Exploring Summaries in Counseling: Benefits and Practical Application

This essay delves into the concept of summaries within counseling sessions, defining them as succinct accounts of longer excerpts that highlight the most significant points and identified feelings. It emphasizes that summaries draw together emerging themes, providing clients with an overview of the discussion. The essay outlines several benefits of using summaries, including assuring clients that they are heard and understood, enabling them to contemplate their shared experiences, and facilitating session progress by clarifying understanding and identifying problem areas. Furthermore, it suggests that summaries can bridge topics and encourage clients to continue or shift their focus. The author also reflects on how they can implement summary skills in their health profession, such as organizing session initiations, clarifying misconceptions, and structuring end-of-session reviews to reinforce thoughts and feelings discussed.

Running head: SUMMARIES 1
Summaries
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation

SUMMARIES 2
Summaries
Summaries refer to succinct accounts of longer excerpts from the content of a counseling
session. As Geldard, Geldard, and Foo (2016) outlines, a summary includes the most significant,
focal, and crucial points from the gathered information while putting into consideration the
identified feelings (p. 80). More precisely, summaries draw together the emerging themes from
content. These main points are presented in a manner that provides the client with an overview of
what has been thrashed out (Geldard,. Geldard, and Foo, 2016 p. 80).
Summaries have certain benefits in regard to the therapeutic relationship between the
counselor and the client. Firstly, in summarizing the client get an assurance that they have been
heard and understood as outlined by Geldard,. Geldard, and Foo (2016 ) p. 80. Consequently, the
clients are able to contemplate on what they have been sharing and thus come up with some
resolution (Geldard,. Geldard, and Foo, 2016 p. 82). Secondly, summaries help to move the
session forward by reflecting top clients what they have stated, checking and clarifying
understanding, categorizing premises, and identifying problem situations and problem issues
(Nelson-Jones, 2013 p. 84). Further, they may act as a bridge for clients to facilitate them to
continue with a certain subject or move to another (Nelson-Jones, 2013 p. 84).
In my health profession, I can implement the summary skill in certain ways. For instance,
I can use the skill to organize the initiation of a session by recollecting the main points of the
preceding sitting. Also, I may utilize summaries to seek for clarifications of any misconceptions
that may arise during the sessions. Lastly, I can structure a summary at the end of a session
where I outline the main discussed issues in the session as a way of reviewing the thoughts and
feelings featured in the sitting.

SUMMARIES 3
References
Geldard, D., Geldard, K., & Foo, R.Y. (2016). Basic personal counselling: a training manual for
counsellors (8th ed.).Cengage Learning Australia.
Nelson-Jones, R. (2013). Introduction to counselling skills: Texts and activities. Los Angeles,
Calif. [u.a.: SAGE.