Basic attending skills are necessary which include the ability to use your active listen skills and follow what the client is saying, maintaining good eye contact, identifying the problem, soothing calm voice, attentive body language, therapeutic interaction, and coping. Stage A is all about building a bond between the counselor and the client. These steps will help successfully develop trust and rapport with the client. “The counseling relationship is unique in this regard; before any work will be done, the client must feel understood and accepted by the counselor” (Kanel p 50). The reason that a crisis intervention worker needs these personal skills is to let the client know that you understand their feelings, and needs. The rapport leads to client trust and openness to talk about the crisis that they are experiencing. You develop the rapport by asking questions which will get the client talking. Open and Closed Ended. Two examples of opened questions are “How are you feeling? How are you doing at work? Two examples of closed-ended questions Did you go out to the party last night? How are your children.? The wording is important during the phase to avoid using why questions, confusing questions and never assume you understand what the client means. A crisis counselor needs to have empathy for the client. You have to show the client that you care about them, and then they will start to trust the advice that you …show more content…
It is where the counselor identifies why the client is seeking help. Stage B that leads to the information that is necessary for making decisions to solve the problem. The goal in Stage B is to climb the Cognition tree and to turn the leaves from brown back to green; this is achieved by therapeutic interaction. “Exploring the many limbs and twigs of the initial perception presented, the counselor and client gain a deeper understanding of what is bothering the client most about the precipitating event” (Kanel 61). Identifying the problem or what triggered the client to seek help can help the counselor find ways to help the client cope. The counselor can identify the precipitating event by asking “What happen that made you call in for an appointment”? “In what way alone?” “What makes you think that? “What are your thoughts about the idea of you being ugly and stupid? “We must explore the meaning, perception of the event. We must examine emotional distress and functioning levels and how the precipitating events are affecting the client. Soon after the interview starts, we ask precipitating questions by using open-ended questions. “Clients seem to benefit from expressing painful feelings and sharing other symptoms—symptoms that may impair clients' occupational, academic, behavioral, social, interpersonal, or family functioning.” (Kanel 64) Once clients’ perceptions and frame of reference regarding various situations are understood,