Emotions In Counselling Research Paper

Empathic attunement, which requires identifying a person’s emotions, is a foundational element in the process of counselling. Discuss the role and function of emotions in human experience and the process of change.
Emotions have an important function and role in human experiences and in the process of change. As many of the definitions I looked up for the difference between role and function in terms of emotion were hard to separate definitively, I have decided not to treat them separately. In the first half of this essay I explore how emotions play into our everyday lives, in helping to keep us safe and to thrive in life, how emotions can affect our decision making, how they can motive us to action and how they can affect our communication …show more content…
Our overall assessment of the possible outcomes of our actions can affect what we choose to do, or not do, even if it is unconsciously done. Once again, anger and fear tend to have differing influences on our decision-making. Anger diminishes a person’s perception of risk, while fear increases it. Angry people are also more likely to locate control within people, whereas fearful people are more likely to locate it in situations. In a rather strange pairing, when people feel either happy or angry they are more likely to expect positive outcomes, though in an impaired way with anger. When people feel sad, they are more likely to focus in on the detail of the tasks involved, and it is thought that this might be a way of defending themselves against the more emotionally-laden aspects of their situation. Another view of how emotions can affect our decision-making is by looking at whether the emotion tends to be more activating or deactivating. Both fear and anger are more likely to cause a person to be motivated to either escape or attack, whereas disappointment is more deactivating, and is more likely to cause a person to withdraw. This small sample of the effects of emotions on aspects of decision-making indicates that what we are feeling when we make a decision can have a significant …show more content…
Verbal and non-verbal communication can convey important information about what is happening inside a person, particularly of their emotional state. If there is a mis-match between the verbal and non-verbal elements, it has been shown that people will generally read the non-verbal behaviour, and make their judgements/course of actions from that. I have also heard it said that in an argument it is never about the actual content of the words that causes the contention, but the emotions that are carried along with it. Communication can be improved if we are aware of what we may be conveying with our body language, and take this into consideration when we choose our verbal communication. If there is no mismatch between the verbal and non-verbal, others are more likely to pick up on our sincerity, our emotional congruency. On the flip-side a counsellor can pick up on the degree of match or mis-match, and utilise this in helping the client become more aware of what is happening inside of them. The ability to read emotions can help build and strengthen relationships. Transference and counter-transference can also play a role in how the therapeutic relationship develops, and can be another way of informing the counsellor of what may be happening for the client, based on the feelings that the client seems