Helping Skills
Psychology 478/578

Course Overview
Instructor
Syllabus
Texts
Resources
Topics

 

Overview: There are a number of basic helping skills that a counselor must practice and master in order to build rapport, foster trust and facilitate constructive collaboration.  These include

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Making personal contact - being cognitively and emotionally present with the client.
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Accurate empathy - accurately sensing the client's world and communicating that understanding.

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Genuineness - self-awareness, honesty and openness; being real (not phony).

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Unconditional positive regard - accepting and valuing the client as a unique and worthwhile person, being nonjudgmental.

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Active listening - listening carefully and empathically to the client's story with undistracted attentiveness to 1) gain an understanding of the client's problem, 2) learn how the client thinks, feels and acts, 3) discover the client's strengths, assets and personal power, and 4) build rapport with the client.  This includes maintaining comfortable eye contact and open body posture.

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Reflecting - mirroring the client's thoughts and feelings to demonstrate active listening and encourage the client to continue speaking.  This includes:

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Restating - repeating verbatim the main thought or feeling expressed by the client 

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Paraphrasing - stating, in your own words, the main thought or feeling expressed by the client.  This 1) lets the client know you are working to understand what they are communicating, 2) brings focus to the client's communication, 3) allows the client to correct any misperceptions or misunderstandings, and 4) encourages client self-exploration.

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Summarizing - summarizing, in your words, a set of thoughts or feelings expressed by the client.

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Open-ended questioning - Asking questions that require more than a minimal or one-word response by the client.  They usually begin with what, how, where or when.  They encourage the client to elaborate and provide additional information.

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Problem solving - assisting the client to 1) define goals (what the client wants, how the client would like things to be), 2) generate strategies to accomplish these goals (how the client may attain these wants and make things be the way the client would like), 3) examine each strategy for potential problems and outcomes, 4) review support, strengths and resources, and 5) decide on a plan of action.

Goal: Learn about and practice basic helping skills for facilitating constructive counseling.

Outcomes:

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Demonstrate basic helping skills, including active listening, paraphrasing, clarifying, reflecting, and problem solving.

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Demonstrate the development of a helping relationship with the client characterized by warmth, respect, genuineness, congruence and empathy.

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Demonstrate client-counselor collaboration in the development of realistic, achievable goals.

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Describe the process of adapting of counseling strategies to the individual characteristics of the client, including but not limited to disabilities, gender differences, sexual orientation, developmental levels, culture, ethnicity, age and health status.

Objectives:

  1. Readings from course and supplemental texts.

  2. Discussion questions.

  3. Exercises and role plays.

  4. Videotape assignment.

  5. Class discussions.

Tasks:

  1. Complete the assigned text readings.

  2. Complete the following exercises in your Cormier and Hackney text with an appropriate, willing partner and local supervision:

2.1 (pages 18-19) 2.6 (pages 29-30) 3.4 (page 40)
2.2 (pages 21-23) 2.7 (page 30) 3.5 (page 41-42)
2.3 (pages 24-25) 3.1 (pages 35-36) 3.6 (page 42-43)
2.4 (pages 27-28) 3.2 (page 37) 4.1 (page 49)
2.5 (pages 28-29) 3.3 (page 39) 4.2 (page 54)
  1. Submit complete and thoughtful answers to the following questions in your Cormier and

Hackney text:

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#4 at the end of Chapter 2 (page 32)

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#1-#7 at the end of Chapter 2 (pages 43-44)

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#2-#6 at the end of Chapter 4(page 55)

  1. Practice the basic helping skills with an appropriate, willing partner and local supervision.

  2. Submit a 30-minute videotape demonstrating the basic helping skills.

  3. Participate in class discussions.