Free Essay Sample on Mock Counselling Role

While working as a student counselor at a student support services on campus, a student came to me to seek my services. The student says that he is experiencing feelings of stress and from his description, he is feeling overwhelmed and weighed down by his college and life commitments. We had a lengthy conversation so that I could get to the bottom of the issue. From the conversation, I gather that that the student usually experiences negative thoughts about his life and has a negative attitude towards his college as well as his life. The student seems eager to change this situation regarding his life.

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From the situation that the student presents to me, we have a conversation where I advise him accordingly on how to go about his situation. First, I ask the student to take some minutes to reflect on his life and see whether he has presented every bit of the information which he would like me as a counselor to have. In this particular context, the student admits that he has surrendered all the necessary information to me. The purpose of this reflection is to establish whether I have all the necessary information to try to help the student as a counselor. This particular student unlike most of the other students who pay occasional visits to my office to seek my services as a counselor is well open and ready to share information with me. This aspect makes dealing with this student quite effective. While undertaking this counseling, I realize that I have gained tremendous counseling skills. I also realize that I have several areas that I need to perfect on in my counseling work.

This paper will explore my reflections on my role as a counselor such as the importance of having excellent communication skills and knowing how to communicate effectively with my clients, the micro skills that I use as a counselor in discharging my services to clients and my strengths and weaknesses in terms of the micro skills. Also, I will explore the potential areas in which I require to do self-development.

The Overall Importance of Communicating effectively in the counseling process

In counseling, Communication is one of the most important aspects. Counseling is based in communication in a significant way. This is because for the counselor to be in a position to help the client, the two of them have to communicate and understand each other. The client has to be open to the counselor and explain the problems they are facing to the counselor for the counselor to decide the best way to dispense advice according to the situation presented and the problems at hand. While carrying out counseling that I had on this particular student, I realized that my communications skills were good enough and we had an easy flowing discussion with the client. I was able to ask specific questions that helped me significantly to dig to the bottom of the matter. I engaged the client in a free-flowing conversation between us, a factor that enabled me to understand the situation that the client was facing. Effective communication also enabled me to advise the client appropriate and to my best of knowledge and also depending on the information that the client presented. From this Interview, I observed that for an interview to be well successful, effective communication between the counselor and the client is mandatory as it helps the client to gain some faith in the counselor. The client also feels that the counselor fully understands the problems that they present to them. The aspect of effective communication has a crucial role in describing the advice to the client. The counselor needs to be as clear as possible and easy to understand so the client can understand the advice and directions given to them and how to execute them.

The Micro skills that I have used as a counselor

While carrying out this interview I applied several micro-skills to ensure that the client benefits from my services. Micro skills are also known as counseling skills in psychology and are broken down into various specific ones. They include: The attending behavior, questioning, responding, noting and reflecting, client observation, confrontation and focusing.

The Attending behavior micro skill: While carrying out the counseling, one of the most significant micro skill that I had to use was the attending behavior micro skill: Here, the counselor encourages the client to talk and show that the counselor was taking interest in what the client was saying. In this particular context, I applied the attending behavior micro skill by encouraging the student who was the client to keep talking to me about their situation. I encouraged the student to keep talking about the problem. This aspect of counseling is therapeutic in that it helps the client feel quite relieved after talking about the problem. Often, clients claim to have a refreshed feeling as if they have just shed a heavy load. I used the technique especially in the first stages of our conversation which came in handy in creating a rapport between us.

The questioning micro-skill. In the presented context, I applied the questions that I felt was important in enriching the client's narration. Asking effective questions while in a counseling session helps the counselor to ask questions that can answer questions without having to practically ask. In this interview, I asked questions that helped me to unearth several details about the client that was useful in counseling the client.

The noting and reflecting micro skill. This is a situation whereby the counselor uses noting of the finer details and reflecting upon them so as to reflect on the underlying feelings of the client. In the counseling session that I had with the student, I achieved success in a big way on the noting and reflecting skill. I concentrated on the finer details that the client narrated to me and reflected upon them to try and gather the underlying feelings. This was successful to a certain extent as unearthed some if the underlying feelings without having to ask or confirm with the client.

The responding micro skill: This micro skill is about effective responding to the clients. In this micro skill, the counselor keeps on confirming with the client whether they are hearing them properly. The aspect of responding is useful throughout all the stages of counseling. Comments such as "Let me see if I got this right..." go a long way in seeking responses from the client.

The Client Observation micro skill: This is an aspect of counseling requires that the counselor identifies discrepancies or possible incongruities in the way that their client communicates. In this interview, I tried to look for such discrepancies in the way my client was communicating. I found my client to be quite stable in their communication and without glaring incongruities.

Strengths and weaknesses in terms of counseling micro-skills

Carrying out the interview, I felt that I have various strengths and weaknesses in counseling. One of my strengths is effective communication with the client. For instance, I felt that I could implement most of the micro skills in my counseling. However, I found out that I still could not implement some of the micro skills such as:

Confrontation micro skill; this micro skill is meant to assist the client to boost their self-awareness. Here, the counselor highlights the discrepancies which the client may have but are not aware of. While conducting this interview with the student, I found out that my confrontational skills in a counseling session are still insufficient. This is one of the counseling aspects that I will have to work on to sharpen my counseling skills.

Influencing; this is a micro skill in counseling whereby the counselor may facilitate the way a client thinks and approaches a particular subject. While carrying out the counseling session with the student, I realized that I still have not acquired competitive influencing skills for use when carrying out counseling.

Areas requiring self-development

The Counselling session with the student made me realize that there are several areas of counseling within which I need to cultivate self-development. Such areas include the confrontation and influencing micro skills. The micro skills are crucial in counseling as they enable a counselor to do effective counselling. To polish up these areas I will need to carry out various counseling sessions paying special attention to these areas.