question_answer

What do you understand by the term ‘counselling’? Explain the characteristics of an effective counsellor.

Answer:

Ans.

Counselling is “a therapeutic and growth process through which individuals are helped to define goals, make decisions and solve problems related to the personal-social-educational and career concerns.”

Counselling involves helping relationship that includes someone seeking help and someone willing to give help who is capable of or trained to help in a setting that permits help to be given and received.

The effectiveness of the counsellor is assessed by:

1. The ability to successfully resolve the client’s problems.

2. Certain skills and characteristics which help in the process of counselling.

3. Following are the characteristics of an effective counsellor.

1.         Authenticity: Authenticity means ‘Being yourself’. It stands for accepting and knowing oneself and one’s positive as well as negative aspects of personality, i.e., accepting weaknesses as well as the strength of oneself.

Authenticity is acting without mask, without disguising oneself, without playing any role. (It is like you are not an actor in some play.)

It means that ones behaviour is consistence with his image and self-concept.

It refers to congruence between how individual describe himself that is his ‘I’ and what is collective judgment of others regarding him that is his ‘Me’.

For example, when a friend tells you that he had spent all of his money on a useless venture and seeks your advice whether he should tell this honestly to his parents? If you feel that being honest to the parents is important and you give the same advice to him, then you are being authentic.

2.         Positive Regard: Positive regard is accepting the person as he/she is, with non- judgmental and unbiased attitude with all his strengths and weaknesses and gray areas of his personality.

It can be done by:

(a) Using the word ‘I’ rather than ‘you’.

(b) Giving him freedom to say anything he wishes to say.

(c) Expressing yourself, your feelings and opinions.

(d) Responding carefully.

(e) Not engaging in labelling. Being non-judgmental.

For example—if your friend tells you that last night he behaved very rudely with his parents and now he does not know what to do, instead of lecturing him on the mannerism and labelling him as ill mannered, you should try to understand him, go deep into the problem and situation and then give any advice, if needed.

3.         Empathy: It is the ability to understand the problem of the client ‘as if it was your own, without loosing the ‘as if’

quality—it means that you should be scientific enough to feel the pain of the other person on the same level as he is, but it does not imply that you loose control over yourself, in that case you won’t be able to help the person.

For example, suppose your best friends’ grandmother died recently, you should be able to feel the same emotion with the same intensity but it does not mean you go into depression.

4.         Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing involves putting the message into your own words.

Example: Client—I cannot cope with the pressure of studies. I feel as if I am being deprived of the joys of life.

Counsellor—you are frustrated with studying all the time, which means no time for play.