The end of the counseling relationship can be emotional for clients and counselors alike, but when done well, the process can serve as a tool to empower clients and prepare them for continued personal growth.
Tag: therapeutic alliance
When conducting clinical interviews, the types, manner and context of questions have the potential to result in false responses, with implications for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment.
“He had no reason to trust me. If I had been in his shoes, I wouldn’t have trusted me either.”
Empathy allows for the full and complete exploration of thoughts, feelings and behaviors, with no intent to short-circuit the process simply because we cannot tolerate someone else’s pain.
Throughout our work, Angela would repeat to me, “I want to be one of your success stories.” Many times, she felt the way was too difficult, but as I continued to hold a safe place for her, she developed the courage to face her fears one by one, dismantling the entire structure of her constructed “personality” and reclaiming her original innocence and wholeness.
In the search for empirically validated methods, are counselor researchers, educators and clinicians in danger of losing touch with what matters most in counseling?
Self-disclosure can establish trust and strengthen the bond between counselor and client, but the trick is knowing when it is (and isn’t) an appropriate tool to use.
In the early days, Caroline, a 14-year-old girl, started each session with a chin thrust indignantly at her counselor. She wanted to be seen as a warrior, and she offered answers that were blunt as a sledgehammer. And why should she drop her defenses? She had seen too many adults
In the counseling profession, resistance is essentially considered a four-letter word. Actually, many counselors probably feel more comfortable using a four-letter word than they do talking about a client’s or supervisee’s resistance. There are good reasons for this aversion. Traditionally, resistance shown by clients or during supervision was considered a
The stories of the aftereffects of human-made disaster have become all too familiar: a refugee forced to make a dangerous journey to find a new home; the soldier deployed thousands of miles from home for months at a time; the person who finds his or her world turned upside down