Authentic Counselling Training
Layers of the person centred counselling process
[Under construction: 10 February 2005 ]
This
document in all parts is copyright © Peter Hughes from the date of construction
given above. Please feel free to make use of them for solely personal purposes.
However, should you wish to use them for teaching, training, commercial or
other purposes, you are required to ask me first.
Contact layer
Contact between the counsellor and the client must first be established, and then both maintained and deepened.
1. The counsellor’s respectful welcome, evident warmth, and full attending behaviour reaches out to the client and invites initial contact.
2. The counsellor’s continued full attending behaviour maintains and deepens contact.
3. The counsellor’s evident positive regard for the client, and the unconditionality of this positive regard, receives the client and encourages deepening contact through:
·
Expressions (verbal, para-verbal and non-verbal) of warmth towards the client.
·
Respect for the client through manner of
expression, and respect for the client’s material through non-directiveness.
·
Acceptance of the client as a
person, and acceptance of the client’s material through being non-judgmental.
Content layer
Communication of the counsellor’s empathic understanding of the client’s material encourages the client to attend more deeply to a fuller range of their own material, as distinct from the client selecting material to conform to what they consider acceptable in relation to the concept they have of themselves. The counsellor achieves this through:
1. attending to the client’s material, and holding the client’s material in shared attention
2. respecting the client’s frame of reference by attending only to the client’s material, and rarely adding anything in response beyond what the client has just disclosed, and respecting the client’s chosen path of disclosure by being non-directive in response
3. validating the importance of trying to make sense of an experience by confirming repeatedly the counsellor’s understanding of the client’s material, and by clarifying with the client what the client has expressed ambiguously
4. validating affect as a guide to making sense of an experience by explicitly attending to the client’s feelings, and giving value to the client’s feelings by explicitly naming implied feelings
Life themes and meanings layer
We each tell ourselves stories about how our life was, is and will be. This is intimately tied up both with who we perceive ourselves to be, and the meanings we attach to circumstances and events in our life. By means of a total empathic immersion in the client’s material, a preparedness to work at the edges of the client’s awareness, and an enthusiasm to engage with the client to make sense of their experience, the counsellor is able to help the client to discern the themes and meanings in their life.
Dynamics of the relationship layer
By means of the qualities of the counselling relationship, the client can experience themselves in ways from which they are dissuaded in other relationships in their life. Experiencing themselves differently, the client may be able to experience life differently.
1. The client is encouraged to honour themselves by means of the counsellor’s expressions of unconditional positive regard for the client, through
·
Warmth
·
Respect
·
Acceptance
·
Prizing
2. By the counsellor demonstrating their trustworthiness and integrity, and communicating their eagerness to engage authentically and genuinely, the client is encouraged to locate within themselves and to engage more fully with, their own authenticity. The counsellor achieves this by means of:
a. communicating a basic empathic understanding, to build trust
b. monitoring and sifting their own perceptions and subceptions
c. expressing congruently aspects of their own perceptions and subceptions
Process layer
The process layer describes the processes taking place in, and as a result of, the counselling relationship.
1. In what ways has the relationship been changing?
2. What aspects of the counselling relationship, the counselling process, and the social and institutional environment in which the counselling has been taking place, have been impacting on the development of the counselling relationship?
3. To what extent is the client’s understanding of their material deepening?
4. To what extent is the client able to hold more of their material in their own attention?
5. To what extent is the client’s understanding of themselves deepening
6. To what extent is the client’s concept of who they are as a person shifting towards a more accurate overlap with their organismic self?
7. To what extent is the client able to liberate themselves from conditions placed on their sense of self worth?
8. To what extent is the client shifting from an internal place of rigidity towards greater flowingness?
This
document in all parts is copyright © Peter Hughes from the date of construction
given above. Please feel free to make use of them for solely personal purposes.
However, should you wish to use them for teaching, training, commercial or
other purposes, you are required to ask me first.