Student Directions: Complete Essay #1 in Live text as directed by your instructo
ID: 3489730 • Letter: S
Question
Student Directions: Complete Essay #1 in Live text as directed by your instructor. Essay I:Counselor Roles and Relationships 1. Empathy is viewed as an essential aspect of the counseling relationship. Discuss the difference between primary and advanced accurate empathy. What barriers exist to the development of empathy? How might these barriers be overcome? 1. In the dynamic interaction that occurs in a crisis, the three principle components are (a) worker, (b) client, (c) ecological-cultural determinants. Explain what is meant by this statement. 1. Describe what types of collaborative efforts and/or consultations that a counselor might engage in over the course of his or her career.Explanation / Answer
Counseling refers to giving professional help and assistance to clients to resolve personal or psychological issues. Empathy means understanding feeling of another individual. According to Carl Rogers empathy is a capacity to assume internal frame of the client, perceive world as per client's perception, communicating client about understanding of their situation.
Primary empathy includes sensing the client's perception about world, understanding the situation according to client's view point, and communicating the understanding of the same back to client (Rogers, 1965). Example: Listening to client to sense how client perceives the situation and trying to understand the situation with client's view, communicating to client about understanding making client feel comfortable and confident with counselor.
Advanced empathy includes getting deeper awareness of client's expressed and unexpressed situations and difficulties (Hough, 2006). This includes intense listening to the client, observing client's body language to sense any unexpressed issues, correlating client's story with observed body language to understand the issue in depth, communicating the understanding and ability to help the client in affectionate way.
Key difference between primary empathy and advanced accurate empathy is primary empathy tries to understand client's situation at surface level and advanced accurate empathy tries to understand the root cause of issues in depth with accuracy. Listening to client's story about difficulty with smoking cessation and communicating the understanding of difficulty to client is example of primary empathy. Analyzing factors causing difficulty in smoking cessation like marital issues, financial stressors, legal issues and trying to figure out root cause of difficulty with smoking cessation is example for advanced accurate empathy in counseling. Advanced empathy is reflecting what is just outside the client’s awareness rather than reflecting what is communicated by the client.
Below are some barriers to develop empathy:
1. Communication language may differ from one region to another region hindering effective communication between client and counselor. Example: Hispanic person trying to connect with English speaking counselor through translator assistance. This might not result in effect communication and thus becomes barrier to developing empathy.
2. Lack of motivation of client obtain counseling and help. Example: Client coming to counseling session on obligation of relatives or friends and having no interest may become barrier to developing empathy.
3. Failure to develop good rapport between client and counselor may result in barrier to empathy.
Below are some steps to be taken to overcome above barriers to develop empathy:
1. Develop good rapport with client and make easy move in understanding client's perceptions.
2. Create friendly and familiar environment to client, so that client can open up comfortably.
3. Usage of neutral words to avoid biases during conversation. It is better to be good listener rather than reflecting the thoughts immediately.