Stages in the counselling process

starting off with those stages in counseling how do they show themselves in our in in our counseling room well I think it's I think this is a very interesting topic in terms of applying a theory to practice and if we if I could take you back in time can to when you did your maybe your introduction course sometimes it's called a level two here in here in the UK or here in England um you know when we started off our counseling skills we usually asked just to sit with a partner and um just practice listening skills there's no stages in it it's just a case of getting used to to listening more than you speak and and to be able to really um tune into someone to to start that empathic Attunement that is so important in counseling and then as we as we move through with our training we begin to realize that it's not just a case of sitting and listening there's actually a active structure to counseling skills using counseling skills whether you are just using them as skills or if you're using them as a counselor and those are stages and the reason we have stages in a counseling um encounter is so the therapist can manage the time allocated and and can not direct but can put a structure in place that the client can work within so both the client and the counselor Works within it and those are called stages and a very simple stage to look at is Beginnings middles and and if I if you're doing your kind of level three or your certificate in counseling as as our good friends in Scotland do it might be that you start off with a contract so that the person knows exactly what they're getting and the time allocated and confidentiality and you know you know you know that this is the space for them and then you start off with that so people exactly know exactly what they're getting and then you move through that place where people are talking about you know what's on their mind and you may be using skills of Silence attending reflecting and paraphrasing um active listening skills and then as the hour or the timer allocated in that in that one session comes to an end you're then looking at ending giving someone um some time or a Time indication there's a few minutes left so that they the ending isn't abrupt and they don't feel cut off or discounted and then eventually you you end the session and that's the end of The Arc of that therapy and then when you go into level four that extends because you're using that not just in one session with a client but through a series of sessions with a client Beginnings middles and endings can um it's interesting and I I like the way that you've kind of drawn attention to that Rory that yes we can say of course there's a beginning a middle and an end in every single session we we have with the client but there's also if we take the group of sessions so the all of the sessions we might have with that client we're also going to track the beginning middle and ending within that as well in the stages of counseling and for me it's the beginning bit makes a lot of sense because a beginning if you think about a film if you think about a book if you think about a new relationship or a new friend that you might meet there's going to be a process of getting to know who they are and them getting to know who you are so if we were reading a good book they would be defining the characters they'd be giving us a bit of the character's background and they wouldn't be going too much into the meat of the story though they would be kind of giving us a reference and the same is true when we're counseling we need to I guess consider if we're looking at the beginning uh stage of counseling in the beginning stage if we're looking at a an arc of sessions could be two three could even be four sessions depending on who that client is and how that relationship feels with within the therapy room and within that beginning phase as you've already said Rory we're going to be doing the paperwork and and the housekeeping as it were in terms of our Contracting and we do that as we've spoken so many times before to kind of level the playing field so that that client understands what we understand you know they understand the arena in which we are working what the boundaries look like so that's part of that beginning but then when we look at the counseling skills that we might use in that beginning phase we are as you've you've called them out already Rory we're using active listening we are showing that we are there and that we are our attentive to to to the person who's bringing their their materials keeping in mind it kind of could be quite nerve-wracking for them in those early sessions coming in Meet seeing a complete stranger and then and then kind of being expected to bring parts of their lives maybe difficult or challenging parts of their lives we're there to build that relationship to build the trust and it's called Rapport we are doing Rapport building within those early stages and great skills skill of silence as you've said and non-verbal communication showing that you're listening leaning your body in eye contact when it is appropriate um reflection just reflecting back what they're bringing to you paraphrasing and what do these skills do well that they instill in the in the speaker that is coming to us that they are being heard they're being heard if we're paraphrasing back and we're choosing a a an emotion or something that they may have brought that's important to them we're not just parroting we are paraphrasing or we are reflecting back and they're hearing it and they're going wow this this person is really listening to me they really get me and that is what builds the trust it breaks those barriers that we have in everyday life where we're kind of quite guarded