Counselling Session Reflection: Skills, Analysis, and Development

This essay is a reflective analysis of an 18-minute counselling session conducted by a student counsellor with a client experiencing workplace-related stress that was impacting her personal life. The essay provides a brief overview of the session, followed by an analysis based on the client-centered approach, focusing on the implementation of empathy, warmth, and genuineness. It details the use of various counselling microskills, such as attentive behavior, questioning, and reflection, supported by verbatim examples from the session. The student compares intended techniques with actual implementation, evaluates the effectiveness of the skills used, and discusses personal learning and areas for future development. The essay also incorporates the use of a miracle question and scaling to gather information about the client's perspective and goals. Finally, the essay concludes with a discussion of the client-centered approach and the importance of the counsellor's skills and the client's intuition in the therapeutic process.

Running head: COUNSELLING
COUNSELLING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
In this essay, I will reflect upon an 18 minute long counselling session that I had with
[Client name]. The client was worried about her behavioural adaptations where her
frustrations because of certain workplace conflict has, according to her, transpired into her
life back home as well. In this essay, I will provide a brief summary of the session that I had
with the client followed by an analysis of the session based on client centred counselling
approach (Rogers, 2012) where I implemented the aspects of empathy, warmth and
genuineness in order to indulge more freely and genuinely with the client (Kensit, 2000). This
essay will be reflective in nature and will be focussed on the manner in which I engaged with
the client in the session. The essay will be developed with verbatim examples to show my
skills as a counsellor as well as how these skills and knowledge that I have gathered and
gained over my experience has been put into use. I will also provide an in depth analysis of
the various counselling micro skills and advanced counselling skills that I used throughout
the session. At the same time, I will also provide a comparison between what I intended to
follow and what I actually followed throughout the session. Based on that, this essay will also
serve the purpose of being a reference for my future counselling engagements.
Main Body
At the beginning of the session, I started by explaining to the client that I am a
counselling student and reassuring her that the recording of the session would only be
accessible to my professors. Afterwards, the first step that I took before moving into the main
session was ask her about her commute to the centre. We talked briefly about how some
recent work has made the trains crowded. Even though this is completely unrelated to the
content of the session, this small ice breaker conversation was important to build a
comfortable rapport with the client (Bastress & Harbaugh, 1990). Following that, we talked

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about this counselling session being her first and if it was okay if I take notes. I did that to
emphasise that the client’s opinions are valued.
There are eight basic counselling microskills that I implemented throughout the
process. They are attentive behaviour, questioning, response, note taking and reflection,
observation, focussing and influencing (Kuntze, van der Molen & Born, 2009). Once the
initial barriers of client-counsellor were addressed, we started the session by me asking her
what brought her to the centre. The first microskill, that is attentive behaviour is of
paramount importance and should be the primary implementation of every counsellor in
every session. Not only does this help gather useful information about the client, but also
helps establish that the counsellor is taking the client seriously, thereby encouraging the client
to divulge more information (Kuntze, van der Molen & Born, 2009). The second microskill
that I implemented at this stage is accurate responding. It is a restatement of the client’s
statement in the counsellor’s own words and is used to confirm with the client whether the
information received is correct. An instance from the session is provided below:
Client: I feel like I am unappreciated, even though I’ve been in the industry now close
to 3 years. I still feel like moving to this new house, I feel like they see me like a new person,
like I don’t even have any qualification. I feel undermined
Counsellor: so what I am hearing is that you just started a new job but you’ve been in
the industry for a while but the people you are working with are sort of giving you hard time,
because they are not appreciating you and the skills that you have, is that right?
Throughout the process, I ensured to follow the proper counselling demeanour in
correlation to attentive listening. I kept my posture straight and maintained constant eye
contact as well as used encouraging gestures to show that I was engaged in my client’s
concerns (Kuntze, van der Molen & Born, 2009). Immediately afterwards, I enquired and
double checked her stance on being treated like a new person. I did that to reassure her that I

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was paying attention to whatever she was saying in order to not make her feel abandoned.
After when she confirmed her stance, I responded by saying “That must be really hard”. This
tells her that I am on her side and I am empathetic towards her situation. I also told her what I
thought of her situation after listening to her. I described the situation of her feelings as ‘sad’
and ‘frustrated’ to which she confirmed feeling frustrated. She also added disappointment to
her list as she felt when nobody understood her value. She described her frustration as a
perpetual feeling at work. This is also the stage where she gave me the most vital bit of
information when she said that the reason she came for therapy was because her feelings of
frustration were also being carried back to her home.
Even at home, she said that she started feeling underappreciated and that did not help
her situation. Afterwards I asked her what the things are that she does at office or back home
to keep herself busy outside of work. Here I was focussing on the microskill of influencing as
I was trying to find out alternate approaches that might help the client.
I also ensured to ask the client about if there are any events or occasions where the
expectation of a certain feeling was countered by some other feeling. This was also done in
order to gather information about the personality type of the client.
Counsellor: so you’ve told me about how u feel low when you at work, are there any
time when you expected to feel low however for some reason it did not notice the feeling?
Client: hmm… I remember there was this client who brings handmade jewellery so
she brings when they go for the centres so and she brought me one, but I had to turn her
down and I felt bad about it later when I got home. This made me realise that, that’s not me,
this not the person I want to be, there’s something wrong I tend to take more annual leave
days than work.
Noting and reflecting is also something I carefully measured in the process, as I
progressed to iterate my understanding of the situation. According to Kuntze, van der Molen

