The Traits That Will Help You Thrive as a Counselor

Running head: EFFECTIVE COUNSELING SKILLS
Effective Counseling Skills
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1EFFECTIVE COUNSELING SKILLS
Introduction
Counseling is a process of giving advice to the people who need special support. In most
of the cases the assistance is provided by special professional counselors who possess various
skills. Through counseling sessions the patients speak up their problems and the counselor
addresses the individual problems with efficiency and professionalism providing solution to their
issues. Effective counseling requires a set of skills, and the person providing the advice should
be properly trained in them. The following essay deals with the role of basic counseling skills in
effective counseling and how each skill is used by the counselor to facilitate effective
counseling.
Discussion
Effective counseling and efficient counselors make use of different counseling skills
through which they listen and understand the problems of their clients. There are several macro
as well as micro skills which are necessary for a counselor to possess (Nelson – Jones, 2015).
The fundamental counseling skill is to provide an ear to the patients. It is the role of a counselor
to listen empathically to the problems of the patients. Along with this, the core counseling skills
are listening actively and attentively, taking care of the non verbal communication and
expressions of the patients and also building a rapport with them.
It is the role of a counselor to attend their patients with utmost patience. According to
Bayne & Jangha, 2016), the person who visit the counselors expect full attention from them. it is
important to listen to what they speak and value their problems, here comes the micro skill
associated with it, which is demonstrating empathy towards them. during the client- counselor

2EFFECTIVE COUNSELING SKILLS
sessions it is very important on their part of the counselor to impart the empathetic skills. This
helps the patients to open up and share their problems. This ensures that being empathic towards
them actually means listening to them carefully without judging them or their issues
(Hutchinson, 2014). By using empathy in the interactive sessions, the counselors successfully
can build a strong relationship with the client, they can stimulate them to self explore and
provide them the necessary support.
According to McHenry & McHEnry (2015), another important skill that is essential for
the counselors is reflection upon the contents and the feelings of the clients. This involves
reflecting upon the issues and the problems that the patient has said. Alongside it is very
important for the counselor to show their involvement in the interaction by repeating what the
client had said. This is very important in the reflection scenario because it helps the clients to
trust their counselors. However according to the argument of Aladag, Yaka & Koc (2014), it is
very important for the counselors to be aware of not to overuse reflection of the content. It must
be limited and the conversation must seem normal. Moreover, in accordance to this, there should
also be reflection of feelings that the clients share. The emotional effect should be acknowledged
and there should be reflection of the non verbal communication and expressions too. It is very
essential for an effective counselor to take notice of the emotions and reflect them verbally to
the clients so that they feel that the conversation is effective.
Silence is a key role that the counselors should play. They should remain silent and not
interrupt the clients unnecessarily. This would help the clients speak up their issues with utmost
diligence and the counselors in return can concentrate and focus on the problems (Fawcett &
Borck-Jameson, 2014). Focusing on the problems is extremely important for the counselors to
make decisions and to deal with the issues professionally. If they have any query regarding the