as we go out there and it's in a really important part of the counseling journey and and I guess in the same way as within a new relationship Rory let's say I I met somebody and I thought oh that's that's quite an attractive person it would be pretty inappropriate for me to after two drinks to say you know what I think we should get married I really think we should get married too much and it's far too soon it doesn't belong in the beginning phase of a relationship and and similarly within the beginning phase of a counseling action there are certain skills that we might um either not use or use with reservation and skill as a mature therapist maybe but we would maybe try to avoid High challenge in the early stages because that that client being so delicate in those early stages could could easily fracture run away wow okay hold on I feel very challenged here and and that could kind of get them to take a step back Rory ABS absolutely can and I like that you've talked about the appropriate use of skills through the Arc of an engagement because you're absolutely spot on you know the skills you'd use in a more mature five six seven sessions in maybe are going to be slightly different since I was in the early stages and you you touched on the roller challenge challenge is it should only be used I think when the relationship is built there's trust there you you sort of know each other and even learning you think it has to be used quite kind of sparingly and with a lot of thoughtfulness um because that can be that can be kind of real well you know challenge the clues in the name it's challenging to the clients and and one skill that we we've yet to discuss of course is summarizing because as we move to the end of a session we summarize it's a longer paraphrase and that allows the client to have something to take away with them that's that that's going to be fresh on their mind as they leave the therapy room or leave the engagement and that allows for something that's often unspoken I think in therapy and that is that they have something to take away and reflect on through the week and how often can have we heard as practitioners clients coming back to us um you know on a maybe a subsequent session who say you know at the end of last session you know you you kind of summed up and you said to me they easily say you've said to me and I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure if that's right or actually you've got a point there yeah and and those that's sometimes where the majority of work is done and I think that managing the Arc of a session is really important to allow the client to have something to think about to reflect on in between and when it comes to um skills so if you're listening to this and you've got to make a recording um for your tutor it's really important that you show a wide range of skills that welding bodies usually say a minimum or a maximum of skills summer welding bodies do some awarding bodies don't so you're actually demonstrating your use of skills but also a skillful beginning and a skillful and and you know when you come to write your assignment you're almost certainly going to be asked why is it important to have a beginning why is it important to have a a middle what are you going to be doing in the middle of that session why is it important to have an ending and you know it's important to have a beginning because everything has to begin somewhere I'm always reminded Ken when we start counseling it's been like an opening curtain of a theater where you open and you know you are on the stage with your clients and I'm not suggesting that you're acting but there is that kind of that kind of tenseness if you like of where's this going who are we going to be what is the relation ship going to look like where which direction are we going to travel neither of us know that until the until we begin and then you begin with the contract that says to the client this is what I can offer these are the limits of confidentiality this is how you're welcomed here in in the room and then it begins and then you move through looking at those that difficult material being thoughtful being curious maybe in some cases using questions sparingly and as the session comes to an end because we don't want sessions two on for three or four hours we're looking at a time we say she's got about 10 minutes left and my wife got about 10 minutes left and that helps the client then think about the the ending and the fact that they're going to have to leave the therapeutic really really important and I I don't think I can speak about endings without thinking about some of the rookie errors that I made certainly certainly I made as a student which was you get to the end and and you know you said we just come to the end now and then you you stay to the you say to the person who's the client you know if it's one of your colleagues or you know the the person you're helping you you say um is there anything else you can help you with and you go well actually I've got this other problem and you've come to the end of the session and um and you know the students I thought we had a lot of fun with that because he's saying well what do we do now and I said well you know clearly when it comes to the end just just let the End come and then just disengage because obviously if you ask someone if there's anything else they may very well likely say that so it is a skill in itself managing the arc managing managing the kind of theater the ones with a better phrase of therapy beginning middle and end and like everything we do it's in service of the client care it is and and you know you're speaking about this and speaking about if you're a student and if you're doing recordings or if you're working with your