates the use of counselling skills such as active listening, empathy, genuineness, checking out and asking of questions. Active listening is the foundation of a good understanding between the counsellor and the client. Active listening requires additional work to the normal listening that people usually do. It equips the counsellor with a capacity to understand exactly what the client is curious to explain. Active listening does not only involve listening to what is being said but the manner in how it is expressed. The counsellor should show indications to the clients that they are listening keenly to them and they heavily rely to the information passed to be able to assist them. These indications involve using actions such as nodding the head. The indicators facilitate active listening since they show that the counsellor is interested in what the client is putting across and as result helps to maintain the focus of the client. Short verbal expressions such as the expressions of agreeing with the client help in making the communication of the counsellor and the client more interesting. This facilitates the opening up of clients since the communication encourages expression (Milne, 2003). Empathy is an advanced level of responding to issues brought to table by a client. It involves not only understanding and showing awareness of the surface feelings of the client but much of the deeper and underlying feelings. Empathy includes the skill in which the counsellor puts themselves in the situation of the client to be able to give proper and a more convenient solution. Empathy goes along with genuine which is very essential in the counsellor and client relationship to enhance the dissemination of counselling skills. One of the essential counselling skills that a counsellor should have is the ability to genuine and real with client. This contributes to the winning of trust by the patient. Much of the skills involves being open to share feelings and attitudes about the topic of discussion with a client. Genuine enables the client to open up to the experience and behaviours of their clients. Caring is also a fundamental aspect of the counselling skills as they create a sense of belonging to the client which is enhances the process of getting hope and having solutions to their problems. Asking of questions also plays a vital role in the use of communication skills. These questions enhance the understanding of the client’s situation by the counsellor. They facilitate active communication between the client and the counsellor by way of interaction (Milner, 2001). Ethical principles of counselling Ethical decisions play an important role in the practice of counselling. In the process of counselling, many ethical issues arise and they are responsible to the decisions made by the counsellors. Issues of ethical dilemmas are common in counselling. It is up to the counsellor to consider ethical issues in disseminating counselling skills. The first ethical principle to consider is fidelity. It involves being trustworthy in resolving ethical issues. Counsellors have the responsibility to preserve the trust bestowed in them by their clients. This is in relation towards disclosures of confidential information obtained through the normal course of service. The second ethical principle according to the BACP ethical framework is autonomy. This principle safeguards the client’s right to be self-independent. This principle ensures that the counsellor respect their clients autonomy during the advertising and advancing of their services. Counsellors should make their clients own the decision they take, they should not decide for them but only give advice. In matters where conflicts of interest occur, this principle of ethics requires the counsellors to disclose it to their clients. Beneficial is an ethical principle in counselling that promotes the counsellors commitment to the wellbeing of their client. It involves the counsellor having interests in the achievements of the client during the professional assessments. It requires the counsellor to strictly pay attention on the service delivery to the clients. They must ensure that they are well trained and are able to provide professional services. This principle requires counsellors to keep links with their clients so that they are able to find out how they fair on after the counselling process. The counsellor should also supervise their client’s progress to facilitate them with appropriate skills to advise these clients on a regular basis since counselling is a continuous process. The ethical principle in the framework also requires counsellors to observe non-maleficence. This is a requirement that ensures that the counsellor commits himself or herself preventing their clients from harm. It involves avoiding financial, sexual, and emotional or any other of exploitation that may occur in the counselling process (Seden, 2005). This ethical principle requires the counsellor not to provide counselling services when they are sick or in an unfit situation since they may expose their clients to harm. This ethical principle in the framework provides a counsellor with the responsibility to challenge where necessary the malpractice or incompetence of other people who might cause harm to their clients due to incapacity. Counsellors always have the right to investigate and make inquiries concerning professional practice of the people who offer services to their clients. They do so to ensure that discredit is not brought upon a profession due to the carelessness or mistake of a particular individual. The ethical framework provides for justice in counselling. This principle requires that the counsellor treat all clients fairly and impartially. The principle of justice requires not only being just and fair to all clients but also to respect their dignity and human rights. In offering of counselling services should be very careful to practice justice since it is very challenging to do so while observing legal obligations and ethical concerns. The provision of justice to all clients requires the determination and allocation of services to clients appropriately depending on the underlying. The application of justice in the service delivery by a counsellor encourages them to appreciate the different types of people and have the opportunity to treat them equally. This principle prevents the counsellors from discriminating their clients. Counsellors have a duty to provide fair counselling needs to all potential clients in need of their services. The last and most important ethical principle in this framework is the self-respect principle. All counsellors should practice this principle since it applies or the other principles of ethics. If a counsellor does not have self-respect then they cannot be in a position to assist others since they will also not respect them. There is an ethical responsibility for counsellors to supervise personal and professional aspects such as financial obligations and character to facilitate healthy relationships between counsellors and their clients (Shebib, 1997). Developing self-awareness and the discussion of prejudice and oppression within relationships The developing of self-awareness is done through the focusing of an individual’s behaviour and personality. This is mainly done through paying of close attention to these details. Developing self-awareness involves the learning and paying attention to the small details in our lives. Since it is not learnt from books, this close examination is the only possible way in which an individual would develop self-awareness. Developing self-awareness is very crucial in an individual’s life since it facilitates them with the ability to identify their personal aspect that they did not know earlier. For example if an individual has a tendency to react to emotional pressures in anger and frustration, self-awareness may equip them with the necessary skills to identify what causes these emotional pressures (Tschudin, 1994). Counselling relationships are normal relationships in our society and they are no exceptions to issues of prejudice and oppressions. Issues of oppression and prejudice and prejudice heavily contribute towards ruining these relationships. Counselling is always the last option that victims of various social and emotional problems sort making it a very sensitive field. Oppression and prejudice along any lines in counselling is an ethical and may lead to serious implications such as worsening the client’s problems. References Hodgkinson, L. (1992). Counselling. London: Simon & Schuster. Hough, M. (1996). Counselling skills. London: Pitman. March-Smith, R. (2005). Counselling skills for complementary therapists. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Miller, L. (2006). Counselling skills for social work. London: Sage Publications. Milne, A. (2003). Counselling. London: Teach Yourself. Milner, P. (2001). Counselling. London: Sage. Seden, J. (2005). Counselling skills in social work practice. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: Open University Press. Shebib, B. (1997). Counselling skills. Victoria, B.C.: Province of British Columbia, Ministry of Education, Skills and Training. Tschudin, V. (1994). Counselling. London [u.a.]: Tindall. Wilding, C., & O'Driscoll, P. (2008). Counselling skills. London: Teach Yourself. Read More