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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
Discover the practical skills for helping others.
Whether you are considering becoming a counsellor, have to provide some form of counselling as part of your job, or are simply interested in communicating well, Counselling Skills For Dummies provides the perfect introduction to the practical basics of counselling. Starting with a thorough guide to the qualities, knowledge and skills needed to become a ‘listening helper’, the book goes on to provide a framework for a counselling session, helping you to successfully manage a potentially daunting process.
Counselling Skills For Dummies, 2nd Edition:
- Illustrates how you can create a positive relationship between listener and speaker
- Teaches you how to structure a helping conversation
- Explains how asking the right questions are important to the progression of the relationship between speaker and listener
- Shows how you can better understand yourself, which is a crucial step in ensuring that you break down your own barriers to listening
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Seitenzahl: 545
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Counselling Skills For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com
This edition first published 2013
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex.
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
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ISBN 978-1-118-65732-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-65747-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-65756-0 (ebk)
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Counselling Skills For Dummies, 2nd Edition®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/counsellingskillsuk to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Focusing on Yourself First
Chapter 1: Introducing Counselling Skills
Knowing Yourself to Understand Others
Working Safely and Ethically
Being a Listening Helper
Your journey as a listening helper
Using counselling skills or being a counsellor
The key skills you need
Common problems that stop you from listening
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Structuring the Conversation
Understanding Others
Being prepared for common personal problems
Spotting signs of stress and distress
Coping with different types of conversation
Exploring Counselling Further
Chapter 2: Understanding Yourself through Personal Development
Identifying Obstacles to a Helping Relationship
Assessing your motivations
Blocked listening
Developing Your Self-Awareness
The Johari Window
Receiving feedback
Giving feedback
Avoiding Assumptions and Prejudices
Power in the helping relationship
Continuing Your Personal Development
Challenging yourself
Peer group discussions
Personal Development through Personal Therapy
Peer counselling
Group therapy
Personal therapy
Couple/relationship counselling and family therapy
Finding a Counsellor
Knowing what to expect
Understanding when counselling can harm you as a client
Chapter 3: Taking Care of Yourself
Evaluating Your Self-Care
Your work
Your body
Your mind
Your emotions
Your spirit and creativity
Weighing up the results
Being Aware of Potential Pitfalls
Mapping Your Support Network
Increasing Your Personal and Professional Supports
Consultation, mentoring, and supervision
Replenishing your batteries
Cultivating appropriate assertiveness
Chapter 4: Maintaining Good Practice
Monitoring and Reflecting on Your Work
Examining Ethical Dilemmas
Some examples of ethical dilemmas
A model for ethical decision-making
Working with Crisis and Risk
Child protection
Suicide and self-harm
Keeping Records
Stick to the facts
Data protection
Part II: The Listening Helper
Chapter 5: Being a Listening Helper
The Value of Listening
The Importance of Your Personal Qualities
The If . . . Then Hypothesis
Knowing What It Takes to Be a Listening Helper
Sharing Power in the Relationship
Figuring Out How Being a Listening Helper May Affect You
In your job role
In your personal life
In your career
On your personal resources
On your emotions
Thinking about Other Concerns
The speaker gets upset
The speaker gets angry
When the speaker harms himself
Avoiding harm as a helper
The speaker becomes too dependent
Thinking on the Fly
Reflecting on Practice
Chapter 6: Qualities, Skills, and Knowledge for Listening
Developing Your Personal Qualities
Empathy
Sincerity
Respect
Integrity
Resilience
Humility
Fairness
Wisdom
Courage
Competence
Assertiveness
Working with Active Listening Skills
Realising that a helping conversation differs from ordinary conversation
The three-stage model: The aims of the stages
Managing the helping process
Encouraging self-direction and motivation
Developing Other Helpful Knowledge
Chapter 7: Recognising Your Own Barriers to Listening
Getting Acquainted with Defences
Knowing How Defences Operate
Responding When You’re Defensive
Recognising the Interactive Effects of Defensive Behaviour
Realising What You Can Do about Your Defences
Seeing Defences in Action
Part III: Structuring a Helping Conversation
Chapter 8: Establishing a Helping Relationship
Getting the Relationship Started
Meeting
Greeting
Seating
Setting the Ground Rules
Managing other boundaries
Explaining the limits of confidentiality
Managing the Story or Content
Working with confusion
Noticing assumptions and prejudices on both sides
Noticing uncharacteristic responses
Practising Core Conditions
Respecting the speaker
Communicating empathy
Being genuine
Chapter 9: Stage One: Beginning the Discussion
Having a Structure in Mind
Forming the Relationship
Conveying the Core Conditions
Demonstrating acceptance and empathy
Communicating non-verbally
Picking up on emotions
Paraphrasing and summarising
Exploring the Presenting Problem
Probing, clarifying, and filling in the gaps
Prompting
Interrupting appropriately
Working with silence
Mastering the Art of Questions
Finding alternatives to questions
Using questions constructively
Avoiding unhelpful questioning
Responding to questions
Chapter 10: Stage Two: Deepening Understanding
Getting Below the Surface
Responding with deeper levels of empathy
Noticing themes
Using language: metaphor and imagery
Challenging and Confronting
Using immediacy
Being specific and concrete
Thinking about thinking and beliefs
Focusing and prioritising
Chapter 11: Stage Three: Working with Action and Endings
Stage Three of the Three-Stage Model
Making an Assessment
Problem-Solving
Identifying goals
Supporting problem-solving
Looking at Your Own Endings and Transitions
Managing the Ending of a Helping Session
Being clear about what you’re offering
Setting a time
Using closing skills
Managing the Ending of a Helping Relationship
Reviewing and celebrating the work and the relationship
Planning your endings
Working with Difficult Endings
Emotional upset at the end of a session
Abrupt endings on either side
Unexpected endings
Dealing with breaks
Reluctance to end
Saying Goodbye
Physical contact
The role of gifts
Referral
Evaluation
Part IV: Understanding People and Problems
Chapter 12: Being Prepared for Common Personal Problems
Using the BEST-I BEST-RU Model
Broadening the categories of experience
Body
Emotion
Sensation
Thinking
Imagery
Behaviour
Environment
Spirit
Time
Relationships
Unconscious Processes
Identifying Signs and Symptoms of Distress
Recognising Issues that Cause or Result in Distress
Dealing with change
Working with loss
Dealing with life stages
Coping with sexual issues
Improving relationships
Controlling unmanageable feelings
Chapter 13: Understanding People from a Social Perspective
Power in Society and in Helping Relationships
Prejudice and Oppression
Developing Your Understanding
Physical and mental disability
Different ethnic and cultural backgrounds
Class is still an issue
Ageism across the spectrum
Gender inequality
Sexuality issues
The Influence of Your Setting
Working Affirmatively
Chapter 14: Understanding Individuals from a Psychological Perspective
Nature or Nurture?