peers but similarly if you a seasoned practitioner and maybe the challenge here is to to revisit that beginning middle and then when you have a look at your caseload and ask yourself the question where am I at with this client where am I at with this client where am I at with this client am I in the beginning phase the middle phase or the ending phase um when we're looking at a session independent Lee it's it kind of makes sense and it still needs to be managed carefully and professionally the beginning the middle and the end as Warriors just said um and and that kind of reflecting against all of the sessions that we might have with that person and um I I was thinking you know you've spoken about the end I just want to visit the the middle for a bit and first of all how might we know that we're in that middle phase how might we know that we might use those more advanced skills such as immediacy challenge asking more uh open questions of this client and a great indicator for myself is looking at the client themselves and seeing how they how they appear and how they present themselves in your in your therapy room you know you may see in the very beginning they might be quite nervous you notice their hands are maybe ringing they don't know where to put their hands they might use words like well I'm a little bit nervous I've never told anybody this I don't know how to tell you this I don't know if I should those are the kind that's the kind of language that we might see in that beginning phase when we're building that trust where we're being gentle and being more of a listener and feeding back that we hear we're working with a very very deep levels of empathy and showing that we truly understand in that beginning phase that's what we might see within the client we may see it in their body language they may shun away from us they may sit facing away from us they may cross their arms so we're really open to that body language so that's what we might see as a presentation for we're in the beginning phases and that can be one session it can be three sessions it depends who that client is it is that idiosyncratic relationship in that it's different with each so we can't say on session three now we're in the middle even if there's six sessions you it does not necessarily mean that it's session three you're now at the you may have a client who needs more gentleness in in those early and there's sometimes that we get to the end of six sessions which were allocated where we we need to uh plan uh further Journey for this client because they're not at the the the point that they feel well served at that stage so then when we move into that middle phase what might we see well we might see a more relaxed client we might see them settling down in the chair being more open we might see them talking and moving their hands to kind of indicate what's going on for them as opposed to holding their hands clenched so there might be less uh mindful of how they are holding their body they might turn more into us they might make more eye contact and of course these are all mites depends on who that person is there's not a checklist that indicates that they all okay are in the middle but these we're looking for the signs of this and a really good sign for me is when a client comes in and speaks in a more free Manner and and you kind of alluded it to a rewardingly you might do a a a um a summary at the end of a session the client may go away and they may come in and if they come in and they go you know you said last week and we were talking about last week and I've noticed in my in my dealings this weekend blah blah and you can see they're on a roll they're going there that trust is built they're now here and they are freely sharing who they are within this threat-free environment that we've created in that in the opening in those beginning phases we're now in the middle we're in the place where we're going to really delve deep into the material we're going to maybe use more questions we're maybe going to use immediacy where we bring how we might feel about something into uh uh the session um and I think that that's an important phase of of the counseling it's where a lot of the work is done um and of course then we need to recognize that there is an ending and if we have open sessions that go on forever and and of course there's there are many that that have been in therapy maybe Psychotherapy for many years 10 years 15 years and continue to go on a weekly basis there we would just acknowledge the ending of each session but if we do have a a set ending we would be acknowledging that ending within that middle session well we do it firstly in the beginning when we're setting the contract but we would also do it during the middle session just acknowledging the ending of of all of the sessions and and then if we don't have a cap succession so we've got flexibility in that we might acknowledge the ending when a client starts to show that they have developed that they have changed they have got what they initially came in for you know they can't might come in and and their initial presentation is I'm I'm really struggling with this I'm hoping to get over that and we might get to a point where we're going you know I recognize when you came in you mentioned that you were really struggling with X and what you've just shared in today's session suggests that's really loosening up for you and I can't help but recognizing that that's what you came in for and perhaps this is an indicator that we may be coming to the end of our time items together because we don't want to create that dependence and then we would go into the ending where a lot within the ending we would be recognized the ending is coming we would be summarizing not just