Study counselling skills for professional development.
- Improve communication skills both personally and professionally.
- Use counselling skills in areas, such as parenting, teaching, retail work, youth work, management, personnel, training, volunteer work, support work and much more.
- Learn about counselling theories, counselling techniques, micro skills, active listening, reflection, finding solutions and much more.
- Study in your own home and at your own pace.
WHO IS THIS COURSE SUITABLE FOR?
This course is suitable for –
- Volunteer counsellors
- Trainee counsellors
- Police officers
- Law enforcement
- Teachers
- Social workers
- Parents
- Foster carers
- Carers
- Support workers
- Welfare workers
- Counsellors wishing to update their knowledge
- Retail staff
- Hairdressers
- Anyone wishing to start counselling
- In fact, anyone who works with people would benefit from using counselling skills.
COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
The course is divided into 8 lessons as follows:
Lesson 1. Learning Specific Skills
- What is Counselling?
- Perceptions of Counselling.
- Differences between Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists.
- Counselling Theories.
- Empathy.
- Transference.
- Directiveness, Non Directiveness.
- Behavioural Therapies.
- Systematic Desensitisation.
- Positive Reinforcement and Extinction.
- Goals of Psychoanalytical Approach.
- Defence Mechanisms (Repression, Displacement, Rationalisation, Projection, Reaction Formulation, Intellectualisation, Denial, Sublimation).
- Use of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy.
- Psychoanalytic Techniques.
- Analytic Framework.
- Free Associations.
- Interpretation.
- Dream Analysis.
- Resistance and Transference.
- Humanistic Therapy.
- Evaluating the Effectiveness of Therapies and Counsellors.
- Case Studies.
- Methods of Learning.
- Micro Skills.
- Triads.
- Modelling.
- Online and Telephone Counselling.
- Telemental Health.
- Clinical Considerations.
Lesson 2. Listening and Bonding
- Scope of Listening and Bonding.
- Meeting and Greeting.
- Creating a Safe Environment.
- Location.
- Time and Duration of Sessions.
- Privacy in Telephone and Online Counselling.
- Showing Warmth on the Phone.
- The Contract.
- Helping the Client Relax.
- Listening with Intent.
- Minimal Responses.
- Non Verbal Behaviour.
- Use of Voice.
- Use of Silence.
- Case Studies.
- Active Listening.
- Dealing with Silent Phone Calls.
Lesson 3. Reflection
- Non Directive Counselling.
- Paraphrasing.
- Feelings.
- Reflection of Feeling.
- Client Responses to Reflection of Feelings.
- Reflection of Content and Feeling.
- Case Studies.
Lesson 4. Questioning
- Open and Closed Questions.
- Other types of Questions (Linear, Information seeking, Strategic, Reflective, Clarification, etc).
- Questions to Avoid.
- Goals of Questioning.
- Identification.
- Assessment.
- Intervention.
- Case Studies.
Lesson 5. Interview Techniques
- Summarising.
- Application.
- Confrontation.
- Reframing.
- Case Studies.
- Perspective.
- Summary.
Lesson 6. Changing Beliefs and Normalising
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
- Changing Self-Destructive Beliefs.
- Irrational Beliefs.
- Normalising.
- Case Studies.
- Designing a Questionnaire.
Lesson 7. Finding Solutions
- Moving Forward.
- Choices (Reviewing, Creating, Making choices).
- Facilitating Actions.
- Gestalt Awareness Circle.
- Psychological Blocks.
- Case Study.
Lesson 8. Ending the Counselling
- Terminating the Session.
- Closure.
- Further Meetings.
- Dependency.
- Confronting Dependency.
- Chronic Callers.
- Terminating Silent Phone Calls.
- Silent Endings.
- Case Study.
- Other Services.
COURSE AIMS
- The ability to explain the processes involved in the training of counsellors in micro skills.
- Demonstrate the skills involved in commencing the counselling process and evaluation of non-verbal responses and minimal responses.
- Demonstrate reflection of content, feeling, both content and feeling, and its appropriateness to the counselling process.
