Counselling Pitfalls

Counselling Pitfalls

• Pseudo counselling involves exploring interesting but irrelevant issues without solving problems; it includes parroting, platitudes, or irrelevant questions.
• Advice giving by an "expert counsellor" undermines client self-determination and suggests the counsellor has all the answers.
• Overt advice includes phrases like "You should try...", while suggestive advice implies, "Have you thought about trying...".
• Inappropriate counsellor self-disclosure involves sharing personal experiences, like "What I did in the past was...".
• Giving information is appropriate only when invited by the client.
• Providing multiple options allows the client to gain knowledge and make informed decisions.
• Rescuing, also known as "band-aiding", stops clients from dealing with their issues or difficult feelings.
• Tension reducers involve avoiding difficult topics to prevent discomfort.
• Placating avoids confrontation through false feedback or empty reassurance, such as "You are going to be fine".
• Impeding independence entails doing tasks for the client, hindering their self-advocacy.
• Communication stoppers are any communication that halts the conversation, like judgmental statements or assumptions.
• Communication stoppers also include "Why" questions, not listening, and inappropriate silence.
• Faulty technique should be avoided.

Self-Awareness

• Self-awareness is vital for counsellor competence to understanding impact on clients. Manage personal feelings and reactions
• Know where personal feelings end and those of clients begin. Identify vulnerable areas
• Self-awareness helps to control bias and maintain objectivity, helping to set professional goals.
• Counsellor biases can harm counselling; awareness is the first step to limiting their impact.

SSW Counselling Values

• Respect for the dignity of persons is key.
• Not willfully harming others is important for maintaining integrity in relationships.
• Responsible caring and responsibility to society contributes to respect for self-determination.
• Essential elements of self-determination include freedom to choose.
• Elements of self-determination: Freedom to choose, control and informed consent, knowledge and information, access to resources and involvement in decision-making
• Values are beliefs about what is important or desirable.
• Professional values are what the profession deems important.
• Personal values are what individuals deem important.
• Professionals should uphold professional values over personal values.
• Key values include accepting help as a sign of strength
• People are essentially good and capable.
• Counselling helps clients make choices, change, and embrace diverse cultures, religions, and viewpoints.

Professional Ethical Decision-Making

• Ethical dilemmas arise from conflicts between values and actions.
• Ethical dilemmas arise from Distribution of scarce resources, professional competence of colleagues, behaviour of clients, policies and procedures of the agency and competing values, needs or legal requirements
• Ethical principles hierarchy: Protection of life, equality and inequality, autonomy and freedom
• Ethical principles hierarchy also includes least harm, quality of life and privacy and confidentiality. Truthfulness and full disclosure
• Resolving ethical dilemmas involves autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and fidelity.
• A 4-step model includes gathering facts by objectively reporting who, what, where, when, and how. Personal opinion is not fact.
• Next, identify ethical issues, like which ethical principles might be competing against my own values
• Then, identify and evaluate options and strategies, like using a matrix decision-making chart.
• Finally, take action based on the decision-making chart and ethical principles hierarchy.

What is Bias?

• Bias is the tendency to draw incorrect conclusions based on cognitive factors, a predisposition or prejudice.
• Unmanaged bias results in unsuccessful counselling.
• Factors effecting bias include motivation, capacity, opportunity, personal problems, burnout and vicarious trauma, and loss of objectivity.

Strategies for Maintaining Objectivity as a Counsellor

• Objectivity involves understanding and acting without bias.
• avoid assumption, attempt to understand and monitor prejudices, preferences, and biases. Develop self-awareness of personal needs and values
• Being curious and inquisitive and brainstorming/seeking information from all perspectives contributes to limiting bias
• Check your conclusions with clients to ensure they match and understood correctly.
• Control over-identification with clients; Monitor reactions and discover areas of vulnerability. Be alert to strong negative and positive reactions to clients.
• Refer to another professional as needed (loss of impartiality or loss of control over feelings)
• Tools like video recording review interviews for innapropriate attempts to influence or control
• Manage overuse involvement with client by managing overinvolvement with the client.
• Avoid promoting client dependency and develop a wellness program to ensure that you're not relying on clients to meet needs
• Recognise warning signs of over-involvement.

Dual Relationships

• A dual relationship is a counseling relationship combined with another type of relationship, such as business, friendship or intimacy.
• Dual relationships are generally considered unethical
• Professional boundaries: Avoid physical contact when there is possibility of harm
• SSW is responsible for setting clear, appropriate, and culturally sensitive boundaries for contact

Types of Contracting

• Contracting can be work/sessional, relationship, or anticipatory.
• Work/Sessional Contracts answers why we're meeting?, sets the structure, the problems or concern to be addressed.
• Work / sessional : goals, objectives, tasks, duration, schedule, identification of other persons and ethical issues.
• relationship contracting answers what do i need to know about you, communication styles and explores differences.
• relationship contracting includes personal values, world view, exploration of differences.
• Anticipatory contracting involves how do you want to plan for?

