Applied Counselling Reflective Journal: Skills and Models, University

This reflective journal chronicles a student's exploration of applied counselling, focusing on the development of essential skills and the application of various counselling models. The journal entries, spanning ten weeks, detail the student's engagement with module materials, highlighting the importance of assertive communication, active listening, and the establishment of trust in the therapeutic relationship. The author reflects on the significance of understanding client perspectives, utilizing metaphors and imagery, and addressing ethical challenges within the counselling context. The journal emphasizes the critical role of counselors in actively listening to client stories, maintaining confidentiality, and prioritizing patient well-being. The student's journey involves evaluating their own use of core counselling skills and identifying strategies for improvement, aiming to integrate the acquired knowledge into their future professional practice. The journal underscores the demanding nature of counselling, emphasizing the need for empathy, unbiased approaches, and the ability to help clients resolve their problems effectively.

Running Head: APPLIED COUNSELLING
APPLIED COUNSELLING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1APPLIED COUNSELLING
Introduction
This is a reflective journal that I will be maintaining in relation to what I have studied
this far in context of applied counselling. Counselling clients is the very integral duty of the
psychologist when it comes to ensuring that the person can cope with the mental health issues
he or she is displaying. For this the counselor will require the person to open up and trust the
counselor with the details of the problem. This is various other skills of the counselor that is
necessary to help client. Skills like assertive communication is necessary to effectively
establish proper communication with the client, by carefully establishing trust and a
relationship where the patient can be open and feels understood, the counsellor should also be
able to communicate the problems to the patient correctly. This has to be followed by
effective listening skills so that any information by the patient is not missed out and that the
patient feels comfortable knowing that someone is willing to lend an ear no matter what the
problem may be. I will also be developing my ideas on a particular counselling model to
demonstrate my understanding of the same, because it is important that future counsellors
have a firm hold on the subject of counselling and the methods that can be utilized to achieve
correct results. I will also be critically reflecting on how these various counselling skills and
abilities will be helpful in the profession and the improvements that are required for the same.
Week 1
The core work of a counselor is to listen to the stories of the client because it is in
these stories that information about the issues and problems are available. Active engagement
means actively engaging the client by replying to his or her stories while passive engagement
is mostly listening. This is similar to passive empathy where the counselor empathizes with
the client after listening to his or her stories in a passive way. Active engagement is
sometimes required to take out for the information from the client while passive engagement

2APPLIED COUNSELLING
is mostly listening and lending an ear to the problems of the client. Tentativeness is important
in counselling because in order to be completely sure of the story, the counselor must confirm
it multiple times. Counselling relationship in between a counselor and a patient has to be
established by carefully establishing trust and by ensuring the patient is comfortable in
sharing stories with the counselor.
Week 3
During counseling procedure listening to the client is in extremely important step that
must be undertaken by the counselor. Thus it is important that the counselor takes into
consideration effective listening strategies that ensure know part of the information is lost. As
discussed listening can be both active and passive. Along with listening skills it is also
integral that the counselor displays understanding of the situation that is being narrated by the
client. Paraphrasing for ensuring the response to the client is accurate is also necessary. In
counseling being patient and curious is extremely important because patients take time to
open up and in order to make them open up father the counselor must showcuriosity and
interest in the case. If the client is in pain it is important that The counselor makes the client
feel valued and cared for so that he or she opens up.
Week 4
Being empathetic and sensitive to the emotions of the client is extremely important in
counseling because if that is not displayed the client feels uncomfortable and uncared for.
The counselor must learn to read in between the lines said by the client to understand how the
client maybe feeling and what is body language of the client is expressing. There might be
clients will not be very aware about how they feel about various issues and also working with