the session we're in but maybe the sessions we've had together when you came in it was like this and then we worked through this and then you had this breakthrough and now we're at this place and I wonder as we come to the end now where you might be going forward and what that looks like for you well yeah I absolutely can and I like the fact that you've you've spoken about long-term engagements because in the long-term engagement as a therapist I think one needs to not become complacent um because at the beginning of therapy I think there's quite an intensity but that's the beginning of the engagement you're you're you and your clients are set up as a teacher they're trying to work out who you are and then as the Arc of therapy starts to form and you go into that middle middle piece um you're getting a good idea of who you are and the client is getting a good idea of who you are to be honest because you're building a relationship and it's really important I think to stay tuned into the client to keep that empathic Attunement and and I think you know I mean I think in my experience it can be easy to to drift a little bit that's why good supervision is important you know because my supervisor said to me on more than one occasion you know what's happening in this relationship and if you can't you can't work out where you are and where the client may be are you the are you actually you know responsive a better phrase in the game are you are you connected are you in tuned to the client and um and I think you're absolutely right you know we there is a bit of a debate whether we shouldn't be making ourselves redundant or not and I think that that really relies on the client and we but we have to balance that out with autonomy we don't want to keep people in therapy longer than they need to be especially if it's paid therapy there's an ethical Dimension to that so you know I think you might be should be listening for um you know for signs that the client is has got what they came for and also the fact that you know they're they're now able to be autonomous people and go out into the world you know if we're thinking of person-centered kind of methodology the idea there are you know they're self-actuated you know they've harnessed their own actualizing tendency so we must be very careful in that in that middle piece to stay attuned to to really work with the clients and not kind of get I don't know complacent and say oh well they're going to be talking about this this week and no that's not right AI you know they're going to be talking about something that's really important to them and you need to be in with them and I think it's a fascinating topic the The Arc of therapy and you know okay it's something that comes up in our Facebook group quite a lot which is why I put it into the podcast today um you know and if you're not a member of our Facebook group if you go to Facebook type in counseling tutor you'll find as we're a close group if you knock on the door our moderators will let you in and can join thousands of thousands of like-minded people talking about the world of counseling and Psychotherapy students there's qualified colleagues there's also supervisors and Shooters and there's huge debates goes on about really interesting topics and I have to say the Arc of therapy comes up more often than not Ken yeah thanks for that Roy there's also a super duper handout go to counselingtutor.com click on the podcast tab it's episode 245 uh Rory has prepared a handout for you that you can download free of charge on the stages of counseling it's really worth having those popping them in a file whether you're a student to reflect back on when you do your assignments or your recorded skill sessions but if you're a qualified therapist these are really good uh base theories that we that are really worth revisiting as I said before if you if you have a caseload maybe the challenge is where where are my clients you know when you've got somebody in the room with you are they in the beginning middle or ending phase and and I am I serving them in the best way within the phase that I see that they are in and of course it's great to take into supervision you know I've got this client and I can still see on session three they still seem to be in the that that forming that that beginning stage they seem timid you know um it's it's really a a rich area to delve into the skills we use within the Arc of those sessions so so important uh if you've listened to the counseling tutor podcast before and Rory and are you going to know that I love skills I wrote the book uh basic counseling skills a student guide which is recommended a reading on so many uh training providers and I've also created a um a little personal project called uh counseling skills academy and what we've built on there is six full sessions they're real sessions of client and counselor material and it beautifully matches the Arc of uh beginning middle and end the the counselor there is Sally Anne she is absolutely amazing Shell's master's degree she's been counseling for many years she's a clinical supervisor we contracted to be able to use this information for uh educational purposes so that's counselingskillsacademy.com who incidentally are the sponsors of theory in practice

Channel: CounsellingTutor

Views: 9,431

Keywords: counselling skills, counseling skills, counselling process, cpcab, cpcab portfolio, counselling tutor podcast, rory lees oakes counselling, counselling skills and techniques, counselling psychology, Stages of counselling process with examples, Counselling process steps, the counselling process pdf, Stages Of Change - The Beginning Stage of the Counselling ...

Id: ahchwHkc1wk

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023