Counselling Skills 2

Students of this unit further explore Gerard Egan's three stages of helping, introduced in Counselling Skills 1, and learning is supplemented with significant additional considerations. The skills introduced in Counselling Skills 1 are revisited, with a new dimension of depth and complexity. We introduce you to skills that are particularly appropriate to longer and more in-depth counselling relationships, and concepts such as self-disclosure, immediacy, and advanced empathy. Ethical, legal and professional issues that arise in counselling are discussed throughout the unit.
Students develop further understanding of the theory and practice of counselling and counselling terminology; learn how to establish a counselling contract; to conduct the initial counselling session; to manage and maintain a client case load; and the importance and necessity of supervision.

Learning Outcomes

  • Demonstrate and explain how counselling skills are a critical part of the therapeutic process
  • Outline a potential counselling contract
  • Explain the dynamics of what can be expected to occur in a first counselling session
  • Describe the use of advanced accurate empathy in counselling
  • Describe ways in which different clients have different expectations and behaviours in counselling
  • Outline the range of different attitudes and behaviours that counsellors may be required to use when adjusting to different clients
  • Use several different techniques for achieving rapport with clients
  • Help clients explore and deal with past experiences in a focused and directive way
  • Explain why it is helpful to introduce action steps as experiments rather than tasks or homework
  • Discuss how resistance may extend beyond the client to encompass others
  • Explain the implications of note-taking, audio-taping and videotaping counselling sessions
  • Discuss ways of using counter-transference to help clients
  • Analyse the impact of using immediacy sensitively with clients
  • Conduct an inventory of stress levels in relation to the helping role
  • Discuss how a referral may impact on a client
  • Describe the impact of termination on the counsellor and the client
  • Plan for the future development of your skills and knowledge in counselling

Content Areas

  • Beginning the First Session
  • Forming a Counsellor/Client Relationship
  • Achieving Advanced Accurate Empathy
  • Perceiving Clients as Individuals
  • Adjusting to Counsellor/Client Differences
  • Exploring the Past and Connecting it to the Present
  • Moving in and out of Action with the Client
  • Monitoring your Work: Observing, Note-Taking and Recording
  • Relating Professionally to the Client
  • Ethics, Limits and Managing your Caseload
  • Terminating the Counsellor/Client Relationship
  • Reviewing and Planning Further Self-Development

Unit Duration and Workload

This unit involves a total of 36 hours of face to face delivery of self directed study including educator contact in flexible delivery modes, generating a further 54 hours of self-study per unit including research and related study activities, including assessment. This translates to 7.5 hours per week for the unit.