3APPLIED COUNSELLING
them becomes difficult because the counselor does not know what to treat. The counselors
themselves should be extremely aware of the counselors are feeling during the counseling
session and must control emotions in a way that does not get into the path of good
counseling. It is true that men tend to be a little closed about themselves during counseling
sessions and women on the other hand and much more aware of the feelings and what has
occurred that made them seek help.
Week 5
During a counseling session the client learns of perspectives around the situation and
methods of handling it and does it is important that they are involved in practical activities
that will help them reflect better on the same. From The counselor side positive reframing
and summarizing of ideas as presented in the stories of the clients service feedback to the
client for the same and signal them about the fact that the counselor is understanding and it is
aware of the situation. Questioning also plays an important part in the counselling process
because it is true questioning that blank spaces may be resolved and the counselor can look at
the problem from a much clearer perspective.
Week 6
All counselors must understand that people narrate the story of the lives from their
respective and their usage of metaphors and imagery are a reflection of how they feel about
situations. Counselor is not judge but the counselor must also consider other perspectives of
the same story to understand the triggers and problems of the client better. The story is the
main source of information on which the counselor will be working upon and the rest of the
counselling process will also be based upon the same. People in this world face countless

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challenges and difficulties while leaving and they are often subject to circumstances well
beyond their control and thus these issues tend to take a toll on people and how they operate.
Week 7
Metaphors in imagery give an edge to the story that is being presented by the client to the
counselor. The stories indicate how the person feels about the situation from their very own
perspective. How this story has been perceived is also responsible for influencing the area in
the client. The counselor may step into the client's shoes and try to understand the situation
from his or her perspective in order to locate the crux of the issue.
Week 8
Challenges and challenging the clients in the counseling process is important as it
helps in a momentary positive distraction from the main issue and helps give a break to the
client. Challenges that are presented to the client for their own goods and challenges are
presented like personal goals that would be extremely beneficial if achieved by the clients. Is
challenges are helpful in building up self-esteem and self-trust during psychological setbacks.
If appropriate techniques are used, challenges can be extremely motivating and the client will
feel involved in the activity for his or her own benefit.
Week 9
Counseling may have countless ethical challenges because of the extremely sensitive
nature of work counselors tend to do. It is extremely important that counselors limit
themselves to ethical standards like maintaining the doctor patient confidentiality or by

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carefully prioritizing the health of the patient over something not as important as that. The
relationship has to be kept at what it is supposed to be and issues of the clients must be
carefully recognized and prioritized so as to ensure that the process of healing is quick and it
does not do for the damage. Basic counseling procedures must be followed before jumping
into a conclusion about the kind of counseling that will be required for the client.
Week 10
Counselor must maintain reports about what our client is doing and what the client
has been diagnosed with or the client is trying to get rid of. These reports have to be written
in a brilliant way to ensure that no amount of detail is missed and that it is brief and concise
and do not stray. It has to perfectly present the points that have been explored during a
counseling session. Report must be persuasive in nature and it should be a clear
demonstration of the ability of structuring. These reports are integral to understand and
maintain information about the client and might be referred to in case of further investigation
into the matter.
Summary
This channel consists of information about my progress in this module. Effectively
understanding the process of counseling and the worker counselor does is a tremendous
process and is extremely time consuming. No amount to mistake is acceptable in these cases
because a counselor deals with people and their feelings and with sensitive information and
cases that require enormous knowledge about counseling and empathy. Carefully listening to
a person and understanding the perspective of the story being narrated all the while making
sure the approaches to the same is completely and biased is an enormous task. The client will

6APPLIED COUNSELLING
come with his or her own set of problems for the counselor also has to ensure that the
problems are not just resolved but they are resolved to such an extent that they do not return.
Counselors deal with matters of the mind and these metals tend to be scattered and difficult to
deal with especially when the counselor as talking to people who are already a little
disturbed. The counselor is also human and thus emotions might get into the way of a proper
counseling method. However despite these difficulties the job of a counsellor is very
satisfying in nature and since I am aiming for future in counseling, the integration of the
discussed knowledge was extremely helpful and mandatory.