Childhood development
Linking past and present
Coping with Transitions
Experiencing change
Strategies for managing change
Bereavement
Disturbed Emotions
Anger
Anxiety, panic, and avoidance
Low mood and depression
Post-trauma symptoms
Difficulties related to life stages
Mental ill-health
Relationship Problems and Sexual Issues
Part V: Handling Challenges
Chapter 15: Coping with Different Types of Helping Conversations
The Influence of Your Role
Using counselling skills as part of your primary role
Using counselling skills with friends and family
Working through Different Mediums
Contracting
Adapting your skills
Working Through an Interpreter
Unplanned, Unexpected, and Difficult Conversations
Challenges to privacy and confidentiality
Dealing with abusive calls
Breaking bad news
Working with disclosures
Chapter 16: Dealing with Difficulties
You’re Being Taken Advantage Of
You’re Being Messed About
You’re Asked to Give More than You Can Give
You’re Being Too Nice
You’re Making Friends with Your ‘Client’
You’re Experiencing Unusual Feelings towards or from Your Client
Someone Is Being Harmed
You’re the Subject of a Complaint
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 17: Ten or So Key Counselling Skills
Confronting
Elaboration
Empathy
Immediacy
Non-Verbal Encouragement
Open Questioning
Paraphrasing
Problem-solving
Reflecting
Respect
Summarising
Chapter 18: Ten Resources for Improving Your Counselling Skills
Professional Bodies
National Organisations with Volunteering Opportunities
Other Volunteering Opportunities
Books and Journals
Books on Prescription
Internet Resources
University Counselling Services
Further and Higher Education
Jobs
Your Local Library
Chapter 19: Ten Great Counselling Books
The Skilled Helper
Person Centred Counselling in Action
Counselling Skills and Theory
The Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy
Using Counselling Skills on the Telephone and in Computer-mediated Communication
Supervision in the Helping Professions
Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development
Referral and Termination Issues for Counsellors
On Training to be a Therapist: The Long and Winding Road to Qualification
Counselling for Toads: A Psychological Adventure
Part VII: Appendixes
Appendix A: Case Studies and Discussion
The presenting problem
Body
Emotion
Sensation
Thinking
Imagery
Behaviour
Environment
Spirituality
Time
Relationships
Unconscious Processes
Discussion
Outcome
The presenting problem
Body
Emotion
Sensation
Thinking
Imagery
Behaviour
Environment
Spirituality
Time
Relationships
Unconscious Processes
Discussion
Outcome
Appendix B: Becoming a Counsellor
Counselling skills training
Other qualifications
Counselling skills experience
Suitable personal qualities
Maturity and life experience
Ability to complete the course
Understanding of the commitment involved
Knowing which course is right for you
Introduction
Counselling skills are often referred to as ‘active listening skills’, which makes them sound simple – after all, everyone knows how to listen, don’t they? In reality, though, the following is true:
Listening isn’t so simple after all.
Truly listening is a very powerful tool.
Finding out how to truly listen is intriguing, worthwhile, and exciting.
You can discover a lot about yourself in the process.
Active listening skills improve helping (and other) conversations and your relationships as a result.
Active listening skills are usually associated with a helping role but they are the foundation for helping conversations in many different contexts where interpersonal skills are important.
About This Book
For most of my adult life, and even earlier, I have been fascinated by human beings and found great personal satisfaction and a sense of achievement from helping people when they’re distressed or anxious. My goal in this book is to impart my enthusiasm and enduring interest for helping people with their concerns through the medium of the listening relationship. My own experience has been that discovering how to help people with their difficulties is a life-long process, because people and their situations are complex. This stretched me and kept me hooked even when the going got tough. What I didn’t expect at the outset was how much I would find out about myself, and how much I needed to discover about myself to be a better listener. What you will notice in this book is the emphasis on growing your self-awareness as well as increasing your knowledge and developing your skills.
Of course I hope that this book is going to help make you a brilliant listening helper, but there are some things it cannot achieve. This book can’t
Provide you with direct practice. You need to find people to practise on, which poses an ethical dilemma (this is only the beginning of the ethical dilemmas in this area of work!). Counselling skills can be very powerful tools for opening people’s emotions. You need to be aware of this and decide whether the other person is a willing participant and whether using your developing skills is likely to help.
Give you feedback, which is vital for your progress. I do encourage you, however, to practise and find ways of getting feedback from others about how you’re doing with your listening skills.
Tell you absolutely everything you need to know. I’ve had to be selective because this fascinating activity contains so much information.
