Strategies and Techniques of

Individual and Group

Counseling
Emma V. Reyes
Division Seminar in Guidance and
Counseling
Helping:
Providing
assistance to
another person
who would
benefit from an
act of kindness
The Concept of Helping
Informal helping
Giving alms to a beggar
Volunteering to pack relief goods
Babysitting for a friend
Assisting an elderly cross the street

- A planned service offered by trained
professionals whose behaviors are governed by a
code of ethics to meet the identified needs of
clients
- Objectives: prevention, remediation
- Helping professions include medicine, law,
education, psychology and counseling, social
work


Fundamental Tenets of Effective
Helping
(Eisenberg and Patterson, 1979)

1. Understanding of Human Nature
The helper must have a thorough
understanding of human behavior in its social
and cultural context, and be able to apply that
understanding to the particular circumstances
of each client.
Fundamental Tenets
2. Change in the Client
The ultimate purpose of helping is to
enable the client achieve some kind of
change that he/she will regard as
satisfying.
Fundamental Tenets
3. The Quality of the Relationship
The quality of the relationship is
significant in providing a climate for
growth.
Fundamental Tenets
4. Self-Disclosure and Self-Confrontation
The helping process consists primarily of self-
disclosure and self-confrontation on the part
of the client, facilitated by interaction with the
helper.
Self-disclosure revealing significant personal information
Self-confrontation process whereby the client looks at himself
with an expanded perspective that allows for the development
of new perceptions
Fundamental Tenets
5. An Intense Working Experience
The helping process is an intensive working
experience for the participants.

For the helper: attentive listening; information
absorption; message clarification; treatment
planning; etc.
For the client: effort to understand what is difficult to
understand; endurance of confusion, conflict, and
uncertainty; commitment; etc
Fundamental Tenets
6. Ethical Conduct
Helping professionals are obliged to
function in an ethical manner. Codes of
ethics published by the relevant
professional associations will serve to set
some needed parameters
Examples: confidentiality, informed consent, dual
relationships
Any profession in which the primary
responsibility is to assist individuals
in need.
Examples of helping professions
include education, law, medicine,
nursing, social work, and counseling.
Gladding, S.(2001).The Counseling Dictionary.NJ: Merrill
Prentice Hall.
Helping Profession
A point of view in education in education that
emphasizes the total development of
individual students and utilizes instructional
services to help students develop their
abilities and learn to cope. Guidance also
deals with helping students learn to make a
choice.

Gladding, S.(2001).The Counseling Dictionary. NJ:
Merrill Prentice Hall.
Guidance
Guidance

Service provided to student; always in
the school setting include functions
such as:
Counseling
Psychological testing
Placement
Information/Orientation
Individual Inventory
Group Process
Research

The application of mental health,
psychological or human development
principles, through cognitive, affective,
behavioral or systemic interventions,
strategies that address wellness,
personal growth, or career
development, as well as pathology.

American Counseling Association
Counseling
Counseling
Definition: Counseling denotes a
professional relationship between a
trained counselor and a client
designed to help the latter resolve
problems of an emotional or
interpersonal nature (Burks and Stefflre,
1979)
The profession that involves the
use of an integrated approach to
the development of a well-
functioning individual primarily
by helping him/her to utilize
his/her potentials to the fullest
and plan his/her future in
accordance with his/her abilities.


Defining Guidance and Counseling
(Republic Act 9258)

The Helping Process
Helper and Client
The Helping Relationship
Definition: A relationship established
between a helping professional and a
client
Goals: 1. Changes in behavior and lifestyle
2. Increased awareness or insight
and understanding
3. Relief from suffering
4. Changes in thoughts and self
perceptions
The Helping Relationship
Helping Formula
Personality
of the Helper
Helping
Skills
Growth Facilitating
Conditions
Specific
Outcome
The Helping Formula
Personality of the + Counseling Skills
Counselor




Growth-Facilitating Specific Outcomes
Conditions cognition, affect, behavior)

The Helping Formula
Personality of the Counselor: Traits, Attitudes, Values

Counseling Skills : Developed through academic
preparation and practice

Growth Facilitating Conditions: Trust , Respect, Positive
regard, Nonjudgmental attitude

Specific Outcomes: For the person, family, community
and society

Counseling Approaches
Psychodynamic - is a form of depth psychology
whose primary focus is to reveal the
unconscious content of a client's psyche in an
effort to alleviate psychic tension. Although its
roots are in psychoanalysis, psychodynamic
therapy tends to be briefer and less intensive
than traditional psychoanalysis.

Counseling Approaches
Behavior Therapy/applied behavior analysis
focuses on changing maladaptive patterns of
behavior to improve emotional responses,
cognitions, and interactions with others.

Cognitive - generally seeks to identify
maladaptive cognition, appraisal, beliefs and
reactions with the aim of influencing destructive
negative emotions and problematic dysfunctional
behaviors.
Counseling Approaches

Humanistic - emerged in reaction to both
behaviorism and psychoanalysis and is therefore
known as the Third Force in the development of
psychology. It is explicitly concerned with the
human context of the development of the
individual with an emphasis on subjective
meaning, a rejection of determinism, and a
concern for positive growth rather than
pathology. It posits an inherent human capacity
to maximize potential, 'the self-actualizing
tendency'.
Counseling Approaches
Brief- "Brief therapy" is an umbrella term for a
variety of approaches to psychotherapy. It
differs from other schools of therapy in that it
emphasizes (1) a focus on a specific problem
and (2) direct intervention. It is solution-based
rather than problem-oriented. It is less
concerned with how a problem arose than
with the current factors sustaining it and
preventing change.

