Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Topic 1
INTRODUCTION TO
COUNSELLING
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
INTRODUCTION
COUNSELLING
The direct effect of these changes on a person is psychological reaction in the form of stress.
According to research stress can cause various illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure
and emotional disturbances.
Stress that may arise at school level is teacher expectation, and parents who are unrealistic
about academic achievements, small living conditions, and pressure from peers towards a
certain behaviour norm.
In an institution of higher learning stress occurs as an effect of competition for academic
excellence, shortage of money and social pressure.
Reaction from stress differs between adolescents and children.
There are cases of adolescents and children who ran away from homes dues to stress when chaos
happens in the family. Some try to run away or forget the stress by resorting to drugs or involving
in crimes.
Counselling may not be able to get rid of all social diseases caused by economic development
but in order to achieve harmonious state of mind amongst the community it must be
prepared adequately in all institutions that have a role to play in the countrys development.
Counselling can no longer be regarded as knowledge to deal with insane people but it must be
offered widely so that its technology can benefit community members in solving their daily
problems
DEFINITION OF COUNSELLING
There are many similarities between the two fields that involve special
relationship between an individual who wants to get help to solve his psychological
problem (client) and a trained person who gives that help (counsellor or therapist).
The special relationship is the same and in fact, the technique in helping
patients and clients is similar.
The difference between the two is the objective.
The counselling objective is to help at any time an individual overcome his or her
personal growth problem towards achieving optimum strength development that
is in him or her.
This objective can be accepted as the aim of psychotherapy process.
Besides solving growth problem of an individual, psychotherapy also solves the
reconstructive change problem.
Normally, psychotherapy is carried out for a long period (1 month to 2 years) as
outpatient or inpatient.
On the contrary, counselling is usually for a short period (less than 6 months) as
outpatient only. However, counselling and psychotherapy have similar aim that is to
achieve the clients aim.
COUNSELLING
PSYCHOTHERAPY
COUNSELLING AIM
Majority of theorists agree that counselling aim is to help client make some change
in behaviour that enables him or her to have a more productive and satisfactory life.
Prior to visiting a counsellor, there must be something that disturbs him or his
relationship with someone is unsatisfactory (e.g. his employer).
Perhaps, its the routine way the client interacts with others so much so that it causes
a negative reaction from others. This negative effect causes the client to feel disturbed.
It is hoped that after completing a session the client will understand and analyse
effectively and satisfactorily ways to interact with his or her employer or others
who have the tendency to create disturbing response.
Counselling aim is to encourage and make it easier for client to change his or her
behaviour to a more effective one.
For example, Ali (a teacher) is unaware that he always gives a negative response such
as giving cynical remarks to his students who give wrong answers in class. Alis
behaviour causes his students not to interact with him in class. This poses a problem
and disturbs effective teaching. With counselling session, Ali will be able to identify
the real problem and a counsellor can assist Ali in changing his behaviour, where he
should have given support to his students when interacting with him and guide them
although the answers they gave is wrong.
A big part of our life is interacting with people. But, many clients are facing
problems due to their inability to interact with others correctly and appropriately.
This problem can be linked to clients not having communication skills or having
negative personal image.
In this case, the counsellors aim is to find ways to increase effective
interaction with others.
Relationship problem can occur amongst adults in a family, from between
husbands and wives to school children and their peers.
In each case, a counsellor will try to find ways to help the client increase his
quality of life by improving the way he interacts with others.
For example, when Monas principal gave her comments she felt very angry and
refused to listen to what was said. This led to communication breakdown between
the two. Mona saw the comments as criticism. A counsellor can assist Mona in
having a better relationship with her principal. When commented, Mona could be
helped so that she would not react negatively but rationally by listening calmly to
every comment and taking the positive ones for her.
COUNSELLORS ROLES
A counsellors role depends on the place and setting he contributes his service.
Over the years, the counsellors roles have gone through changes.
The roles have now spread to public counselling centres, hospitals, prisons, Islamic
offices, the Haj Fund, churches, some government departments and other places that
require counselling service instead of mainly helping students with problems at
schools and career choices.
Counselling is also found at a few places in cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh
where counsellors provide their services as `private practice to the public.
Place
School
Prison
Hospital
Helping families that lost their family members deal with the loss.
Islamic Office
Government Offices
Churches
This new development took place due to the recognition that counsellors have the
required training to help in matters such as drug abuse at the Rehabilitation
Centre, rehabilitation works at prisons and at places where there is emotional
problems and tension.
In the West, there are counsellors who joined the professional mental health team
which includes psychiatrists, psychology experts and psychiatric nurses, where the
counsellor becomes the case manager of a patient giving treatment and main
service.
