There is a number of skills that are considered essential for a professional school counselor to have, and some of them might be more challenging to develop than others. In my case, the skills that come most easily and that I feel most confident about are empathy and supportive listening. These skills appear to be my strengths in general conversations and interactions as well; when my friends and family members discuss their problems with me, I never experience any internal judgment. My emotions in these situations can be better defined by the gratitude I feel to my loved ones for being willing to share their problems and issues with me. While empathy and supportive listening are my strongest skills, the main weakness in my counseling competency is arguably the reflection of feelings.
My comfort with empathy and supportive listening skills is related to different experiences, values, and beliefs I have had throughout my life. First, for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be able to help people in distress. Even as a child, I always tried to console my family members when they were struggling with some life challenges. In addition, I strongly believe that all clients are entitled to freedom, and this belief helps me to avoid judgment in all my interactions. As a result, my supportive listening skills strengthen and improve the overall quality of my practice.
Moreover, I have immense respect for other people’s cultural background, family values and beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. I believe that to ensure that clients feel completely free to discuss their personal issues, they need to be aware of the fact that their counselor is respectful of their experiences and opinions. Very often, all that the client needs is a friend or someone to talk to, a person who will listen to them without judgment, criticism, or alienation. This ability has also allowed me to develop empathy as one of my strongest counseling skills.
However, there are competencies that I consider challenging at the moment. One of them is reflection, which is a complex skill that involves multiple other abilities and skills. These include understanding the clients’ emotional state both at the surface and deeper levels, considering the context of their emotional state, and showing awareness of their feelings in the appropriate manner. Reflection in counseling may also refer to reflecting the clients’ expressions or emotions in the counselor’s own words. It is very important to understand when exactly the reflection of content is appropriate. When applied timely and efficiently, it allows helping the client understand their own emotional responses better, connecting their personal issues and finding solutions to them.
There may be several reasons that have influenced my challenges with the skill of reflection. First, I might have paid insufficient attention to it in my conversations and interactions with other people in general. I have always known that supportive listening and empathy are important to help a person become more open in personal conversations. However, I have underestimated the importance of reflecting their emotions to help them understand themselves better and see their reactions and behaviors from an objective point of view. Another difficulty is connected to learning how not to overuse reflective skills during sessions and only apply them when it is clear that the interaction will benefit from reflecting the client’s emotions. Otherwise, the client may become silent or confused by the counselor’s overuse of reflective statements.
When researching resources on the topic, I have found a video lecture that focuses on using reflection of feelings in counseling; the video can be accessed through the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXsjk40wKbo&ab_channel=Dr.PoppyMoon. Having compared it to the other resources, such as articles and textbooks on the same topic, I decided to choose this video because it seems to satisfy my learning needs better. First, it is easier for me to perceive information in audiovisual format. Second, I believe that a video format is more efficient in explaining the strategies that deal with emotional states, because the lecturer is able to demonstrate certain emotions and the ways to respond to them. Finally, the video demonstrates different examples of reflective responses used in sessions.
Apart from this video and the other resources on the subject, I can use my personal or professional experiences to also increase my comfort with this challenging skill. For instance, I can pay more attention to the interactions I have with my friends and family members. During these interactions, I will try to identify situations in which the reflection of feelings would be an appropriate strategy to enhance the efficiency of the conversation or reach a solution to the problem. In addition, I think that it will be helpful to pay attention to my own emotional state and think about the need to see my own emotions reflected by the other person in the conversation. This may help me to understand my clients’ needs better. Moreover, I will learn to use reflection in a limited way in order to ensure that my clients feel heard and understood even when their needs are not voiced directly and openly during the session.
Reference
Dr. Poppy Moon. (2021). Basic Counseling Skills: Reflection of Feeling. YouTube. Web.