Counseling Approaches
Systemic - seeks to address people not at an
individual level, as is often the focus of other
forms of therapy, but as people in
relationship, dealing with the interactions of
groups, their patterns and dynamics (includes
family therapy & marriage counseling).
Community psychology is a type of systemic
psychology.
III. Helping Skills for Counselors
Counseling Microskills
Specific skills a counsellor can use to
enhance their communication with clients.
These skills enable a counsellor to
effectively build a working alliance and engage
clients in discussion that is both helpful and
meaningful.

Microskill 1: Attending behaviour

Attending is the behavioural aspect of building
rapport. When a counsellor first meets with a
client, they must indicate to the client that
they are interested in listening to them and
helping them. Through attending, the
counsellor is able to encourage the client to
talk and open up about their issues.

Eye contact is important and polite (in
Western society) when speaking or listening to
another person. This does not mean that the
counsellor stares at the client, but maintains
normal eye contact to show genuine interest
in what the client is saying.

S.O.L.E.R.
When working with a
client, you want to send
a message that you are
listening.
This can be done by
being attentive both
verbally (responding to the
client) and nonverbally.
SOLER is an acronym
which serves to remind
us how to listen.

S: Face the client squarely; that is, adopt a posture
that indicates involvement.

O: Adopt an open posture. Sit with both feet on the
ground to begin with and with your hands folded, one
over the other.

L: As you face your client, lean toward him or her. Be
aware of their space needs.

E: Maintain eye contact. Looking away or down
suggests that you are bored or ashamed of what the
client is saying. Looking at the person suggests that
you are interested and concerned.

R: As you incorporate these skills into your attending
listening skills, relax.

Microskill 2: Questioning

Questions during the counselling session can
help to open up new areas for discussion.
They can assist to pinpoint an issue and they
can assist to clarify information that at first
may seem ambiguous to the counsellor.
Questions that invite clients to think or recall
information can aid in a clients journey of
self-exploration.

Types of Questions


Open allows the client to answer the question in a
free-flowing or narrative style. Used when you
want more detailed and elaborate answers.
Tell me how this is working for you?

Closed this type of question requires only a one or
two word response. UsuallyYes or No.
Do you enjoy that type of work?

Types of Question


Probesa questions which begins with a who,
what, where, how, or when.
What do you plan to do to complete your
project?

Requests for Clarification Asking the client for
more information.
Help me understand what this relationship
is for. is for?IS

How questions tend to invite the client to talk about
their feelings.
What questions more often lead to the emergence
of facts.
When questions bring about information regarding
timing of the problem, and this can include events and
information preceding or following the event.
Where questions reveal the environment, situation
or place that the event took place.
Why questions usually give the counsellor
information regarding the reasons of the event or
information leading up to the event.
It should be noted that care must be taken by the
counsellor when asking why questions. Why
question can provoke feelings of defensiveness in
clients and may encourage clients to feels as though
they need to justify themselves in some way.

Microskill 3: Confrontation

Generally speaking the term confrontation
means challenging another person over a
discrepancy or disagreement. However,
confrontation as a counselling skill is an
attempt by the counsellor to gently bring
about awareness in the client of something
that they may have overlooked or avoided.

Four (4) discrepancies which the client
could display.
The discrepancy can be between:
Thoughts and feelings
Thoughts and actions
Feelings and actions or
A combination of thoughts, feelings and actions.
Eg: Your words say you would like to spend more
time with your sister, but your actions say that its
not a priority for you.

Microskill 4: Focusing (6 areas)

The first is Individual focus, where the counsellor
begins the counselling session by focusing totally
on the personal aspects of the client; the
demographics, history, and the reasons why
counselling is sought, from the client.
The counsellor will often use the clients name, to
help bring about total focus on that client. For
example, Joan, tell me a little about yourself.
Joan, are you the oldest daughter in the family?

Main theme or problems focus (2)
Attention is given to the reason why the client
sought counselling. Other focus, as no
problem is truly isolated, the client will often
speak of friends, colleagues, extended family
members and other individuals that are
somehow connected with the reason for the
client seeking counselling.

Family focus (3)
Family focus may concern siblings, parents,
children. Flexibility is required in the definition
of Family, as it can have different meanings
to different people, i.e. traditional, single
parent, nuclear and/or can include extended
family members, or very close friends who are
given family titles such as Aunt or Uncle.

Mutuality focus (4)
Mutuality focus is concerned with how the
client reacts to the counsellor, because this
could be an indication of how the client
develops in relation to other people. It
attempts to put the counsellor and client on
an equal level, with the counsellor asking:
How can we work together? How would
you like me to help with this situation at this
point?

Interviewer focus (5)
Interviewer focus is where the counsellor may
disclose information about themselves.

Cultural/environmental/context
focus (6)
The counsellor will understand how a client is
influenced by the community, in which they
grew up, but this can be extended to other
issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion,
socio-economic status to gain a greater
understanding of the person the client is
today.
Microskill 5: Reflection of Meaning

Reflection of meaning refers to the deeply
held thoughts and meanings underlying life
experiences. For the counsellor who uses
reflection of meaning in their work, they will
find that clients will search more deeply into
the aspects of their own life experiences.

For example, imagine two individuals who
take a holiday on an island resort: the same
island, the same resort, the same time of year.
One of them passionately expresses the
wonders of the sunsets, walks along the beach
and leisurely life style. While the other
complains about the heat, sunburn and
boredom they experienced.

The same event can have a totally different
meaning to the different individuals
experiencing the event. Hence, the skill of
reflection of meaning is to assist clients to
explore their values and goals in life, by
understanding the deeper aspects of their
experiences.


Thank you for listening