How to Coach Yourself and Others Empowering Coaching And Crisis Interventions | Page 96

This book is in B&W, not color - Print page in Grayscale for Correct view! back on reframing until the client’s problem is fully explored. Moreover, as suggested above, it is important that the client’s feelings be acknowledged through empathy. Exploration and empathy ensure that the counsellor understands the client’s feelings and situation, and they provide a basis for the client to consider reframed ideas as reasonable or worthy of consideration. If counsellors push clients too quickly, clients may feel devalued and misunderstood, and in response they may resist new ideas. Empathy helps counsellors to establish and maintain credibility with their clients. In addition, counsellors can use directives to invite clients to use different language to describe the distorted idea (Young, 1998). For example, when clients avoid responsibility for their actions with statements such as “I can’t get organized,” counsellors can challenge them by proposing that they rephrase with statements such as “I won’t let myself get organized.” A client might say, “She makes me feel hopeless.” In response, the counsellor can propose that the client rephrase the statement by stating, “I have decided to feel hopeless.” The latter response underscores the client’s control over personal feelings. As part of this work, counsellors can empower their clients by explaining that clients have ownership over their feelings and that no one can make them feel a certain way. After offering a reframe, counsellors should check for the client’s questions and reactions to it. Then, if the reframed idea is accepted, they can encourage further exploration and problem solving based on the new perspective. Reframing can energize clients. When clients are locked into one way of thinking about their problems, their solutions are limited. But when they consider new perspectives, problems that seemed insurmountable can yield new solutions. Moreover, reframing can serve to redirect client anxiety away from self-blame and onto other rational explanations that are less self-punishing. In these ways effective reframing empowers clients to action, problem resolution, and management of debilitating feelings. When counsellors “consider the question, ‘What’s good about it?’ they give clients new perspectives on positive things that are already happening” (Miley, O’Melia, & DuBois, 2004, p. 327). Cognitive Behavioural Techniques The following interview excerpt illustrates some of the essential strategies of cognitive behavioural counselling. The client, a 40-year-old first-year university psychology student, has sought help to deal with the fact that she has been “overwhelmed and depressed” since returning to school. Dialogue Counsellor: As we discussed, one of the things we will do during our sessions is to explore how your thinking affects your feelings and your behaviour. Analysis Cognitive behavioural counselling requires a collaborative relationship. An important component of this is educating the client on how the process works. This will also help the client to make her own interventions when she recognizes problematic thinking. Client: I’m at the point where, if I don’t do something fast, I’m going to lose the whole term. I might as well drop out. Counsellor: You’re feeling desperate. Analysis In all phases of counselling, empathy is an important response. More than any other skill, it tells clients that they have been heard and that their feelings have been understood. For [email protected] Property of Bookemon, do NOT distribute 96