Role of Basic Counselling Skills in Effective Counselling

Psychology
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Author Note

Role of basic counselling skills in effective counselling
The term counselling can be defined as the process of building relationships with people
that empower them for accomplishing psychological health and wellness, education and career
goals. Considering the fact that counselling is a process of conversation or dialogue between the
client and the counsellor, it is highly crucial for the councillor to possess basic counselling skills
in order to facilitate the change. The basic counselling spills that a counsellor must possess to
ensure effective outcome of his or her counselling session includes demonstration of empathy,
reflecting on content, reflecting on feeling, clarifying and asking open ended questions. The
basic counselling skills play a highly crucial role in the whole phenomenon of counselling since
with the help of these skills counsellors obtained the potential to gain the trust the clients along
with forming an effective rapport with them (Nelson-Jones, 2015). These in turn smoothens the
way of the counsellors while solving the mental issues faced by the client (Tolan & Cameron,
2016). In the following paragraph, I will evaluate the role of basic counselling skills on effective
counselling by referring to the role plays as well as love skill demonstration that I have observed
in my academic life.
One of the most crucial counselling skills that need to be possessed by the counsellors
while conducting a counselling session with the client is efficient demonstration of empathy. It
makes the client feel that his or her mental state is understood by the counsellor (Geldard,
Geldard & Foo, 2017). In counselling, empathy refers to an expression of the regard and respect
the counsellor holds for the client whose experiences may be quite different from that of the
counsellor. In the counselling sessions that I have conducted, I demonstrate empathy by actively
listing to the client’s issue, understanding the feelings of the client, demonstrating sympathy
towards the mental stress that he or she has been facing and letting him or her know that I am

with him/her in the adverse situation. However, several times, I have noticed my friends often
has got carried our while demonstrating empathy. For instance, one of my friends had revealed
information about him as well while showing empathy to the client’s situation. This strategy got
backfired when the client stated judging him on the basis of the information shared by him an
that eventually led to closure of the counselling session with that specific client.
The next basic counselling skill that must be possessed by a counsellor includes
reflecting on the content. Counsellors use this technique to describe the affective state of the
client from both verbal as well as non verbal cues. For instance, while I was in school, I had to
perform the role play of a counsellor (Dewing et al., 2015). One of my friend played the client
and her issue was depression. She came to me because she felt she would die soon because she
had cancer, and this was common in her family. She was scared she was going to die soon, and
so she did not want to opt for therapy so that she did not have to hear something worse or be told
that she would not live long. Since she was depressed was speaking in a low tone. In order to
make her realize that was actively listing to her issue and encourage her to continue to talk, open
up and explore issues in greater depth, I used the “reflecting on content” strategy. For instance,
when she said “I am really afraid of the fact that I will die soon. One of my aunt had got breast
cancer and her last days were really pathetic. I just don’t want to suffer.’ By applying the
mentioned technique, I replied, “ So, you have already evidenced the last stage of your aunt and
this chiefly makes you more afraid of dying.” While reflecting to content, I always put emphasis
on the most important details of what the client had said. My reply helped the client to
understand that I have captured the essence of what she said. However one of the major
limitation of the ‘reflecting to content strategy includes it does not help the counsellor to reply on
the basis of the feelings client is demonstrating while continuing with the conversation.