- Develop different questioning techniques and to understand risks involved with some types of questioning.
- Show how to use various micro-skills including summarising, confrontation, and reframing.
- To demonstrate self-destructive beliefs and show methods of challenging them, including normalising.
- Explain how counselling a client can improve their psychological well-being through making choices, overcoming psychological blocks and facilitating actions.
- Demonstrate effective ways of terminating a counselling session and to explain ways of addressing dependency.
WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE
- Report on an observed counselling session, simulated or real.
- Identify the learning methods available to the trainee counsellor.
- Demonstrate difficulties that might arise when first learning and applying micro skills.
- Identify why trainee counsellors might be unwilling to disclose personal problems during training.
- Identify risks that can arise for trainee counsellors not willing to disclose personal problems.
- Discuss different approaches to modelling, as a form of counselling
- Evaluate verbal and non-verbal communication in an observed interview.
- Identify the counsellor’s primary role (in a generic sense).
- Show how to use minimal responses as an important means of listening with intent.
- Explain the importance of different types of non-verbal response in the counselling procedure.
- Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person which that problem relates to.
- Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
- Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
- Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
- Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase
- Report on the discussion of a minor problem with an anonymous person which that problem relates to.
- Identify an example of paraphrasing as a minimal response to reflect feelings.
- Discuss the use of paraphrasing in counselling.
- Differentiate catharsis from confused thoughts and feelings.
- Identify an example of reflecting back both content (thought) and feeling in the same phrase
- Demonstrate and observe varying responses to a variety of closed questions in a simulated counselling situation.
- Demonstrate/observe varying responses to a variety of open questions in a simulated counselling situation.
- Compare your use of open and closed questions in a counselling situation.
- Identify the main risks involved in asking too many questions
- Explain the importance of avoiding questions beginning with ‘why’ in counselling.
- Identify in observed communication (written or oral), the application of different micro-skills which would be useful in counselling.
- Demonstrate examples of when it would be appropriate for the counsellor to use confrontation
- List the chief elements of good confrontation.
- Discuss appropriate use of confrontation, in case studies.
- Show how reframing can be used to change a client’s perspective on things.
- Develop a method for identifying the existence of self-destructive beliefs (SDB’s).
- Identify self-destructive beliefs (SDB’s) amongst individuals within a group.
- Explain the existence of self destructive beliefs in an individual.
- List methods that can be used to challenge SDB’s?
- Explain what is meant by normalising, in a case study.
- Demonstrate precautions that should be observed when using normalizing.
- Determine optional responses to different dilemmas.
- Evaluate optional responses to different dilemmas.
- Explain how the ‘circle of awareness’ can be applied to assist a client, in a case study.
- Explain why psychological blockages may arise
- Demonstrate how a counsellor might help a client to overcome psychological blockages.
- Describe the steps a counsellor would take a client through to reach a desired goal, in a case study.
- Identify inter-dependency in observed relationships.
- Explain why good time management is an important part of the counselling process.
- Compare terminating a session with terminating the counselling process.
- Demonstrate dangers posed by client - counsellor inter-dependency
- Explain how dependency can be addressed and potentially overcome.
- Explain any negative aspects of dependency in a case study.
WHAT DO OUR STUDENTS THINK?
"This course has been extremely valuable to me as throughout those 5 months my friends all seemed to go through some crisis or other. I have learned so much that I could put into practice and from the responses I have had, it's been very positive. Tutor feedback was fantastic. All individual answers were given a comment which helped me understand if I missed something."
Brenda Harvey, Counselling Skills I course.
WHY DO THIS COURSE?
- Improve your communication and counselling skills with this course.
- Understand more about counselling skills.
- Study counselling skills I for professional development.
- Gain an insight into the use of counselling skills in many situations.
WHAT NEXT?
- You can start our Counselling Skills I course at any time - Register to Study - Go to “It’s Easy to Enrol” box at the top of the page and you can enrol now.
or
- Phone us on (UK) 01384 442752, or (International) +44 (0) 1384 442752, OR
- Submit you questions to our specialist Psychology And Counselling tutors - they will help you in choosing a course which suits your goals.