Make you a counsellor. Listening skills are an important part of counselling (sometimes called psychotherapy, or just therapy). This book isn’t about being a counsellor. You may have ambitions to become a counsellor and if so, I hope this book helps you along the way to deciding whether this is a rewarding career for you. Counsellor training courses usually require you to have grounding in the theory and practice of counselling skills in an environment where you can practise and get feedback on your developing skills from willing (well mostly!) participants. You can find many counselling skills courses in Further and Higher Education colleges and from private providers around the country.
Throughout the book I use the terms listening helper or helper to refer to you (and me) and help-seeker or speaker to refer to the person who needs to talk. The phrases counselling skills, listening skills, and active listening skills are used interchangeably to mean the set of skills that contribute to effective listening help. I have tried to use everyday terms but whenever doing so isn't possible, I explain what the technical terms mean. Web addresses are set in monofont. Even-numbered chapters use female pronouns and odd-numbered chapters are male, to be fair to both genders!
Foolish Assumptions
In writing this book, I assume a few things about you, the reader. I assume that:
You’re not a counsellor, but you’re in a position at work or elsewhere where people talk to you about issues and problems. Or perhaps you are a counsellor and want to revisit your active listening skills.
You’re willing to be an explorer, a detective, and a reflector. The process of developing understanding is like a journey of discovery.
You’re a person who’s interested in other human beings. You can acquire each individual counselling skill, and ‘do’ it passably. But being an effective listening helper is more than being a skilled technician – you need to base the skills in positive, personal qualities.
You’re probably reading this book because you’re interested in other people, and maybe in how you yourself tick. However, even if you’re reading this book because someone told you that you need to learn how to listen, or to get some counselling skills training, you can gain something valuable if you’re willing to reflect on yourself.
You have some listening skills already, and maybe some things seem basic to you. You’re an individual with different experiences and skills than the next person who picks up this book. Certain parts of the book probably appeal more to you than other parts, depending on your personal interests.
You and I and the people you want to help are essentially the same. Most people are prone to being vulnerable, erratic, under-confident, helpless, defensive, and so on – even if you’re lucky enough for this to be only some of the time.
Given that you’ve picked up this book, you’re likely to find that some of these statements apply to you:
You’re interested in and intrigued by people in a general way.
People seem to turn to you for advice or just to talk to.
You gain satisfaction from helping someone who talks to you about being distressed, vulnerable, or worried.
You sometimes feel distressed or worried, or are puzzled by your own reactions.
You are in a role that brings you into contact with distressed people.
You sometimes have frustrating conversations.
You’re in a role where understanding people through listening to them can help them and you.
If any of these statements is true for you, then you’ll find that acquiring and developing counselling skills is helpful.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout the margins of this book, you see icons that highlight particular types of information:
This icon marks stories from my own experience.
This icon draws attention to important points you want to remember.
This book is full of detailed suggestions and ideas for dealing with different situations. The Tip icon highlights particular suggestions that can help your development as a listening helper.
These exercises help you think about the topic at hand. Often I ask you to remember or imagine a situation so that you can put yourself in the position of a help-seeker. Sometimes I ask you to rehearse a situation in your imagination.
This icon alerts you to potential dangers in the listening endeavour as a whole and in using particular skills. By being aware of these pitfalls you’re better equipped to avoid them.
Beyond the Book
In addition to the material in the print or e-book you're reading right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the Web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/counsellingskillsuk, featuring advice on the framework of a helping encounter, understanding your responsibilities as a counsellor, taking care of yourself as a counsellor, and more.
Where to Go from Here
You can start at the beginning of this book and read it from cover to cover – the chapters are organised in a logical sequence – but few people read reference books in this way. What may work best from the perspective of your individual development as a listening helper is to start in a section that interests you, or that you have a pressing need to understand. Within each chapter, you find links to other chapters that can contribute to understanding the topic that interests you.
For example, if you’re a person who likes a structure to guide you, start out with the three-stage model (see Chapters 6 and 9-11), which I use as one framework in this book, and also the BEST-I BEST-RUmodel (see Chapters 12 and Appendix A), which is another framework I use.
Alternatively, you may be more interested in reading case examples, so you may want to start with Appendix A. Perhaps you’re struggling with some helping conversations right now and want some practical guidance. If so, Chapters 9, 10, and 11 are for you.
Maybe you wonder what it is about you that keeps getting you involved in helping situations, or why you have difficulty listening sometimes. Flip to Chapter 2.
You can also look at the Table of Contents to get an idea of where to find what you need, or you can look up a particular topic of interest in the Index.
Part I
Focusing on Yourself First
For Dummies can help you get started with a huge range of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.
In this part . . .
Learn to be comfortable with yourself, and know your strengths and limitations before you start using and developing your listening skills to help other people.
Find out why knowing as much about yourself as possible is such a crucial step in learning how to help others.
Discover strategies to get to know yourself better, including addressing your personal prejudices and focusing on your personal development.
Understand why taking care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally is really important and can help you take better care of others.
Pick up the necessary know-how to become a safe counselling practitioner, even when dealing with people in crisis or at risk.
Chapter 1
Introducing Counselling Skills
In This Chapter
Developing as a listening helper
Realising that self-understanding is essential
Discovering the challenges of ethical practice
Preparing to understand others
In all sorts of work and personal situations, you come across people (family, friends, work colleagues, employees, and others) who are experiencing some kind of personal difficulty or dilemma, or simply need to review an aspect of their life. The task of listening to and helping such a person is made easier and more productive by using counselling skills within a supporting framework. These skills can even help in other situations, such as when the other person is your boss or with an annoying neighbour. By developing your capacity to use these skills, you can:
Have fewer frustrating conversations.
Understand better where the other person is coming from.
Understand your own reactions better.
Manage the listening process more effectively.
Using counselling skills in a helping relationship enables help-seekers to become less distressed and to lead more constructive, satisfying lives.
