2320 ASSESS 2
Write a 3-4 page paper that reflects upon the therapeutic relationship and empathic listening, after being introduced to therapeutic skills and cultural competency.
Introduction
Counselors recruit a multitude of skills when helping someone. Building a relationship with a client means to first understand their concerns from their point of view. It is not to offer advice, but to first hear and reflect what the client is trying to communicate. A counselor will make eye contact, invite the client to communicate their concerns, and affirm their understanding of what the client has communicated through empathic listening (listening with an open mind), and reflective listening, where the counselor reflects back to the client what the counselor has heard and understood. It is important that the counselor has an accurate understanding of what the client is attempting to communicate.
The multicultural counseling movement has made great strides over the past few years and has gone beyond simple awareness of cultural differences to an emphasis on the development of specific attitudes and skills related to counseling people from diverse backgrounds. Models of cultural competency and sensitivity can help guide practitioners' intentional development of cultural competency. There are models of skills that go into cultural competency in counseling. When working with clients of any culture, one begins with developing basic therapeutic listening skills.
Additionally, in recent years, there has been increased attention paid to self-care and personal growth in the mental health field. It is important for counselors to know how to take care of themselves to be able to continue the work that they do. A plan to maintain wellness not only benefits you as a future counselor, but also your future clients!
For your assessment, you will focus on the basic skills of listening, expression of empathy, and reflection. These are all foundational pieces to the therapeutic relationship.
Preparation
In Part 1 of this assessment, you will watch a video and reflect on what you observed. In Part 2, you will practice your listening skills with a partner. After you complete these exercises, you will write a 3–4 page paper that reflects on what you learned during these experiences.
Part 1
Watch the Excerpts from Initial Counseling Sessions video presentation and observe the following:
- How the therapeutic alliance is being formed.
- The attending and listening skills being used.
- How the client is responding to the therapist.
- Which counselor strategies seem to be most effective with the client.
You are encouraged to watch the video more than once and take notes since the answers to these questions will be incorporated into your paper.
Part 2
For the second part of this assessment, find a partner with whom you can practice your listening skills. This is not a mock therapy session, so the volunteer should not discuss a personal problem or issue. Instead your partner can talk about any topic they choose for 3 minutes. You should actually time the session.
Your task is to simply listen to the person without interjecting anything about yourself. For this first round, you should also not ask any questions or even respond to your partner verbally. You can, however, use nonverbal behavior to indicate that you are actively listening.
For the second round, your partner should continue talking for another 5 minutes. They can talk about the same topic from the first round or a new one. Prior to beginning, explain that you will be interacting a little bit more to practice your counseling skills. However, the goal is still to listen to what is being shared, not to interject information about yourself or offer your thoughts. Focus on basic attending, listening, and reflection skills while still keeping in mind the ultimate objective, which is to simply listen and affirm (reflect) what you have heard the person communicate to you.
At the conclusion of the session, ask your partner for feedback. You can use some of the following questions:
- What was it like to talk without getting verbal feedback (first round)?
- Did you feel heard for the second round? If so, what made you feel as though you were heard?
- Was there anything in either round that could have helped you to feel more like you were being listened to?
- Overall, what was this activity like?
Instructions
For this assessment, write a 3-4-page paper of your video observations and the listening session with a partner. Please label your two sections as Part 1 and Part 2. The paper should contain the following.Part 1: Video Observations
- A summary of your video observations using the guidelines provided in Part 1 under Preparation. Provide specific examples when writing your responses. In doing so, you will identify and describe psychotherapeutic skills and their effects. As a reminder, the subtopics are as follows:
- How the therapeutic alliance is being formed.
- The attending and listening skills being used.
- How the client is responding to the therapist.
- Which therapist strategies seem to be most effective with the client.
- Anything you learned from the video that you were able to practice with your volunteer. Be sure to relate your learning to research. Cite at least one of your scholarly sources here.
Part 2: Listening Session
- A description of the skills you used for the listening sessions.
- Insights you gleaned from the listening activities. Be sure to relate your learning to research. Cite at least one of your scholarly sources here.
- Research findings (from the text and supplemental scholarly literature) on the therapeutic alliance, efficacy of counseling, relationship therapeutic factors, and/or counseling skills. Cite at least one of your scholarly articles here.
Additional Requirements
Your assessment should also meet the following requirements:- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: References and in-text citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting. See the Evidence and APA section of the Writing Center for more information.
- Length: 3–4 double-spaced pages of content, in addition to the title page and references page.
- References: Use at least one resource from the course and at least one scholarly source from the Capella library to support your paper.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
- A summary of your video observations using the guidelines provided in Part 1 under Preparation. Provide specific examples when writing your responses. In doing so, you will identify and describe psychotherapeutic skills and their effects. As a reminder, the subtopics are as follows: