Integrative stress counselling: a humanistic problem-focused approach

Palmer and Milner's Integrative Stress Counseling: A Humanistic Problem-Focused Approach is a book in a series on counseling that focuses on the integrative counseling technique. This technique seeks to employ many principles of stress counseling that seeks to help clients focus directly on solving the problems that are the cause of their stress. The approach also explores underlying thinking styles that have contributed to the stress and seeks to develop changes in the thinking patterns.

Earlier models of stress and coping are examined in an effort to illuminate their inadequacies and highlight the need for a more integrative approach. Examining these techniques gives rise to the integrative approach that is considered transactional in nature and depends upon an individual's coping resources. The integrative approach differs from an eclectic approach because it has a theoretical model as its basis.

Not all clients and counselors are perfect candidates for integrative counseling. A counselor must have a broad range of counseling skills and strategies for dealing with stress. Most importantly, the counselor must fully involve the client in the counseling process, treating it as both a teaching and a learning experience. The counselor must also acknowledge individual differences among clients.

The book is an excellent guide for counselors to implement an integrative approach to stress management. The authors have even included several templates for managing stress and keeping track of the stresses that affect the client on a regular basis. Overall a strong case is made for the use of integrative counseling to manage stress.

Review of Integrative Stress Counselling

Introduction

The book Integrative Stress Counselling is the third book in a series on stress counseling. The entire series hopes to focus on the different approaches to stress counseling and management as well as applying research and theory to the different techniques. This book in particular, however, focuses only on the integrative stress counseling technique, which "helps clients to focus directly on solving or managing problems that are a cause of their distress" (Palmer and Milner 10). Approaching the problem in such a manner can also illuminate the underlying thinking styles that have contributed and exacerbated stress while also encouraging the subsequent changing of such styles and patterns. Overall this text provides a comprehensive overview of the technique and offers in-depth analysis of different techniques associated with integrative counseling and supplies the reader with several frameworks for confronting various stress-related problems.

Summary

The book begins by providing a conceptual model of stress and coping. Earlier models of stress that have been expounded upon for some time include the engineering or stimulus variable approach and the physiological or response variable approach (Palmer and Milner 3). These types of stress can be coped with either through interactive or transactional approaches (Palmer and Milner 4). Coping, in general, has three main properties including how the person thinks and behaves in a stressful situation, it is affected by the specific situation with which the individual is dealing, and it is independent of outcome (Palmer and Milner 4). The integrative model of stress and coping is transactional, since it depends upon how a person appraises a given situation and considers that individual's available coping resources (Palmer and Milner 5).

Integrative counseling is proposed due to the fact that there is an abundance of different types of therapies available in clinical psychology and a single theory is generally viewed as inadequate. An integrative approach combines the essential elements of many different approaches, including therapeutic rituals, effective experiencing, regulation of behavior, and many others (Palmer and Milner 15). This approach is often mistaken for an eclectic approach, though that often leads to a random borrowing of ideas that can ultimately be less helpful for the patient. Integrative counseling differs from an eclectic approach in that practitioners often have a core theoretical model as a basis for their counseling work (Palmer and Milner 15).

An integrative approach to counseling may not necessarily be implemented by every counselor, nor can it readily be applied to every client. The counselor must take five key elements into consideration before undertaking an integrative approach: the client's qualities, the counselor's qualities, the counselor's skills, the counseling relationship, and the nature of the chosen technique that will be applied (Palmer and Milner 37). For the technique to work properly, the counselor must have a wide range of counseling skills and strategies for dealing with stress, as well as an open mind, flexibility, creativity, assertiveness, communication skills, and several others (Palmer and Milner 38).

Counsellors who employ the integrative approach must fully involve the clients in their approach. They do this by being professional and accountable for their work while understanding that work with clients is at the heart of all integrative stress counseling. They also understand that the counseling approach is collaborative and that it is about both teaching and learning. Finally, the counselors acknowledge individual differences, especially in personality and learning style, they share power with the client (Palmer and Milner 17).

To facilitate the achievement of such goals, the authors have laid out a "five-star framework" that is used to challenge clients' self-defeating thinking (Palmer and Milner145). The five-star framework seeks to help people make their thinking more effective and less disturbing. It can show the clients how to discover good things within the bad things that happen to them and how to face challenges that confront them when they under unusual stress. It can also reduce emotional temperature and provide a though process to accept some of their worst stresses while refusing to upset themselves (Palmer and Milner 145).

The book closes with appendices containing several different action plans and forms for the counselors to use with clients, as well as diaries that the client can use to document his stress and response to the stress during the course of a day. These include a relaxation diary, a homework diary, and assertiveness behavior diary. Also included are a stress management plan and an action plan that would each be considered essential for the client deal with his or her stress. This additional forms and plans can provide considerable assistance to both the counselor and the client during integrative counseling sessions.

Evaluation

The authors of this book are both eminently qualified to espouse their theories on integrative counseling. Stephen Palmer has a PhD and is the Director of the Centre for Stress Management and the Centre for Problem Focused Training and Therapy in London. He has written and edited over fifteen books and training manuals and is an editor of several professional journals (Palmer and Milner 9). Pat Milner is a supervisor associated with training at South West London College and the Centre for Stress Management in London. She is a consultant director of the Centre for Problem Focused Training and Therapy in London and is a former feature editor of the journal Counselling (Palmer and Milner 9).