Basic Counselling Skills
Mastering basic counselling skills
is one of the core requirements of a psychologist. Through the use of building rapport, attending, silence, reflecting, paraphrasing, clarifying and the use of questions, focusing and summarising, you are better able to understand your clients. Likewise, your clients will feel heard and understood by you.
Here are some resources for you:
Basic Counselling Skills Overview
This website provides an overview of basic counselling skills, and goes into each sub-components of counselling. There are examples of what each component looks like, as well as handouts that you can download. Here’s an example of Paraphrasing in Counselling.
Alternatively, here is another website that we refer to. You can learn and use counseling techniques, counseling theories and how to integrate these into counseling practice through some sample sessions.
Understanding the Role of Silence in the Counselling Relationship
The relationship between you and client may involve a great deal of talking, using words to explore meanings. All aspects of a conversation are included, such as speaking, listening and body language. A conversation without pauses rarely takes place. When those pauses stretch to five seconds or longer, they become silences. What role does silence play in enabling the client to benefit from the counselling process? Find out more in this article.