Solomon Lecture Series, Lecture 7A: Counseling skills

The following post contains some highlights from the seventh lecture in the Solomon Lecture Series, presented by Dr. John Woodward. The entire lecture series is available, here, at Grace Fellowship International.

Counseling skills allow us to listen, guide, and facilitate the process. 

Approach to initial phase of counseling:

A: Accept the person. Be accepting and welcoming no matter what their behavior is. Do not reject the person.

R: Reflect back to them what they are saying and feeling.

M: Motivate them to talk while you listen. Don’t jump right to advice.

S: Support the person. Help stabilize and calm them. Be reassuring and encouraging.

Using a cooking analogy, you can have the right ingredients and recipe but there are cooking skills needed. Have the recipe of Spirituotherapy and the ingredients of Christ-centered biblical truth.

There are five different types of reflective responses to clients:

Conversational response: “I see”, “Mmm”

Mirror response: Reflect back exactly what the person says.

Content response: Reflect back a paraphrase, but not like the mirror response.

Feeling response: Look at the emotion of the person and reflect back what you observe about their emotion.

Values response: Sense and reflect back what you think the person thinks is important.

Skills Inventory:

1)    Attending: Your own posture, eye contact, and body language conveys positive regard and shows that you are concerned about them.

2)    Genuineness: Be honest and transparent.

3)    Respect: Treat the client with dignity and high regard as a person.

4)    Empathy: “Weep with those who weep.”

5)    Concreteness: Help them by being specific about their circumstances, such as teaching specific parenting skills.

6)    Content: Choose words carefully. Be sensitive to your choice of words.

7)    Feelings: Be aware of the emotions behind what the client is saying.

8)    Confrontation: Sometimes you need to confront the client, such as if they are not doing their counseling homework.

9)    Self-disclosure: You can share some personal information to help the counselee but be selective; your motive must be for the well-being of the counselee … will it help them or distract them. If it is a grief issue, you can share your own grief issue to empathize, but not to get sympathy for yourself.

10) Immediacy: Be aware of the dynamics between the counselor and counselee so you are not a stumbling block.

11) Concreteness: Communicate specific realities and not the abstract.

12) Notetaking: This is particularly important during history taking. It should be adequate information for review prior to the next session, but not so detailed that you are losing eye contact. Try to develop a short-hand notation, especially for sensitive information. Write down what they share with you and what you share with them.

13) Use of diagrams: Use the wheel and line diagrams and analogies such as the phases of a person going through the wilderness, Egypt, and Canaan.

14) Homework: Knowing what homework to give at each stage is important. You don’t want to burden the person, but it should be substantial enough to help them.

15) Recordkeeping: Use forms and store them securely.

16) Consulting: Use resources from another counselor for feedback and advice, particularly if the other counselor has specialized knowledge. 

17) Referral: Refer to a medical doctor for suspected medical issues.

18) Prayer: It could be right in the middle of a session. An example would be the Selfer’s Prayer.

19) Scripture presentation: Use a large print Bible. Be sensitive to Bible translations that the client prefers. You will need wisdom to know when to use it. Balance between enough and too much Scripture. Ask them questions about the passage to engage in the passage, for example, say “what does God have to say in this passage about such and such”. You can ask them to bring their own Bible.

20) Thanksgiving: Give thanks to God for transformational change so that He gets the glory.