Developing as a listening helper and going through the helping process are often depicted as journeys because people can feel transformed, as if they’ve travelled a significant distance. Like all journeys, you’ll face frustrations and you may wonder why you ever set off in the first place but, because human beings are complex and using counselling skills is challenging, you have a fascinating and rewarding journey ahead. In this chapter I walk you through this journey.
Knowing Yourself to Understand Others
The saying goes that to understand another person you have to walk a long way in his shoes. Although this is a neat way to say you need to feel what being the other person is like, you need to have a good look at your own feet first – walking a few miles in someone else’s shoes may damage his shoes and hurt your own feet into the bargain.
You bring your life experiences, attributes, and ways of thinking and feeling to the helping relationship and have a significant impact on it, both positive and negative. For this reason I frequently explore thoughts about personal development and self-understanding in this book.
Chapter 2 focuses on self-development and ways of taking it further, and Chapter 7 puts the spotlight on your defences, but I refer to your self-understanding throughout. In Chapters 8 and 9, I explain the Core Conditions which are fundamental to the approach of this book. These conditions are key qualities expressed in terms of skills but they’re more than just a skills checklist. Being able to demonstrate the Core Conditions to a help-seeker means developing your self-knowledge and self-awareness.
Working Safely and Ethically
Although working as a listening helper is rewarding, it can pose some challenges and dilemmas and drain you of energy at times. In Chapter 3, I talk about the importance of making sure you take care of yourself and get support for your work. Self-care contributes to being a safe helper.
Another part of working safely is reflecting on what makes for good practice. Helping situations routinely throw up ethical dilemmas. Chapter 4 gets you thinking about your practice, risks, and protective measures, including an ethical decision-making model. Good practice is also informed by research and the influence of research findings is reflected in this book.
Appendix A considers some case studies and ethical dilemmas, while some of the things that can go wrong are explored in Chapter 16. Chapter 15 looks at the influence of your role and setting and prepares you for different types of helping conversation, such as by telephone.
Being a Listening Helper
Think of your development and work as a listening helper as a journey: travelling with a companion in the helping relationship. The vehicle for the trip is the helping relationship – a safe environment which contains, supports, and conveys the help-seeker to his destination.
Some things you read and hear may trigger uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, so take care of yourself.
Counselling skills are the nuts and bolts, the engine, of the helping relationship, while the fuel is the motivation and energy of both parties in the process. In the helping relationship, you assist the help-seeker to get somewhere by helping him to work out the final destination and how to get there, using your growing understanding of him, of yourself as map-reader and guide, and of the process of the journey. These tasks involve certain skills and knowledge, but most importantly require particular attributes and qualities. You are encouraged to reflect on these in Chapter 6. Reflection is a key part of being a listening helper. You also need to know your role and how being a listening helper may affect you; I explore both these aspects in Chapter 5.
Counselling skills are also referred to as active listening skills. ‘Active’ denotes that the helping relationship is not just about listening, but is concerned with demonstrating that you are listening carefully and attentively.
Your journey as a listening helper
The journey, whether as help-seeker or as aspiring or practising listening helper, can be daunting but it is also life-enhancing. As you explore your development as a listening helper, bear in mind that you’ll go through a cyclical process:
You start with enthusiasm and excitement and blissful ignorance.
As you begin to develop, you hit a depressive, under-confident period of realising how much you don’t know.
As you continue to grow, your confidence starts to return, but in a self-conscious way.
You reach the point where you almost instinctively know what to do without constant checking and self-questioning.
The cycle begins again every time you challenge yourself with new developments.
You make more progress in this journey if you develop your reflective skills and maintain a regular journal that records your experiences and associated feelings, thoughts, wonderings, and so on. Look back over your writing at intervals to see how your preoccupations have changed and how you have grown. Some people draw, copy, or write poems, paste in articles and cartoons – whatever captures the imagination and emotions.
Using counselling skills or being a counsellor
Although counsellors use counselling skills, being a counsellor and being a listening helper using counselling skills are different, even though the boundary is blurred in some situations. In this book I focus on the listening helper using counselling skills. The differences are to do with a combination of time, focus, boundaries, role, and depth:
Counselling skills are usually used as part of another primary role, such as being a teacher, youth worker, welfare worker, advice worker, or working in human resources, for example.
Normally counselling skills sessions are short (typically 20-40 minutes) whereas counselling appointments are typically 50 minutes.
Counselling skills sessions are less likely to be at regular intervals than counselling and are usually a short-term relationship (although the counselling skills sessions may be part of a wider relationship).
Counselling skills are aimed at either simply listening without offering advice, or possibly focused on a specific issue with an expectation of reaching some kind of outcome by the end of the session. Counselling is usually working on underlying issues and less likely to be interested in an immediate outcome.
Counselling has clearer boundaries which define certain limits of the relationship, distinguishing it from other relationships. For example, confidentiality and time boundaries are stricter and the counsellor is unlikely to have another relationship with, or dual role, with his client.
Normally when you're in a role in which you use counselling skills but you're not being a counsellor, you work at a relatively superficial level. This statement may seem to denigrate the importance of the counselling skills role, which this book is about. However, I say that only to highlight the fact that when you’re in the position of using your counselling skills, you generally function in another primary role, such as the aforementioned teacher, welfare worker, and so on, so you can’t afford the time and commitment to delve deeper.
If you are interested in continuing your listening helper development by becoming a counsellor, check out Appendix B for more useful information.
An important feature of all listening help is that the helper doesn’t offer advice, in the sense of ‘If I were you I’d do this’. Knowledge from your primary role or elsewhere may mean you can inform a help-seeker about choices available to him, but never advise someone what to do.
The key skills you need
Helping conversations involve:
Engaging the speaker in being comfortable enough to speak openly.
Helping the speaker to deepen exploration of the issues he wants to discuss.
Enabling the release of emotions.
Making sense of the issues.
Moving on to deal with the issues.