With the expansion of counsellors roles at specific places, so the focal point of
approaches will be towards the whole individual that includes his whole life. This
means the focus of counselling includes physical, social, mental and emotional
concerns as well as individual spiritual needs
Aspects that include the whole individual
Physical Health
Social Needs
An individuals social needs include family relationship, working environment, friendship and
other activities that tie him to other people in the community. This relationship gives that
individual strength and avoids him from experiencing feelings of alienation, down and low self
esteem.
Mental Health
A counsellor must always be aware of the relationship between his clients thoughts and
feelings to his doings or behaviour. The counsellors roles towards his clients thoughts are to
stimulate his thought process so that his ability to solve problems will increase and becomes
more creative. Creative mental activity is the guide to a persons quality of life.
Emotional Needs
In many cases, human beings focus of aspects is linked to the aim of increasing an individuals
emotional contentment. This aim has become a tradition for all counsellors and will continue to
be the focus of counselling. Normally, an individual will meet a counsellor to obtain clarification
about certain feelings. Often, the expressed feelings are related to his life or certain event that
disturbs him in his life. So, the importance of emotional contentment is clear when a client talks
about things that affect his feelings physically, socially, mentally and spiritually.
Spiritual Needs
related to his religious beliefs and teachings.For the majority, their values in life and the
ways they react in a community are influenced by religious teachings.
Characteristics of a counsellor
One important characteristic that a counsellor must have is to trust that every human being
created by God is useful, valuable and unique.
Sincere acceptance towards a client actually can be felt by the client, and to him it is not
merely an abstract explanation.
This doe not mean we must simply accept or not his behaviour or we like or dislike the
character he demonstrates.
In fact, we must sow our sincerity and respect towards him as a valuable individual and
a useful human being.
A counsellor must try to understand that a clients self and world observations are his
realities.
Every belief, attitude, feeling and thoughts about himself and is environment greatly influence
the way he reacts.
As a counsellor, you must focus your attention on this perception because all these will
show the clients thoughts and will give meanings to us on why he reacts and behaves as
such.
As a counsellor, you must convince the client that you trust him to change.
Do not merely say it but show him with your actions and attitude.
Utterance like, I really believe you will solve this problem, will not on its own change the client
or influence your belief.
This utterance must be accompanied by relevant body movements, convincing facial expressions
and voice intonation that has positive quality. All these have therapeutic value to put across our
attitude and belief towards our client
While you are designing and expanding your counselling skills you should seize the
opportunity to conduct counselling session to clients from different cultural background,
for example clients from different ethnic in Malaysia.
In this way, you can see the difference ways the ethnic groups perceive
themselves, their environment and worlds. This will add on to your experience that
not all clients will give the same response though the problems appear to be similar.
This experience is useful so that you will understand when you ought to change your
strategy and to use a suitable technique in a relevant situation.
A counsellor must accept the fact that learning ways to help people takes a long
time.
Trainee counsellors normally start their counselling training process via a few
attempts, from one to another. They read and listen to ways counsellor conducts
counselling.
They also emulate skilled counsellors behaviour to obtain suitable actions that can be
used as part of their rituals or styles.
A counsellors development skill is a process that is always on going. A counsellor has to
increase his skills as long as he still carries out his professional role.
WILLING TO BE INVOLVED
The service of teaching and training is for those in need of certain skills and practice. For
instance when it is important for students to get general information about smoking or drug
addiction and also the danger of certain contagious diseases e.g. HIV or AIDS, a guest speaker will
be invited to deliver a talk. This service is meant to spread information.
In other situations like career choice problems, the counsellor will invite people of specific posts
to deliver a talk about the available career opportunities or those in the future. It is common
among students at school to be lack of information and exposure about the job opportunity
as well as the necessary academic preparation. Information such as this will serve as an eye-opener
for school students and more importantly will trigger their interest to learn subjects related to
their dream jobs.
Other activities that can be held by the counsellor in the component of teaching and training are:
a- Effective revision strategies
b- Preparation for an important exam
c- Time management
d- Tips for attending an interview
e- Ways to prepare a good resume (curriculum vitae)
f- Practices to overcome nervousness and shyness
g- Practices to be assertive and to deliver a speech in public
The counsellors effort to spread information and provide teaching and training can be held in a big
group according to the suitability of the condition. However, to train certain behaviours such as to
reduce shyness or to train someone to be assertive, it is best if it is held in a smaller group of less
than 10 individuals.
