Question

What do you understand by the term counselling? Explain the characteristics of an effective counsellor.

Answer 1

Counselling provides a system for planning the interview, analysing the counsellor’s and client’s behaviour, and determining the developmental impact on the client. In this section, we will discuss skills, concepts, and methods that are designed to help develop concrete competencies. A counsellor is most often interested in building an understanding of the clients problem by focusing on what understanding the client has of her/his problem and how she/he feels about it. The actual or objective facts of the problems are considered less important, and it is considered more important to work on the feelings and their acknowledgement by the clients. The focus is more on the person and how she/he defines the problem.

The  following  elements  about counselling are common to the major theoretical approaches to counselling :-

(i) Counselling involves responding to the feelings, thoughts, and actions of the clients.

(ii) Counselling involves a basic acceptance of the client’s perceptions and feelings, without  using  any  evaluative standards.

(iii) Confidentiality and privacy constitute essential ingredients in the counselling setting. Physical facilities that preserve this quality are important.

(iv) Counselling is voluntary. It takes place when a client approaches a counsellor. A counsellor never uses any kind of coercion for obtaining information.

(v) Counsellors and clients both transmit and receive verbal and non-verbal messages during the process. Therefore, awareness and sensitivity to the nature of the message is an important prerequisite for a counsellor’s effectiveness.