Inviting the client to discuss what is helpful and unhelpful and adapting your approach.
In order to embark on and work through this process, you need to develop not only your personal qualities but also a set of skills that have been identified over many years as being most helpful in the listening helper interaction. Chapter 18 gives you a list of some of these skills, with a brief explanation of each skill and its purpose. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the full range of skills you need, have a look at Part III, which covers them in detail.
Common problems that stop you from listening
However willing and keen you are to listen and be helpful, some things can interrupt your listening. On a practical level, the distractions of a busy or unsuitable environment can do so. You don’t always get to choose an ideal situation, but you can pay some attention to minimising or avoiding distractions. You’ll find discussion of such distractions in Chapter 7.
You can also suffer from practical internal distractions, such as being hungry, thirsty, or needing the toilet.
You can be disrupted from careful listening by worries such as being unsure what to say next, not knowing anything about the specific topic the help-seeker has brought up, or panic about disclosures that have been made.
People tend to carry around prejudices, assumptions, and needs (such as the need to be liked or seen to be competent) that can interfere with their ability to really listen. I talk more on this subject in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 7 I expand on the discussion of defences, which protect people from difficult feelings and may make them miss the help-seeker’s emotions. Defences are an aspect of our unconscious processes and I say more about this in Chapter 12.
Increasing your knowledge, skills, and self-awareness through the information in this book can help to improve your confidence and therefore progress your ability to concentrate without distraction. Having a structure to guide you is also helpful.
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Structuring the Conversation
This book uses a three-stage model to guide you through the process of the helping conversation. I give you an outline of the model in Chapter 6, and then expand on that model in Part III. In a nutshell the model divides the process into beginning, middle, and end, corresponding to Exploration, Understanding, and Action respectively. Holding this structure in mind can help steer you through the time you have with a help-seeker, both for an individual session and for a series of meetings.
In Chapter 8 you have a section on making a contract with the help-seeker which clarifies your role and responsibilities as a listening helper. You will feel more secure if you have made a contract and have a structure in mind.
Understanding Others
Understanding yourself is a good preparation for understanding others. Although you are a unique individual, you share some very common themes in human experience and share the same gamut of emotions with everyone else. However, everyone arrives in this world with different strengths and vulnerabilities and is subjected to various personal, social, educational, and relationship experiences and events which shape his or her capacities to cope, or not.
Being prepared for common personal problems
In this book I use a model that attempts to capture the range of human experience using an acronym, BEST-I BEST-RU. Like all models this one aims to assist your thinking, but is undoubtedly incomplete. Use your own experience and what you know of the experiences of others to compare with the information you find in this book. The initials of the acronym stand for Body, Emotion, Sensation, Thinking, Imagery, Behaviour, Environment, Spirituality, Time,and Relationships and I encourage you to view people in their context. Check out Chapter 12 for a description of this model.
Other chapters that aim to prepare you for dealing with the everyday problems you may encounter as a listening helper are Chapters 13 and 14, which look at people’s social and psychological experiences.
Chapter 11 focuses on the ending phase of the helping –relationship, which means that it considers how to encourage action and also looks at the meaning of endings and transitions, which are intrinsic to many problems people come for help with. Although I can’t cover everything in this book, I can tell you that the bounds of human distress are wide. Read, talk to people, and watch television programmes to broaden your knowledge and understanding of what can distress people.
Spotting signs of stress and distress
Many people who seek help from listening helpers, especially counsellors, have identified that they are distressed. Most often people hide the true extent of their distress for various reasons – embarrassment, not wanting to make a fuss, protecting others, and so on. I see people’s emotions as being like an iceberg – nine-tenths submerged and hidden from view. Many listening helpers find that they are the first person to notice that someone is struggling or needs to talk. Perhaps you are reading about counselling skills because this happens to you all the time. Being sensitive to signs and symptoms of stress and distress in yourself is one way of developing your sensitivity to others.
Chapter 12 explores signs and symptoms. Chapters 13 and 14 are on social and psychological understanding, and the case studies in Appendix A all help to develop your sensitivity.
Coping with different types of conversation
As a listening helper with another primary role, you may find yourself facing a potentially wide variety of helping conversations, planned and unplanned, sometimes with conscripts rather than volunteers, all influenced by your setting or context. Conversations are mostly face-to-face but they may be mediated by telephone or other electronic means. Chapter 16 explores some of the issues connected with these different situations.
Exploring Counselling Further
You have no end to the information and skills development that will prove helpful to you to develop and grow as a listening helper. Chapter 18 focuses on resources such as the professional bodies where you can obtain general relevant information and guidelines, including how to take your development forward if you want to train as a counsellor. Chapter 19 describes some books, and their authors, that will further your understanding. In Appendix B, I give details about becoming a counsellor, some of the things you need to think about, and how to go about training.
Chapter 2
Understanding Yourself through Personal Development
In This Chapter
Nurturing your personal growth
Dealing with internal distractions
Getting feedback to develop your self-awareness
Taking personal development further
Becoming an effective listening helper, someone who helps another to explore issues in her life by using active listening skills, involves more than simply identifying and practising the individual skills of active listening. You may be technically correct in using each particular skill and yet be an inadequate listener if your attitude to the speaker is poor, self-awareness absent, or you have unresolved personal issues that you need help with yourself.
An in-depth understanding of what motivates you to help makes you a better listening helper. In this chapter I explore some aspects of personal development which can increase your self-insight.
Identifying Obstacles to a Helping Relationship
Someone seeking help with a problem needs to trust you before she can open up to you. You must pay full attention to her without judging her — let her direct her own path and decisions.
