Basics of Counselling-Part 5 (Final)

ESSENTIAL CONSELLOR QUALITITES

In various clinical studies concerning the question, what makes a good counsellor, the
answer to this question was directly related to the personal qualities of the counsellor.
When the essential qualities of understanding, acceptance and genuineness were missing
from the counsellors their clients grew worse. So important are these essential qualities of
the counsellor that it is essential to consider them, in detail.

There are three basic personal qualities of a counsellor.

1) Empathic Understanding

Understanding the client from his point of view, being with him in his world.

2) Acceptance

Being able to suspend judgement and criticism, listen by giving compelte attention so that
the client feels valued for himself.

3) Genuineness

The ability and willingness to be open, real and consistent in the relationship with the
client. Prepared to give him time and attention, not wanting to manipulate or patronise
him in a ‘do-gooding’ way. The client must feel the counsellor is a real person, not just
someone in a professional role.

These qualities bring forth the facilitative role of the counsellor. He / she is assisting the
client by showing genuine concern and by not attempting to advise the client. These
qualities are communicated by the way the counsellor attends and responds verbally and
non-verbally to the client.

The essential qualities of a counselling are empathic understanding, acceptance and

genuineness.

In a context these qualities are projected by showing respect to the client. The client has
varous rights that must be respected. Some basic rights of he client are :-

(a) Right to speak and be heard.

(b) Right to his/her opinion

(c) Right to defend him/herself

(d) Right to his/her own personal philosophy

These are the most basic human rights. The counsellor therefore cannot expect the client
to just accept his interpretation of the problem and simply accept all that is given to
him/her.

A helpful image of the human person is one of a ‘document’ to be read and interpreted in
a manner analogous to the interpretation of New Testament texts. These texts are treated
with respect and allowed to speak for themselves. The client when shown empathic
understanding, acceptance, genuineness feels free to say exactly what he thinks. Each
individual living human document has an integrity of his/her own that calls for
understanding and interpretation, not categorisation or stereotyping.

DEVELOPING COUNSELLOR QUALITIES

Developing and Nurturing Counsellor Qualities

The following are five basic ways of developing and nurturing these qualities :

1) Practice seeing and feeling the world from another person’s viewpoint.

2) Become aware of accepting and un accepting responses in your self and others.

3) Become aware of your own prejudices and attitudes which make acceptance difficult.

4) Become aware of how open or genuine you are as viewed by others.

5) Practice and improve listening and ‘active listening’

Self awareness is essential to being an effective counsellor. The above five exercises
assist in knowing yourself and seeing yourself as others see you. The reality of knowing
yourself is greatly assisted by asking the community that work with you to honestly state
how they see you.

All people are embedded in their history. This is our background to our language world.
More accurately, we come embedded in our personal and social history and immersed in
one or more language worlds from which the images, symbols, and meanings are drawn
with which to make an interpretation.
To be aware of your personal and social history is to gain distance and therefore self-
understanding. Our personal and social history is what governs our accepting and un
accepting responses. It also governs our own prejudices and attitudes which make
acceptance difficult. Developing and nurturing our counsellor qualities therefore involves
taking a serious look at our personal and social history.

One method of taking a serious look at your personal and social history is to write out
your life story. Begin with our birth through childhood, adolescence to adulthood. Reflect
on your feelings and important relationships that caused pain or anxiety and process them
to find out how they impact your life today. When you can understand your own story
then the understanding of the client’s story will not be so difficult.

EMPATHY

Empathy is an essential Stage I skill that enables you to communicate emotional

understanding to your client. This skill can be defined as :

(a) An ability to experience the world from the other person’s shoes.

(b) Clarity of your own perceptions, beliefs and values so that we do not muddle our
world with theirs.

(c) Verbal ability to communicate our understanding.

Empathy exercises

1. Bill/Mrs. Collins

“I am going to imagine that I am Mrs. Collins ………..

I am Mrs. Collins and I am talking to my friend ………..”

Comment : It is very difficult to see me through her eyes.”

2. Helen/Andrew

“I will be Andrew talking about me to his friend on his way to school”

Comment: “It is interesting trying to think as if I am inside him”

3. Paul/Susan

“I’, Paul, I’ll try that exercise and see if I can be Susan”

Comment: “It is difficult, perhaps it is my thoughts projected onto her.”

Note the difficulty of the exercise and its intrinsic value.

To empathise with another person is to put oneself in their shoes. This is a very difficult
exercise because our own perceptual and interpretive capacities come quickly and
automatically into play.

Some counsellors think it is erroneous to consider this task of empathising with another
person in subject-object terms. It should be considered in much more of a dialogical
process in which what is hoped for is a merger of horizons of meaning and
understanding. This means we attempt to understand another without leaving behind our
own experiences and self-understanding.Trust these have been of some use to those
involved in Counselling.

Good luck,

Prof.Lakshman Madurasinghe, PhD