Counseling Skills

A counselor is someone who is focused exclusively on providing therapy to individuals, couples, or families. Counselors are not there to prescribe medications but focus on common life issues. Some of these issues can include stress and anxiety, mild to moderate depression, relationship conflicts, and work or career development. Counseling is more focused on "problems of normal living" rather than severe mental illnesses. A counselor’s first duty is to understand and be aware that no two people are alike. With this in mind, it is important to try and not fit clients into his/her own idea of what a person should be and how they should act. The role of the counselor is to enable the client to explore many aspects of their life and feelings. …show more content…
Their interpersonal skills use these communication skills for acceptance, active listening, challenging the client, and congruence. Acceptance means taking another person exactly as they are. The counselor understands a person as a separate being that is entitled to their own feelings and experiences. This does not mean that the counselor is not entitled to their own beliefs, it just means that the client is believed to be all right inside. Active listening means using a special set of skills that encourage the person you are listening to talk. If the person feels comfortable enough to talk, that means the counselor has accomplished the need the client has to feel heard and understood. Active listening involves a focus on feelings. In listening actively, the counselor helps the client get in touch with and work through, the feelings that are at the root of their problem. In doing so, this enables the client to work out for themselves what they may want to do about the problem. Challenging a client is about bringing into focus discrepancies in the other person’s feelings, thinking or their behavior. These feelings, thoughts, and behaviors tend to be overlooked or ignored by that person. Congruence is about being genuine. When a person is congruent, how they act and what they say is consistent with how they feel and what they think. Deciding when not to share a thought or feeling with …show more content…
Helping the client to see things more clearly or even from a different point of view, enables the client to focus on feelings, experiences or behavior. This usually results with a positive change in the clients. Confidentiality is supreme to successful counselling. It is extremely important that a client feels like they are in a safe