Running Head: FINAL PAPER

FINAL PAPER

CPSY 227-COUNSELING PROCESS AND SKILLS

SUBMITTED BY

POORTI SRIVASTAVA

FALL 2018
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THE 4- PAGE ANALYSIS

1. Silence

​Being acutely aware of my personal struggle with silence and its presence in therapeutic

encounters, made me apprehensive ahead of this session. In the past, I have often rushed

in to fill voids prematurely. Consequently, I had prepared myself for these delicate

moments in the current session and resolved to only let the client break any moments of

silence and let them take the lead. As I had pre-empted, there came a moment in the

session (at C22), where the client was thinking for a long time and there was a period of

long silence. I waited patiently for the client to let through whatever was coming up for

her. However, after a while, I broke the silence by gently stating my conceptualization of

her feelings(at T23). I felt this may have derailed her thought flow and was inappropriate.

My feeling was affirmed when at C23 she did not directly respond to my statement and

instead continue to focus thinking on what was said earlier. This session has strengthened

my faith in staying comfortable with silence. Indeed, I pushed my current boundaries, but

I still have a long way to go in using it as an effective therapeutic tool.

2. Tentativeness

​Within the humanistic framework, the therapist and client are considered partners in the

change process. The therapist is viewed as an expert in the process of facilitating this

change and the client is the expert of his own experience. Tentatively formulated

responses by the therapist allow the client to check if the therapist’s perspective fits with

his own experience (Gordon & Toukmanian, 2002). They help to create an opportunity
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for deeper exploration and elaboration of implicit meanings. In this session, I tried my

best to weave tentativeness in my responses. The closest that I get to this skill is at T18,

when I say, “FINDING YOURSELF AT THE CROSSROAD OF THINGS, MAYBE?”.

This checking out led the client to check its veracity within herself and after giving it a

thought, she replied, “Yes, exactly!”. The client felt understood as my response supported

her view but at the same time wasn’t definite and did not portray me as the know-it-all

person. This further helped deepen her self-exploration.

3. Microskills

The microskills that I used throughout the session were Restatement (60%), Client Frame

of Reference (35.71%), Reflection of Feeling (17.85%) and Interpretation (14.81%).

Restatements had the highest share in the distribution simply because it helped to put the

listening into words and facilitated the helping process (Hill, 2009). It helped me check

the accuracy of the client’s statements and state in concise terms the key components of

her message. According to Hill (2009), restatements help clients who think about

problems cognitively and this was true for the client in this session as well. For example,

at C23 the client expresses, “Maybe in the grand scheme of things like when I looked

back this morning, maybe this will be such a small portion of my life. Maybe actually it

is like manageable...”.To which at T24, I softly responded, “SO, A PART OF YOU

THINKS MAYBE IT WON'T BE THAT TROUBLESOME KIND OF THING IN THE

BIGGER PICTURE, THAT I AM PROBABLY MAKING IT OUT TO BE”. The client

immediately responded at C24, “Yes! Exactly!”.This restatement enabled the client to

recognize this shift in her thinking and further provided an impetus to explore this new
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mode of thinking. Additionally, it was the Client Frame of Reference responses that

helped me understand ​with ​the client rather than ​about​ the client (Hammond, 2002). By

simply changing my response from third to the first person, speaking as the client, I could

notice the level of deepening self-exploration in the client. For example at T18 when I

say, “SHOULD I GO AHEAD WITH WHAT I WASN'T EXPECTING OR SHOULD I

GO AHEAD AND MOULD THE SITUATION HERE SUCH THAT IT IS

CUSTOMIZED TO MY NEEDS”, the client (at C19) replied, “Exactly. Yeah…” and

then goes on to further explore her feelings around that situation. This was a powerful

moment that demonstrated this microskill in action. Therefore, the restatements and client

frame of references responses not only helped the client explore and tell her story, but it

also made her gain insight. This shift in her thinking, albeit minor, was evident towards

the end of the session. Other than these microskills, I desired to have used more

open-ended questions and probes to further the client self-exploration. I have indicated

this as my alternative responses at T11, T12, and T17.

4. Empathy

As a beginning student, it was hard for me to not identify with the client, given that, we

were in the same program. But the concept of not falling into the Helper’s Pit (Larson,

2003) was in my mind all the time. All my responses have been at a Level of 3.0 or under

(except at T16). These reciprocal empathic responses by which I attempted to

acknowledge that I have heard the client’s message (Hammond, 2002) may have been

minimally helpful. This is also closer to Gendlin (1974)’s concept of “blind therapy”

which implies that I may have been more worried about saying something spectacular to
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the client rather than being keenly attuned to her message. Even though these level 3.0

responses encouraged self-exploration, facilitated trust and rapport by helping the client

feel understood and even broadened my understanding of where the client is

phenomenologically, they missed out on expanding the further meaning of her feelings

and going beyond the surface level. I also noted that it is important to have a repertoire of

varied empathic response leads to not seem stereotyped and repetitive, which

automatically affects the empathic communication. For instance, at T4, T5, and T6, I

open my responses with the same lead “Kind of hearing” all in quick succession.

However, in the rest of the session, the response leads are altogether missing. These

introductory phrases are vital to communicate empathy and convey to the client that the

counselor’s pain compass is actively tuned in their direction.

5. The Feeling Vocabulary- ​According to Hammond (2002), “Conveying an accurate

understanding of emotions and feelings to the client requires full awareness of the

diversity of human emotion”. At many times during the interview, I felt at a loss for an

expansive range of feeling words. To be able to communicate using different words

would have led to more in-depth exploration. For example at C10 when the client says,

“Yeah. It's really uncomfortable for me to be in the gray.” After a long pause the client

took to think, I replied at T11: IT'S UNCOMFORTABLE TO NOT KNOW WHAT

WILL BE THE RIGHT THING TO DO OR WHAT WOULD BE THE WRONG

THING TO DO”. Even though I used a part of the client’s feeling word, it would have

been better to expand on this feeling of discomfort arising from the not knowing.
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REFERENCES

Gendlin, E. T. (1974). The role of knowledge in practice.

Gordon, K. M., & Toukmanian, S. G. (2002). Is how it is said important? The association

between the quality of therapist interventions and client processing. Counseling and

Psychotherapy Research, 2(2), 88-98.

Hammond, D. C., Hepworth, D. H., & Smith, V. G. (2002). Improving therapeutic

communication: A guide for developing effective techniques. Jossey-Bass.

Hill, C. E., & O'Brien, K. M. (2004). Helping skills: Facilitating exploration, insight, and action.

Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Larson, D. (1993). The helper's journey: Working with people facing grief, loss, and

life-threatening illness. Champaign, IL: Research Press.

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