Counselling Skills

The practice of helping by advice, counsel, guidance, sympathy and encouragement, both informally and professionally is immemorial (May, 1967). Counselling is used by many different people. Windy Dryden (2006) writes that people will seek counselling for many different reasons. It is usually because they are experiencing personal pain from life's adversities. This essay will discuss the different micro skills I have learnt over the course of this term and my development of these skills over the term. Each skill is unique and when used correctly enables an effective counselling process. Learning and understanding the use of skills to become an effective counsellor over this term has made me become more self-aware throughout my daily life in conversations. To fully grasp these skills is a process within itself and takes practice and experience to be confident and effective with each skill.

Communication is the foremost important skill in any relationship. To communicate effectively in a counselling relationship is vital. Interpersonal communication takes place via a channel between two or more people that in some way are connected. Prior to this module or degree I thought I had good communication skills. An individual needs to become aware of the interpersonal communication process, because until then they are unaware of how effective and powerful communication is. "Communication begins inside, with our thoughts values and beliefs about one's self and others" (Cole 2000, p.7). However a person must know their thoughts and beliefs are. Once established they can become stubborn to alter or remove. Identifying self-awareness increases self-knowledge which will give an insight to better understand their disposition, skills and imperfections

However in the process of learning new skills we must be able understand self-awareness. Self-awareness is having a clear perception and being able to identify the self's an others personalities, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions (Pathway to happiness, 2000). Becoming self-aware helps an individual to be more sensitive to their own attitudes and beliefs and helps establish and maintain a good relationship with other people.

One of the most important skills we can have is listening. To become a better listener we need to practice active listening. "This is making a conscious effort to not only hear the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try to understand the complete message being sent"(Mind Tools, 2012). To be and have an effective counselling process, active listening is essential. I had always thought of myself to be a good listener however, now I am more self-aware about listening that I find myself often making sure I am actively listening. I feel anxious often when I know I need to be actively listening or if I am talking with a friend I am thinking in the back of my mind "am I active listening?" Active listening really is a skill that can only develop and attend to with plenty of practice.

Whilst we show active listening we use minimal responses. According to Geldard & Geldard (2010), the use of minimal response shows the speaker they have our full attention. They can be verbal or as simple as a nod of the head (Geldard & Geldard, 2010). Verbal minimal responses include expressions such as 'Mm', 'Yes', 'Really" or 'Sure'. Although I know I am someone who if in conversation with I do constantly nod my head and say 'Mm' or 'yeah'. Geldard & Geldard (2010), tell us that this is something we naturally do when we are primarily listening. I have noticed that when I am in conversation with someone either formally or informally whilst I am using minimal responses I will become aware of what I am doing.

Reflection of content can also be called paraphrasing (Geldard & Geldard, 2010). According to Stewart, (2005) paraphrasing is reflecting back in your own words what the other person has said capturing the main points. Stewart (2005), writes that a useful format for reflecting content is; 'it sounds as if..', or 'you're saying..'. Throughout this unit, my use of reflection of content has increased. Not only being aware of the skill but I now often in conversation will stop and think before responding to reflect what has been said to me. I do this because I am consciously aware of this skill. By aiming to reflect back to those I hold a conversation with help my listening and reflecting skills develop but it shows respect for others that I am listening and care. Some examples I have recorded throughout the module have been a lot with a close friend of mine. She recently has gone through a relationship break up. Some of our conversations were through text messages and even though it is not face to face. I noticed myself writing a message back but really thinking about what she recently said and just use the key points to reflect back what I heard. This I found really made her elaborate on what she was telling me. This was very effective for our relationship because otherwise if I had not of done that and continued the conversation as per normal, she would have shut off and not spoken about what she was going through, trying to put on a typical brave face. As Geldard & Geldard (2010) have mentioned; "reflection encourages the person to continue exploring their own thoughts and ideas" (p.55). Being able to effectively show good reflection of content doesn't intrude or distract the person from the real issues that they are trying to resolve (Geldard & Geldard, 2010). Sometimes we can paraphrase by parroting or echoing. This is where the listener repeats back to the speaker an exact word or sentence they have said (Geldard & Geldard, 2010).

Reflection of feelings allows us to let a person know that we have empathy for them (Geldard & Geldard, 2010). Reflection of feelings concentrates on the feelings within a statement, to be able to reflect feelings accurately, depends on the empathic understanding (Stewart,