Counselling Services
The counselling service is meant for those who need a
counsellors service to solve a problem. For instance, in
order to choose a career, a counsellor can play a role to
help the clients brainstorm and discuss their
interest and preference and also the ambition. The
counsellor can also show various options for the clients so
as to choose a perfect career for them.
Examination Services
This service is provided for those who need it or those
who simply wish to understand the real self in a more
thorough way. For example in choosing a career, the
counsellor can prepare the clients with exams such as the
IQ test, personality and preference test so that the clients
can match their job with their respective personalities
and preferences.
GROUP COUNSELLING
TYPES OF GROUP
Generally there are two types of groups. They are the guidance groups
and counselling groups.
1- Guidance Groups
2- Counselling Groups
The focus of counselling groups is on the individual, unlike the guidance groups where the
focus is on the topic to be delivered.
Counselling groups consist of 5 to 10 members with no specific structure.
The counsellor serves to create conducive condition for the members to discuss without feeling
depressed or threatened.
Things to be shared with the other members are things that they feel comfortable to talk in
public such as family problems, interpersonal relationship, problems regarding self concept
and personal problems faced.
The content of discussion involves the expression of feelings and each member has a chance to
be heard by everyone including the person facilitating the group the counsellor.
Students who are interested to further find out about other types of groups may refer to the
text books which will state the features and advantages of certain groups. For the purpose of
this course, it will suffice to understand the two groups to help teachers in their tasks in
helping school students. Other types of groups are as follows:
A- Therapy groups
B- Sensitivity groups
C- T-Groups
Group counselling has many advantages. Bear in mind that not all clients may benefit from
group counselling. Some individuals may feel depressed having to confront other people and
some may feel hard to talk something considered private in the presence of others.
The main advantage of group counselling is its practicality. A counsellor has so many jobs
with work burdens facing a lot of clients. This will not allow the counsellor to meet all clients
in the same day, but group counselling enables the counsellor to meet more clients in a short
time. In a group, a counsellor can meet seven to eight individuals within similar time
duration he uses to meet them individually.
Another benefit of group counselling is related to the type of problems faced by the
clients. Most students problems are relationship or interpersonal problems. In a group,
clients are given the chance to explore their interpersonal problems and feelings within a
social context. For instance, the feedback collected from the other members will give a
stronger influence than the counsellors since the feedback comes from the peers. The client
will experience psychological growth through the process of getting genuine feedback from
the peers. Group counselling will turn into a micro society where the client is able to feel
peer pressure, social influence and approval as part of the counselling experience.
In a small group, clients also stand a chance to experiment new behaviours with the support
from other team members through the given feedback. Say, if a client consistently feels
embarrassed to talk in public, for example in front of the class, the client can practice talking
in the counselling group with encouragement from the other members.
Normally, the client faces his problems alone and it is hard for him to view them in
the right perspectives. In a smaller group and with the help of the counsellor, he will
feel less intimidated as he discovers that some other people have their problems too.
Group counselling provides the clients with chances to explore their problems and
at the same time share them with others.
When the members of a team share their problems with each other, it leads to the
feeling of trust and respect for each other as they exchange the information about
the related problems. The group experience will create a support system for the
members. This makes the group as the source of regaining a new spirit and a sense of
security among the members.
Another advantage of group counselling is that the client will not only benefit from the
feedback from the others, but also be able to offer feedback to help other team members.
This will help enhance the clients self concept.
Other elements that provide therapeutic value through group counselling are:
a- Promising hope to the clients
b- Feeling safe and getting support
c- Solidarity among the members
d- Learning something from other members
e- Interpersonal learning
A counsellor who really understands the therapeutic elements explained will be
able to conduct the group counselling more efficiently and effectively.
CONFIDENTIALITY IN COUNSELLING
a- The burden of maintaining the confidentiality is not definitive as there are some
situations that allow the counsellor to repeat the secrets.
b- Confidentiality is maintained if it does not threaten other individuals rights or
the public.
c- Confidentiality depends on the matters being kept confidential. If the issue
which is said to be confidential has been made public, the counsellor is no longer
attached to the question of confidentiality.
The counsellor also needs to think about the safety of the client and avoid
misusing the problems confided to him. To avoid the counsellor from being
charged at the court of fraudulence, the confidentiality of the client is crucial.
However, the counsellor is subject to making a shrewd judgment and thinking
rationally when is the time confidentiality may be exempt. The situations in which
confidentiality may be violated are as follows:
a- The client is harming himself, herself or others.
b- The client demands that his or her particulars be revealed.
c- The court demands that the clients particulars be repeated.
d- The counsellor suspects that there has been a child abuse case involved.
Thanks..