Lifestyle Learning Direct

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course is divided into eight lessons as follows:

 

1. Learning Specific Skills

Learning methods; the counselling role

2. Listening and Bonding

Meeting and greeting; helping the client relax; listening with intent

 

3. Reflection and Paraphrasing

Reflection of feeling; client responses to reflection of feelings; reflection of content and feeling

 

4. Questioning

Open and closed questions; other types of questions; goals of questioning

 

5. Interview Techniques

Summarising; confrontation; reframing

 

6. Changing Beliefs and Normalising

Changing self-destructive beliefs; irrational beliefs; normalising

 

7. Finding Solutions

Making choices; facilitating actions; gestalt awareness; psychological blocks

 

8. Ending the Counselling

Terminating the session; closure; further meetings; dependency, confronting dependency

AIMS

• Explain the processes involved in the training of counsellors in micro skills.
• Demonstrate the skills involved in commencing the counselling process and evaluation of non-verbal responses and minimal responses.
• Demonstrate reflection of content, feeling, both content and feeling, and its appropriateness to the counselling process.
• Develop different questioning techniques and to understand risks involved with some types of questioning.
• Show how to use various micro-skills including summarising, confrontation, and reframing.
• Demonstrate self-destructive beliefs and show methods of challenging them, including normalising.
• Explain how counselling a client can improve their psychological well-being through making choices, overcoming psychological blocks and facilitating actions.
• Demonstrate effective ways of terminating a counselling session and to explain ways of addressing dependency.

WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE

• Report on an observed counselling session, simulated or real.
• Identify the learning methods available to the trainee counsellor.
• Demonstrate difficulties that might arise when first learning and applying micro skills.
• Identify why trainee counsellors might be unwilling to disclose personal problems during training.
• Identify risks that can arise for trainee counsellors not willing to disclose personal problems.
• Discuss different approaches to modelling, as a form of counselling
• Evaluate verbal and non-verbal communication in an observed interview.
• Identify the counsellor's primary role (in a generic sense).
• Show how to use minimal responses as an important means of listening with intent.
• Explain the importance of different types of non-verbal response in the counselling procedure.
• Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person experiencing that problem.
• Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
• Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
• Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
• Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase.
• Demonstrate/observe varying responses to a variety of closed and open questions in a simulated counselling situation.
• Evaluate your use of open and closed questions in a counselling role play.
• Identify the main risks involved in asking too many questions
• Explain the importance of avoiding questions beginning with ‘why' in counselling.
• Explain how the application of different micro-skills would be useful in counselling in observed communication (written or oral).
• Give examples of situtions when it would be appropriate for the counsellor to use confrontation
• Discuss appropriate use of confrontation, in case studies.
• Show how reframing can be used to change a client's perspective on things.
• Develop a method for identifying the existence of self-destructive beliefs (SDB's).
• Identify self-destructive beliefs (SDB's) amongst individuals within a group.
• List methods that can be used to challenge SDB's.
• Explain what is meant by normalising, in a case study.
• Demonstrate precautions that should be observed when using normalizing.
• Determine and evaluate optional responses to different dilemmas.
• Explain how the ‘circle of awareness' can be applied to assist a client, in a case study.
• Explain why psychological blockages may arise, and how a counsellor might help a client overcome them.
• Describe the process through which a counsellor would take a client to reach a desired goal, in a case study.
• Identify inter-dependency in observed relationships.
• Explain why good time management is an important part of the counselling process.
• Compare terminating a session with terminating the counselling process.
• Demonstrate dangers posed by client-counsellor inter-dependency, and how dependency can be addressed.
• Explain any negative aspects of dependency in a case study