In order for you to be a non-judging, reliable, and attentive listener, you must develop an increasing awareness of yourself and what you’re bringing to the helping relationship. Aspects of yourself to bear in mind include:
Your values, prejudices, assumptions, and internal ‘rules’
Your need to be regarded by the speaker in a certain way (for example, to be liked, needed, or viewed as a capable expert)
Your own emotional triggers or blind spots
Your ways of defending yourself against difficult feelings.
All of the aspects in the preceding list can be a source of internal distractions to you. Do you get distracted by thinking about what to say next? If the other person behaves in a way you find difficult (being aggressive, or needy, for example), does it get under your skin and keep you from listening? If she tells you a disturbing or shocking tale, will it be too hard for you to hear? As a listening helper, you sometimes need to challenge the person who is speaking to you, or you may need to discuss the possibility of breaking confidentiality. All these examples require a level of assertiveness and confidence to carry out actions sensitively without being hung up on your own worries and concerns.
You’ll be a better listening helper if you’re secure in yourself and have a reasonable level of self-esteem. However, everyone has insecurities and ways of protecting themselves against difficult feelings. These self-protective defence mechanisms can sometimes be of help, more often a hindrance, depending on the particular situation. They often (but certainly not always) date back to your upbringing and early experiences and are learned patterns of relating to others. Part of your personal development may be to expose yourself to things that are difficult issues for you and challenge any outdated defences. (I discuss the role of your defences further in Chapter 7.) Undertaking some personal counselling can significantly help with this (see the later section Personal Development Through Personal Therapy).
Assessing your motivations
When starting out as a listening helper, you may only be aware of your surface reasons for becoming one. Perhaps you find that others think you easy to talk to, or maybe they seek you out to ask your advice. Being helpful can be personally rewarding, giving you an internal glow. Below this, however, you may have some other powerful motivations that can distract you from careful listening. The factors that drive you to be a listening helper can be double-edged – positive or negative, dependent on the particular circumstances and also on your own self-awareness.
Take a little time to consider as honestly as you can the following questions to help you start to focus on some of the issues that may get in the way of listening, including what makes you want to take on this role:
How did you decide to be a listening helper?
Why do you want to be a listening helper?
What is it that you want to give?
What do you want to receive from people you help?
What do you think you’ll get from being a listening helper?
What are your expectations of anyone you might help?
With what emotions are you comfortable?
What emotions in yourself or in others give you trouble?
How will you deal with the speaker’s feelings towards you?
How will you handle your feelings towards those you help?
Revisit these questions when you finish this chapter, and later when you’ve found out more about the processes involved in using counselling skills. One theory about why people want to be listening helpers (and also to engage in intimate relationships) is to heal their own emotional wounds. The eminent American psychologist Carl Rogers suggested that we’re all, to a greater or lesser extent, prevented from being fully ourselves by conditions of worth that others impose on us: We conform to the expectations of others, rather than being truly ourselves, in order to feel of worth. However, we also have an actualising tendency, or drive towards growth. Becoming more able to be yourself through this growth enables you to be a better listener because you’re more able to accept others when you’re better able to accept yourself. You can find more about some of the issues raised in the previous listed questions in Chapter 5 which focuses on what it means to be a listening helper, and Chapter 7, which looks in more depth at barriers to listening.
Blocked listening
You may be good at problem-solving. This useful skill is potentially of great benefit to others and it gives you a good feeling to help someone by using this skill. If, though, you decide what the other person’s problem is and rush to solve it, that person could be left feeling useless, learning nothing from the process. What seems to be the problem may not be the real issue after all so she ends up not feeling heard. Remember that the help-seeker needs to find her own solutions.
Rushing to offer solutions is a common mistake made by people new to counselling skills. This tendency gets in the way of listening and is a trait you need to overcome.
To illustrate, a person may ask you about a decision she needs to make on whether to change her child’s school. You might draw up a list of pros and cons of changing or staying put, suggesting sources of information and other specific advice. All of this could be helpful. However, it could be that the problem in making the decision relates to an underlying issue – the difference between this person and her partner about what’s important for their child’s future; a clash of expectations and values. If you rush to be helpful with your problem-solving skills, you may never get to this underlying issue.
If you recognise within yourself this tendency to rush in, take time to reflect upon what lies beneath. It could be lack of experience and skill, but it may also be that
You lack awareness of the depth of emotion in the other person.
You’re uncomfortable with probing because of what might emerge.
You feel good about your role and yourself when you offer a solution.
Blocked listening manifests itself as a problem in other ways beyond problem-solving. If someone talks to you about her relationship with her sister (or brother, mother, or whoever) and you have a similar problematic relationship, you may assume that her relationship is like your own. You could unconsciously try to influence the person to behave in the way that you would like to behave, or manage the situation as you do, or would like to. If you’re angry or disappointed in yourself because you can’t manage your own relationship as well as you want, these feelings may interfere with your capacity to listen or even make you angry and disappointed with the speaker. Maybe you don’t have a sister but nevertheless have values about the role of a sister and therefore judgements about how this person should behave in the situation. As you can imagine, the help-seeker may notice any of these attitudes even if you try to conceal them.
On a more mundane level, if you’re too hot, cold, hungry, remember that you forgot to lock your front door, need the toilet, have an appointment somewhere else, are concerned that your privacy may be invaded, and so on – any of these situations are likely to distract you from the task of attending and listening. You need to be aware of such distractions and be able to do something about them, which often requires confidence and assertiveness (see Chapter 3 for more on assertiveness). Being more self-aware is a step towards developing confidence.
Developing Your Self-Awareness
An important aspect of your qualities and skills as a listening helper is your underpinning self-awareness. The Johari Window model of human interaction suggests that we all have an open area, a blind spot, a secret part, and an undiscovered area representing parts of our internal world. (For more detail on the Johari Window, see the next section.) Often our fears and defences get in the way of having a satisfying life and may lead to seeking help. When we block self-knowledge, we tend to make bad decisions for ourselves. When we use energy in maintaining defences, we’re distracted from listening well (to ourselves and others).
