BASIC COUNSELING SKILLS
Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective.
You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.
Paraphrasing: Selective focusing on the cognitive part of the message with the client’s key
words and ideas being communicated back to the client in a rephrased, and shortened form.
Paraphrasing assures the client that you are listening and it assists the client in focusing on
his/her situation more clearly.
Reflecting Client’s Feeling: Affective reflection in an open-ended, respectful manner of what
the client is communicating verbally and nonverbally, both directly through words and nonverbal
behaviors as well as reasonable inferences about what the client might be experiencing
emotionally. It is important for the helper to think carefully about which words s/he chooses to
communicate these feelings back to the client.
Self-disclosure. A process of communication by which one person reveals information about
himself/herself to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative, and can include
thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one’s
likes, dislikes, and favorites. Self-disclosure is seen as a useful strategy for sharing information
with others. By sharing information, we become more intimate with other people and our
interpersonal relationships are strengthened.
Acceptance. Counselors need to develop a self-acceptance of their attitudes, values and beliefs.
Counselors further need to consider and examine how attitudes, values and beliefs may impact
upon how we live our lives and specifically how we conduct our work. They need to know how
they may respond when they are confronted with clients who hold different opinions to their
own. Counselors are required to work with people of different backgrounds, different races,
cultures and religions. Counselors need to recognize and accept that all people are different, and
may hold attitudes, values and beliefs different from their own.
Genuineness. The most important concept in therapeutic counseling according to Rogers.
Genuineness refers to the therapist’s ability is be authentic. When a therapist is genuine, s/he
might share her/his emotional reactions to clients’ problems and experiences. Genuineness does
not mean therapists disclose their problems to clients; it just means the therapist shares his/ her
feelings regarding the client’s experiences.
Unconditional Positive Regard. Regardless of what is said, there needs to be an endless amount
of kindness, and expression of caring. You may disagree, or see flaws in their reasoning, but
your job is not to argue them to your side, but to gently encourage them to see things through the
scope of reality. We all need encouragement, and guidance to help us see things through the
scope of reality.
Concreteness. An aspect of communication that means being specific, definite, and vivid rather
than vague and general. A concrete communication uses specific facts and figures. Counseling
skills of concreteness enable clients to get a more specific awareness of their present problems
and develop more functional strategies for taking action. Concreteness skill in counseling
involves helping the client to identify and work on a specific problem from the various problems
presented. It might also
involve keeping the client on track with that problem in the session, clarifying facts, terms,
feelings, goals, and uses a hear and now focus to emphasize issues in today’s session.
Questioning: There are two main types of questions used in counseling - (A) Open and (B)
Closed.
Open Questions: Open questions are those that cannot be answered in a few words, they
encourage the client to speak and offer an opportunity for the counselor to gather information
about the client and their concerns. Typically, open questions begin with - what, why, how or
could.
Closed Questions: Closed questions are questions that can be answered with a minimal response
(often as little as “yes” or “no”).
Reflection. Reflection is the echoing back of the last few words that the client has spoken. The
counselor check their understanding of the message.
Active listening. Focuses on who you are listening to, whether in a group or one-on-one, in
order to understand what he or she is saying. As the listener, you should then be able to repeat
back in your own words what they have said to their satisfaction. This does not mean you agree
with, but rather understand, what they are saying”.
Summarization as ‘accurately and succinctly reflecting back to the client, from time to time
within and across sessions, the substance of what she has expressed’. Summarizing is therefore
a counselling skill used to condense or crystallize the main points of what the client is saying and
feeling.
Silence. Counselors should be aware of body language, notice changes and respond accordingly.