Promoting Immediacy

• Immediacy is a tool for deepening counselling relationships
• Relationship immediacy: feelings such as anger or resentment, liking or attraction, are clouding your work overall
• Event focused immediacy: client-counsellor interactions as they occur int he interview
• Use I statements, ask client about the meaning and feelings. Acknowledge missing something
• Tips for immediacy: ask for feedback and input, use empathy, create safety and revisit the relationship contract.

Counsellor Self-Disclosure

• Counsellor self-disclosure includes a counsellor shares their experiences or information about themselves.
• Counsellor self-disclosure should be used sparingly.
• Can be a useful tool and reduces the client's sense that their experiences and/or feelings are abnormal or strange. clients are more likely to open up and share.

Empowerment and Change

• Empowerment helps clients discover personal strengths and capacities to take control of their lives.
• The worker must forgo the need to control the client by not taking the "expert" role.
• Identify the barriers and remove gaps, accept that clients are the "experts", believes in client's capacity.
• Identify prior successes, strengths from adversity, challenge self deprecating comments. Avoid diagnostic labels
• Utilizing community and family resources contributes to goal setting rather than blame.

Motivational Problems & Strategies

• Burnout from unsuccessful attempts requires investigating reasons for previous failures, ask them about their counselling experience.
• Client in denial: can provide pamphlets, share information about potiential consequences.
• Involuntary client: empathy; explore thoughts and feelings; what do you think about being told you had to go to counselling?
• increase locus of control.
• Helping client think differently through things like Internalizers VS Externalizers.

Unhealthy Thinking PAtterns

• Distortion includes misinformation, faulty assumptions , culture bias.
• distortion includes beliefs with little or no evidence, drawing a conclusion with little evidence, shoulds on others.
• Selective attention: Failure to look at all aspects of a problem or situation.
• egocentric thinking and magnifcation/minimization.
• Perfectionism: : high standards that are unrealistic and self-defeating thoughts that are irrational.

Challenging Unhealthy Thinking Patterns

• Attemp to look at things differently.
• Independence VS stubbornness. Independence VS stubbornness,ambitiousness VS greediness
• giving a client another way/perspective to think about something.

Directive questions

• Tell their story, give more about an event, what their thinking is.
• can use them in small talk: what are you wanting to get most out of this?
• don't want to go too directive early on. can guide them from too broad to specific by exploring strengths and resources.

Helping clients think differently

• listening for discrepancy, gaps, and bringing them to the attention of the client
• confront respectfully when you hear discrepancy.

Listen for discrepancies.

• How can you confront someone respectfully
• can be an alternative to the "have you tried" if dont want to come off as suggestive

Supporting self-efficacy.

• past success.
• review strengths and resources,
• work on goals

Developing Discrepancy

• creating contrast between things to evaluate the options.
• exploring advantages
• give an example what you mean is all good, or give me an example of change talk to elaborate on that.

Effective Goal Setting

• Setting must be achievable with a goal.
• Avoid using try or hope with short time frames, also measurable or thinking about something.

Action Planning

• Steps for what to include when planning.
• choose a strategy and develop/implement plans, also evaluate outcomes.
• brainstorm out, what do you start thinking about doing?

Motivational interviewing.

• resolution of ambivalence, help the client get unstuck.
• empathy, empowering.
• understand the clients and dont minimize the persons experience.

Strength Based techniques.

• shift focus from problems and opportunities and solutions.
• find out and tell their story.

What is a brief counselling?

• focus on moving people.
• get people to do something different.
• focus on collaboration and strengths.

Techniques for brief counselling.

• Focus on a small success when problem happens
• what is talking like that achieving in the direction.

Miracle question.

• what life be when it could happen even not real
• language and expect change through language and change will occur
• reflect both ends for someone, like weight.

Empathic Understanding

• Understanding emotions.
• Expression of the own feelings.
• non verbal cues also.

Why we share empathy.

• we see to be and give out.

What is ambivalent

• desire to make in one direction but for fear of loss if that direction is chosen.

Basic Interview skills

• Paraphrasing the words.
• Summary a client to to what they are saying.
• Paraphrasing restating the statement also themes.

Basic skills with Interview

• Listen to everything to let people know they are being heard.
• Tell me why what is important.
• Is it bad, let tell me what they need
• Open to say what to say.

Simple encourager and Directive

• Is for them to say how to give more statements.
• Small talk can be used to let them self reflect.
• Be direct to point them to what to discuss to get somewhere.

The six questions for interviews

• what do you bring to us to give, the value you bring to us and etc. what can we do to better.

Congruence

• Being one person to a the customer.
• Is a big connection to being real.

Promoting Concreteness

• definition for feelings and give examples.
• need to define the feelings.
• be clear and specific.

Concreteness Qs

• Tell me about what you are feeling.
• Can go from point A to what point B in relationship.

Direct Qs

• are you good?
• what are you here, and what are your expectations of me.

Managing Transitions.

• what can we do to better. so focus on where the patient is.
• Help clients but make sure to understand to why support the support.
• use Topic for a change.
• what happen and what to do and say and happen.

Questions Pitfalls

• Ask to provide them to have have or allow them
• what happen bad and give answers.