Introduction to guidance counseling core assessment

Psychology - Counseling

Intro to Guidance/Counseling Core Assessment

Introduction to guidance and counseling core assessment

Review of key concepts and theories pertaining to counseling.

Empathic understanding: Empathic understanding involves seeing the world from the client's perspective, although not necessarily validating the external reality of what the client feels. For example, if a man feels his wife does not understand him, the therapist will validate that the man feels this way, not that his wife is actually cruel or heartless.

Unconditional positive regard: In Rogerian (person or client-centered) therapy, the counselor gives unconditional positive regard (acceptance) to the client to help the client achieve a sense of self-worth that is not contingent upon outside factors. For example, a student whose self-worth is entirely contingent upon his grades may be helped to feel less anxious by achieving a sense of self-worth that transcends such external measures of performance.

1c. Transference: Transference involves shifting emotions from one person to another -- usually to the persona of the therapist. Positive transference involves feeling romantic or a sense of strong personal friendship with the therapist, as if the therapist is the patient's lover or friend; negative transference occurs when the client projects feelings of dislike or strong negative emotions onto the persona of the therapist.

1d. Anxiety: Anxiety is both a physical and emotional state of heightened arousal. When anxiety is constant, it can become a problem, as in the case of generalized anxiety disorder, when the client feels a constant state of anxiety that is not connected to any external reality, or is a magnified manifestation of a minor threat (such as a mother who worries that her child will be abducted every day he leaves for school).

1e. Projection: Projection involves projecting emotions or beliefs onto a neutral object. The beliefs or emotions are not really connected to the object itself, such as a father who projects his dreams of a professional baseball career onto his son in Little League. Someone who struggles with his or her weight may feel that a thin person is judging them when they eat a cheeseburger in public: the individual is projecting his or her own conflicted emotions and body image anxiety onto the person, who may or may not notice his or her colleague's lunch.

1f. Irrational Beliefs: Irrational beliefs can be extreme, like those manifested by schizophrenics, including paranoid delusions or beliefs their thoughts can be overheard. Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder may have beliefs about the need for 'checking' and decontamination rituals they know are irrational, but feel compelled to perform, and even psychologically healthy people can have irrational beliefs (such as the idea that 'everyone is looking at me when I leave the house without makeup).

2.a. Behavior therapy and person-centered therapy: Person-centered therapy stresses unconditional acceptance of the client. It is client-directed: the client largely determines the direction of the session. It also focuses on internal rather than external states of being. Behavioral therapy stresses the need for change and letting go of irrational beliefs. The therapist sets goals for the client that the client is encouraged to perform. It focuses on changing behaviors and changing articulated irrational beliefs, rather than changing emotional affective states -- changing actions and thoughts changes the client's emotions.

2b. Family therapy and psychoanalytic therapy: Family therapy focuses on the family as a collective unit, while psychoanalytic therapy focuses on the individual. Family therapy focuses on the individual in a system of relationships, while psychoanalysis uses free association to examine the personal beliefs of the individual client. Psychoanalytic therapy is not solution-focused and can take years or a lifetime for the individual to proceed through analysis while family therapy usually has a specific goal or objective to improve family relationships.

3.a. Pursuing a romantic relationship with a client or former client, either during or after a counseling relationship: Pursuing a romantic relationship during or after the counseling relationship can validate the confusing feelings of the client regarding transference, cause psychological harm to the patient, and can result in ethical sanctions against the therapist. The therapist also leaves him or herself open to possible malpractice suits and troubling issues of client confidentiality, as there is a blurring of what aspects of the relationship are and were professional or personal.

2a. Discuss the importance and limitations of confidentiality in a counseling setting: Clients must be aware that there are certain situations in which confidentiality does not apply, such as suicidal threats. However, they should also know what aspects of they reveal are confidential. An adolescent should know if he or she says that he 'hates his parents' that the therapist does not have a responsibility to 'tattle' to the client's parent, even if the parent is paying for the session

2b. Discuss 2 counseling situations where duty to warn would be necessary. What would be the ethical issues involved: If the client is likely to be harmful to others, such as if he or she threatens someone physically, the therapist must report the threats. Also, if the client is likely to be harmful to him or herself, such as threatening suicide or acting in a manner that is so severely delusional he or she is not competent to engage in basic self-care, the therapist may need to act. (Such as a patient engaging in severe self-harm or a patient with a severe eating disorder). The therapist must evaluate the seriousness of the client's threat and the rights of those individuals affected by the client.

2c. Discuss the importance of ethical standards in the counseling profession: Clients must feel as if they can be candid with their therapists. Therapy as a profession is based upon trust. When a therapist is revealed to be engaged in unethical behavior, and this becomes widely known, clients began to distrust the entire profession, and thus the therapy of many individuals, not just the client in question, is jeopardized.

4. Behavioral therapy has been very effective in setting goals for me to mitigate the effects of negative behaviors I engage in, spanning everything from irrational fears (like driving over bridges) to procrastination and fear of failure. The communication techniques fostered in family therapy have also been helpful.

5a. Low self-esteem: Low-self-esteem would not be helped with psychoanalytic therapy, given the level of personal excavation into the patient's past problems might worsen rather than help the client; cognitive-behavioral therapy might be very helpful given its focus on altering ineffective and irrational beliefs, like "I'm not good at anything."

b. Phobias: The unconditional positive self-regard of Rogerian (client-centered) therapy might validate, rather than challenge the client's irrational phobias. Behavioral therapy can set realistic goals to overcome the client's irrational fears, such as looking at a picture of a spider, being near a spider, and finally touching a spider, in the case of an arachnophobic client.

c. Marital problems: Family-focused therapy stresses interpersonal systems and is likely to be very helpful, as it focuses on relationships rather than individuals in isolation. Psychoanalytic therapy would be very unhelpful, given its stress upon personal feelings, the subject's past, and feelings and associations distinct to the individual.