Saturday marked the first class of my Ethics class. In honor of that, I want to use this space to talk a bit about the teaching of ethics. What is the best way to teach aspiring counselors the ins/outs of ethical care of their counselees. Here are some options: Continue reading
Category Archives: counseling skills
Science Monday: What is the best way to teach ethics to counselors?
Filed under counseling science, counseling skills, ethics
Science Monday: What is most helpful in counseling?
What really helps counselees get better? A colleague handed me a newspaper editorial from the Bangor, Maine Daily News, written by Thomas Gaffney and published July 12, 2006. The editorial reviewed the situation in psychotherapy: Some 400 treatment approaches, 100 that are considered “evidenced based”, and yet many research studies show that most treatment approaches work equally well, about 80% of the time compared to non-treatment.
The editorial goes on to state that there are 4 factors for successful treatment: Continue reading
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Filed under counseling science, counseling skills
Science Monday: Working with ADHD children
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (commonly known as ADD or ADHD) in children presents many challenges for all involved. Often there are frazzled parents, irritated teachers, dismissing/judgmental friends, impulsive/distracted kids with loads of shame and pressure, and distant medical professionals. Continue reading
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Filed under counseling skills
Validating others is harder than it looks
You’re in the midst of a conflict and you find you and your loved one volleying back and forth debate points. You make a good point. They acknowledge with a “yes, but…” and go on to make their good point. You return the “yes, but…” and so the argument goes. While you know your good point was not really acknowledged and admitted, neither did you really validate their point.
When we interact with folks who are thinking/acting/believing differently from ourselves, we find it easy to ignore/negate the other’s ideas because to stop and validate would cause us to miss the important point we REALLY think they need to hear.
Why does it seem that if we stop and acknowledge that we lose? Often, fights and differences are made worse because we are unable or unwilling to validate the other. Validation is communicating in verbal and nonverbal ways that we see and caringly understand–even if we disagree. We don’t validate because we are too much focused on our own ideas or too fearful that if we do validate, the other person will miss the point that we want to make.
Counselors often have dreams and desires for their clients’ growth. We can imagine how they could be more healthy. However, our challenge is to validate pain, hurt, guilt, grief while pointing them to some better ways to live and function. “Yes, self-harm may regulate your emotions. It works. I wonder if some other ways might produce less guilt and greater comfort?”
One of the best ways to validate another to treat them as an equal. In most of our disagreements, we tend to place ourselves over others and in so invalidate their personhood.
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Filed under counseling skills
Diagnosing and connecting to those with paranoid schizophrenia
In the throes of meetings and class prep (childhood disorders, personality disorders) for 6 hrs of teaching so I’m not going to do a review of literature. Planning tomorrow to hit the issues of parenting books again. But today I’m going to make mention of a letter that every faculty member got here at Biblical this past week. This letter advised us of the connections between a minor prophetic book, celestial military engagements, sinful patterns, and the earth’s rotations (or imminent stoppage thereof).
On a frequent basis I get letters from well meaning individuals who want to help me understand some hidden truths that many Christians have missed down through the millenia. These letters have differing content but several similarities worth mentioning. I do so here NOT to make fun of them but to recognize the world they live in and offer a possible way to connect with someone in your life with similar issues. Far too frequently, we run from those we deem are “crazy” without looking at the deeper connections we might have with them:
Here are common threads of these kinds of letters: Continue reading
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Filed under counseling science, counseling skills
Science Monday: Is anger something to be managed?
This week in class I’ll be exploring anger, from explosive to silent, from holy to sinful. Simple definition of anger: We want something, don’t get it, and feel wronged for not getting it and justified for feeling and acting the way we do. In this sense, anger is neutral–neither good nor bad. Except one small problem, the people who get angry aren’t neutral. Seems most popular writings on anger either focus on the sinfulness of it or on the healthy expression of it. The scientific study tends to focus on the best steps to managing it (STAR: stop, think, act, review).
In a 2004 article in Psychotherapy(41:2, 161f) Andrew Rothman asks if anger is something to be managed. Good question. Continue reading
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Filed under anger, counseling science, counseling skills
Counselors…repeat after me
“It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer”
Attributed to Aeschylus, Greek playwright
Something Job’s counselors would have done well to know and the rest of us even more.
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Filed under counseling skills, Great Quotes
Science Monday: How does supervision help the client?
2 Saturdays ago we had a few of our internship sites in to talk about about our fieldwork portion of the program. One area discussed: the challenges of supervision. In preparation I read an article by Gary Freitas of U Maryland. He did an exam of 2 decades of research on the question of whether clinical supervision leads to improved client outcome.
The results? Not good. Most studies were fraught with serious methodological problems so can’t make good inferences. But He pointed out a couple of possible inferences from some of the studies he reviewed.
1. When supervision takes places just prior to the next session, it puts pressure on the counselor to perform more of what the supervisor suggests. The supervisor plays more of a consultant in planning the next session. Makes sense. But, counselors may use less of their own creativity and problem-solving skills and be less flexible and more wooden in such cases. More time between supervision (up to a point of course) may help more experienced counselors.
2. Therapist competence has a negative effect on outcome WHEN therapists are trying to adapt to a supervisor’s style of counseling. The more competent you are as a counselor, the harder it is to fit into someone else’s mold.
3. Live supervision leads to greater alliance between trainee and client.
4. Counselor empathy is positively related to clients’ ratings of feeling understood and client movement towards introspection. HOWEVER, counselor suggestions leads to higher client levels of passive dependence. Interestingly, counselor questions had no significant effect on outcome.
This last inference from Iberg (1991) is a good reminder that our helpful suggestions may not produce the results we are hoping for. Despite knowing this, I still have to fight not to become Mr. Fix-it. (I know, I’ll save that for my wife. I’m sure she’ll appreciate my sage advice!)
Freitas, G.J. (2002). The impact of psychotherapy supervision on client outcome: A critical examination of 2 decades of research. Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training, 39:4, 354-367.
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Filed under counseling science, counseling skills
The art of counseling: Why interpersonal process is (almost) everything
Counseling is both art and science, relationship and action. Academic programs want to focus on both aspects, but the nature of academics leads to a greater emphasis on knowledge and less on interpersonal process. Frankly, its easier to grade tests of knowledge and harder to grade interpersonal process. Further, we outsource the practice part of the program to supervisors that may not be capable of providing the same kind of detailed assessment that we do in our classes.
Most students seeking to learn the art of counseling focus on knowledge and interventions. It makes sense to do so: If I know more then won’t I be able to understand my clients and their problems? (Probably.) If I understand how these problems develop, won’t I be able to help at risk individuals avoid bigger problems? (Probably.) If I learn and practice tried and true interventions won’t I be a more successful counselor?
But the art of counseling trumps knowledge and intervention. Knowing what to do is of little value if trust hasn’t been fully formed. There’s no substitute from having repeated interactions with another and getting detailed feedback related to one’s relational habits and idiosyncrasies. Jay Adams once told me that teaching counseling should be like teaching art. You don’t have a lecture on colors and shades and expect them to know how to use them well. Instead, you give them a brush and you expect them to do trial and error while providing good feedback. This means we really have to focus not just on what we counselors intend to communicate when respond to client content, but what they actually hear and take away from us.
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Filed under biblical counseling, counseling skills, Uncategorized
Musings on Faith and Psychology 