Being self-aware applies to ‘clients’ and their helpers. For anyone using counselling skills, the aim is to be more aware and less afraid of your internal world, for these three reasons:
So that you become free to concentrate on the speaker without your own baggage getting in the way
Because the more you understand and accept yourself, the more likely you are to understand and accept others
So that you model the ability to be in touch with, and accept, your inner self which provides valuable information, known as emotional intelligence.
In Chapter 7, you can find more about recognising your barriers to listening. In this chapter I discuss listening obstacles in a general way to start you thinking about the need to understand yourself better, with some ideas about how you can do that.
The Johari Window
The Johari Window, named after the first names of its inventors Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, explains our inner world by dividing personal awareness into four areas, like four panes of a window:
Open: Known to yourself and others
Blind: Known by others but not to yourself
Secret: Known to yourself but not others
Undiscovered: Unknown to yourself or others.
As a listening helper, you need to increase your open area by decreasing the other areas and becoming more self-accepting. Always use openness with discretion for the help-seeker’s benefit – not to take attention away from them and onto your own concerns. People who have a lot of blind spots lack awareness of how they affect others. Such people are likely to give or receive much feedback or disclose much about themselves. Those who have a big secret area similarly withhold themselves. Beneath both of these behaviours lie fears about being hurt, rejected, or ‘found out’. People with large undiscovered areas have little understanding of how they tick. They may not have learned or taken time to reflect on why they think, feel, and behave as they do.
To some extent everyone has elements of each of these characteristics – some blind spots, some unknown parts, and some withheld aspects. Indeed, to survive in the real world, you often have to protect yourself by not opening up these areas and by keeping defences in place. When helping others, you need to decide if you’re willing to take the risk of opening up your self-awareness and make changes in how you relate to others. My own experience is that it is worth it, partly because doing so has made me increasingly comfortable with myself and because it has improved my relationships with others. Self-discovery and self-acceptance are lifelong endeavours.
The way to increase your open area is by one, or all, of the following routes:
Disclose more about yourself so that you keep less of yourself secret. This doesn’t mean telling anyone and everyone all about yourself, especially when the other person is trying to tell you about her difficulties. It also may not be appropriate to disclose aspects of yourself in certain situations – others can make judgements. Self-revelation about an experience or feeling of your own can help the other person to feel more normal in relation to her experiences and model to them the importance of being aware of and expressing emotions. You can practise self-disclosure in everyday life within relationships of trust. Notice what happens both inside yourself and in the other person when you take this risk of showing or describing your feelings and thoughts.
Take time to reflect on experience, to develop self-insight and discover more about yourself. Keeping a diary or journal is a good way to increase self-awareness,. You may find it difficult at first, if writing doesn’t come naturally to you. Set a time limit of 6 minutes and keeping the pen on the page, keep writing, even if it is gibberish. Doing this, I became better at letting my writing, thoughts and feelings flow. You can take a theme from that 6 minutes of writing and do another 6 minutes focusing on the theme, which can take the exploration deeper. It helps knowing that what you write is personal and for no one else to see. Some people cut and paste poems and pictures, do doodles and sketches in their personal journals. Both the writing itself and reviewing what you’ve committed to paper straight away, and from time to time, increase your self-knowledge through noticing patterns and repeating reactions.
Seek out feedback wherever you can so that you understand more about how you come over to, and affect, others – challenge your blind spots. The prospect of getting feedback can be very scary, especially if you lack confidence. And yet it isn’t usually as bad as you expect and certainly better than your imagination! We are often our own harshest critics. Take time to really listen to any positive feedback – many of us play down the praise we receive, or simply don’t hear it –. and encourage feedback about how you come over from anyone seeking your help.
Receiving feedback
As a listening helper, you’ll rarely receive meaningful feedback on how you come across, for even if you ask for feedback, the other person may not feel able to tell you the truth. However, get into the habit of asking how the other person finds the conversation and encourage her to review and reflect with you.
Listen carefully all the way through. Listening properly when you’re getting feedback can be hard. If you’re like me and my students, you tend to home in on the negative and miss the positives. Even if you ‘hear’ the positive, you may not give it due weight and take it in. We also sometimes cannot hear negative comments without feeling crushed and criticised. Try to put your defences aside and not take the critical feedback to mean that you’re completely useless and might as well give up right now! Always make a note of feedback you have received, as accurately as possible, and go back to it at a later time when you may be able to view it in a more balanced and rational way.
Ask for clarification if you need it. From time to time, you may need to ask for feedback to be explained. Perhaps the person giving feedback is not being clear enough – such as not giving you a specific example of what she’s highlighting. A common fault in giving feedback is to say something was ‘good’. That won’t help you to improve. Ask what specifically was good, how it was good, and how it helped the conversation and the helping relationship.
Try to think of feedback as a gift. Try to remember that the giver of feedback may be feeling very anxious about telling you what she noticed – many of us are nervous about telling the truth as we see it. For this reason you won’t always get the feedback you need to be able to improve and understand yourself better. Sometimes people are trying to be cleverer than you, to take a one-up position by giving you criticism. Remember, they do this because it makes them feel less inadequate themselves but they may, nevertheless, be offering something useful, once you strip out their defensive or negative approach. Also, any person you help is likely to be defensive, so dealing with your own and other people’s defences is good practice! Finally, remember that a criticism doesn’t mean you’re a totally worthless person or completely useless – just that you may have something to work on.Thank the giver for the feedback.
Take time to reflect. Often it is hard to take in feedback immediately: Perhaps you don’t want to hear the feedback; maybe you don’t want to believe it; perhaps it was given in an unhelpful manner; what you have heard may not fit with your self-perception. Our defences against hearing ‘good’ or ‘bad’ things can be strongly embedded.