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& Born (2009), communicating the counsellor’s reflections back to the client ensures that the
client level of trust and understanding is maintained.
Counsellor: what I am sensing is that you feel as though the way you feel at work is
affecting you and if you don’t go to work then it’s affecting you financially, as well as your
clients because your mood is really low when you are at work, you are not feeling good being
there. so that impact the people at work and you knowing that it’s impacting them makes you
feel bad.is that right?
Client: yeah yeah true. As i said before it’s impacting me financially, because now I
cancel more shifts rather than cover more shifts because I don’t want to be in a such place
that gives me all this bad energy
I also used a miracle question as a part of the solution focused therapy practice.
According to De Shazer & Dolan (2012), asking an imaginative question focuses on what the
client’s expected outcome is and can help the counsellor identify and improve several key
aspects of the session. I also implemented scaling in the same aspect to gather information
about how the current treatment of herself is like (De Shazer & Dolan, 2012).
Counsellor: so if u went to bed, imagine a magic happened or I have a magic wound
and as I am waving it around, if I press it tomorrow when you go to work what would you
notice if a miracle happened?
Client: well, I’d be more of myself, I’d be able to communicate more with my
colleagues, it would be more team work rather that everyone working by themselves and the
clients would be happier because they would realise that the staff are getting along better
Counsellor: nice, it sounds like your mood, from scale or 1 to 10 your mood would be
pretty high after the magic happens
Client: yes, yeah I think it would be a seven

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The final most important microskills that I implemented in the session is
confrontation when I asked her if she would be able to talk to her supervisor about her issues
to which she responded yes. According to Strong and Zeman (2010), confrontation helps to
enforce an idea in the client’s head that there are solutions to her problems but she has to take
the stand. On the other hand, I also explained to her the benefits of speaking out loud and
how that helps overcome a stressful situation.
Client: hmm I think , talking to my supervisor , I will go talk to him and tell him how i
have been feeling . I think talk to my supervisor because I think it might all be in my head that
I am new, so I am isolating myself without starting a conversation. Maybe tell him about how
I’ve been feeling, I feeling like I am not part of the team
Counsellor: definitely, I totally agree. Because It’s always good to express
yourself ,how you feel instead of talking about little things that you thing ‘oh I speak about
this because it doesn’t hurt me that much’’ and keep the other things inside ,longer term it’s
not good because it’s hurting you, the fact that you are keeping it inside , It hurting you. I
believe its best to speak out about the way you feel inside, yes it might hurt and upset some
people but at least you are releasing it. so, speaking out help release stress, whatever pain or
trauma.
The final step in the process was to establish a routine of work where the client and
the counsellor would work together to achieve certain goals. This gives the client a hope and
understanding of the future as well as establishes a plan of action.
Counsellor: so, is that something you think we could set as a goal if you comeback for
next session?
Client: yes.
Throughout the whole session, what I paid the most attention to was the client centred
approach that I was following in my session (Joseph, 2004). The client centred counselling

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approach entails that we all have inherent systems and resources that enable us to deal with
any sort of problematic situation that arrives in our lives. The primary undertaking behind
that approach is the belief that the client and not the counsellor is the expert of their own
thoughts, feelings and emotions (Whalley Hammell, 2013). There are three underpinnings to
a client centred counselling approach. I would try to break them down and exemplify from
the session how they were used by me in the session.
I also resorted to detailed note taking as a process of documenting the session as well
as highlighting which aspects of the counselling session should be given the most importance
and which need to be analysed further (Hartley, 2002).
One more important aspect that I ensured to exercise was invoking her intuition in her
process of decision making (Khatri & Ng). This was according to me the most important
stone in the structure as it summarises the entire approach of client centred therapy. Using her
intuition positively allowed her to access a viable solution for her problems herself.
There are however a few things that I could have done better or differently. Asking
the miracle question and the scaling question back to back could have been changed with the
latter being asked once at the beginning of the session and once at the end of the session in
order to understand if there has been a change in the perspective of the client regarding their
life.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to state that I have successfully implemented a viable
approach to counselling in the process. I have ticked all the aspects that an effective
counsellor should implement in their practice. At the same time I have also ensured that the
client continues her sessions in the future for a holistic progress.

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