Check it out with others. Remember that the feedback is just that person’s point of view – others may disagree or see things differently. Check with others if you can. Reflect on what you’ve heard and try to match it to other things you know about yourself to see whether there’s a basis for what’s been said. Also check with yourself and others about what you could (rather than should) do differently.
Giving feedback
Giving constructive feedback is also challenging. Here are some suggestions to help you give feedback. Above all, remember to use all the active listening skills in this book.
Talking about giving feedback in a chapter about your personal development may seem odd, but in giving feedback to others, you find out things about yourself. When you give feedback, notice your feelings before, during, and after, and the manner in which you deliver it so you discover whether anything blocks you. As a listening helper you need to offer feedback on occasion, so try to get feedback on your feedback skills.
Use ‘I’ statements. Take responsibility for your comments by using ‘I’. For example, instead of saying, ‘You shouldn’t judge people’, it’s more helpful to say, ‘I felt uncomfortable when you told me about giving your brother your opinion.’ You can add an explanation, ‘. . . because it seemed like you were telling him what to do and that you thought he was doing it all wrong – I think I would have felt judged.’ Notice that such statements involve realising your own feelings and self-disclosing.
Give it soon. Feedback is most meaningful when it is related to what happened recently. If you wait hours, days, or even longer your memories become more vague. If you’re reluctant to offer feedback, think what that says about you and the kind of relationship you have (or don’t have) with the other person.
Be specific and concrete. Imagine that you’ve acquired a new skill, such as building a space vehicle from instructions. How would you feel if a passing Martian said, ‘That was brilliant,’ or ‘You didn’t do so well there’? You might feel good in the first instance and bad in the second, but in both cases you wouldn’t have much idea of why you were brilliant or not so good.
Try to identify what specifically made something ‘brilliant’ so that the other person knows how she can keep on doing brilliantly. For example, you could say ‘You were very careful to check every step against the instructions, so that the space vehicle ended up working like it was supposed to.’
Concrete examples help. For example, ‘When you screwed part B to part C you followed the instructions and lined them up carefully, but when you assembled the hatch you didn’t consult the instructions and the hatch didn’t fit properly.’
I often hear students telling each other they did well, saying something like, ‘That was really good,’ or ‘You really listened.’ More helpful is to identify how the person did well. Perhaps she accurately reflected on what she heard, or she conveyed empathy through her nonverbal communication (looking concerned and interested and maintaining eye contact).
If you find it difficult to be specific and concrete, you can use some simple techniques – which are also a lot of fun – to give you practice. On a course I attended, we were asked to devise instructions for a blind person to open a matchbox and strike a match. When we put our instructions to the test with blindfolded volunteers, the results were hilarious and telling – matches all over the floor. Another exercise in being clear and specific is to draw a diagram using simple geometric figures such as circles, squares, triangles, and so on. Explain your diagram to another person who cannot see it but who has to try to draw it from your instructions. If your family or friends like games, these can be fun to do together.
Think of the feedback as a gift. To receive well-thought-out, constructive, and timely feedback that can be used to improve or understand yourself better is rare, so it’s a valuable thing for you to offer. Reflect on what stops you from offering your observations.
Remember not to rush to offer solutions. You can boost your own self-esteem by seeming to know the answers, but the objective is the other person’s understanding. Give her time to think it over and to reach her own conclusions, which is the best way of discovering answers. Reflect on your desire to impress, to rescue, and so on, and what these feelings say about you.
Don’t overwhelm with too much feedback. In general, limit your feedback so that the other person can readily take it in. Develop the art of picking out themes and/or what seems most important. Be aware of how the other person reacts to what you say so that you can pace giving feedback to her needs. If you find it difficult to concentrate on the other person’s reactions, you need to think about what it is that stops you from having enough confidence to forget about yourself.
Think what the feedback says about you. In giving feedback what you notice and focus on reflects something about yourself. Two people watching the same piece of interaction will each notice different things, related to their own concerns and preoccupations. One person may notice how empathic a listener is being, or not being, because empathy and being understood is really important to her, whilst another notices how assertive, or lacking in assertiveness, a listener is because she admires or fears assertiveness and challenge.
Avoiding Assumptions and Prejudices
You make judgements and assumptions about other people all the time and you find yourself categorising many aspects of your world in order to manage daily living. You’re bombarded with experiences and sensory information throughout the day and you’d probably go mad or be paralysed if you didn’t use categories and assumptions to make sense of the world and your experiences. However, some of your assumptions are likely to be based on inaccurate and stereotyped views that get in the way of relating to the real person.
Your views are developed by your whole life experience and influenced by significant people, values, and institutions. Early influences are particularly powerful – when you were small you tended to believe what significant adults in your life told you, or conveyed to you through their attitudes. Beneath prejudice lies fear – of the unknown, of difference, of being overwhelmed, of having power taken away, of being found to be weak or vulnerable. Even now when you’re able to challenge assumptions and prejudices, you may find the underlying fear lives on and subtly influences your reactions.
If you’ve grown up as part of a ‘majority’, you may be unaware of the impact of oppression. As part of a minority, especially where that minority is subjected to publicly accepted oppression, people live with negative attitudes on a repetitive, daily basis. Individuals and society are often ‘blind’ to the everyday imbalance of power, and its effects, experienced by oppressed minorities.
As a listening helper, you need to develop your awareness of your own assumptions and prejudices. They can be quite subtle and hard to admit. You can read more about these issues in Chapter 7, which discusses defence mechanisms. Defence mechanisms are the behaviours and ways of thinking we develop to protect ourselves from emotional hurt.
Illustrating negative stereotypes
As a child I experienced two very obvious forms of negative stereotype from my parents. I relate these stories to illustrate how the fear, which is irrational and often not easy to identify, can remain even when it has been rejected at a conscious level:
