CHAPTER Noting and Reflecting Feelings: A Foundation of Client Experience

How can reflection of feeling help you and your clients? Major function Underlying clients words and behaviors are feelings and emotions. The purpose of reflection of feeling is to make these implicit, sometimes hidden, emotions explicit and clear to the client. Knowledge and skill in reflection of feeling result in the following: Bringing out additional specifics of the client's emotional world. Noting that most clients have mixed or ambivalent feelings toward significant events and others. You can use the skill to help clients sort out these complex feelings and thoughts. Grounding the counselor and client from time to time in basic experience. There is a tendency in much interviewing to intellectualize and move away from deeper goals and feelings.

Secondary Function

INTRODUCTION "I'm feeling down right now. I just got word that I got turned down by graduate school. Now I really don't know what to do. It just seems that I've tried everything. If only Professor Jones hadn't treated me so unfairly, 1 might have made it. He really ticks me off! But maybe I should have worked harder. I just feel so confused about what to do next." Paraphrasing is concerned with feeding back to the client the essence of what has been said. Reflection of feeling, in contrast, involves observing client emotions and feeding key feelings back to the client. To clarify the distinction, take a moment right now to write a paraphrase of the preceding client statement:

When you reflect feelings, you add td the paraphrase those affective, or feeling words that are in tune with the client's emotional experience. Before reading further, write down the same client's feeling words and your impression of what some of the unspoken feeling words might have been if they had been expressed: Client-expressed feelings (explicit feelings):

Unexpressed feelings the client may have (implicit feelings):

Feeling words explicit in the client's statement are feeling down, ticked off, and confusion. The unexpressed, implicit feelings could be sadness, depression, worry, anxiety, anger, guilt, fear, and many others. In reflecting the client's feedings the counselor focuses on the clients emotions. In this case the counselor could say, "You feel clown and confused, and I sense some anger there as well." As emotions from the base of much of life experience, noting key feelings and helping the client clarify them can be one of the moss facilitative things an interviewer can do. This is particularly true in situations where emotions are confused or mixed; it often helps if we know how we feel before we act. Before continuing it would be helpful if you generated your own personal list of feeling words. If you are to reflect feelings, you need a vocabulary of emotional labels. An easy way to brainstorm about emotional words is to focus on four basic feelings-sad, mad, glad, and scarred. These four words are listed witch room for you to write related emotional words. Think particularly of different intensities of the same emotion. For example, mad might lead you to think of annoyed, angry, and furious. Sad Mad Glad Scared

Before moving further, it is important for you to reflect on yourself and your own personal style. How comfortable are you with emotional expression? If discussing feelings was not common in your past experience, this skill may be difficult for you. Thus as you work through the ideas presented here, reflect now and then on your own personal history and ability to deal with emotion. If you find this area uncomfortable, you may have difficulty in helping clients explore their issues in depth. The exercises here and throughout the book may be helpful in gaining greater access to your own experiential and emotional world. EXAMPLE INTERVIEW The following transcript illustrates reflection of feeling in action. Judith: So, Beth, how are things with your mother? (open question) Beth: Well, the tests that she had taken recently carne back looking pretty good. Bur with cancer you never can tell. I'm just really worried. It's hard to feel relaxed about her illness. Judith: You sound like you feel tense and worried. (Reflection of feeling. Note visual and kinesthetic modes used by Beth.)

Beth: Well, since she had her first bout with cancer . . . ah . . . I've just felt real concerned. She just doesn't look as well as she used to, and she seems to need a lot more rest. I guess I keep worrying that it's all going to, you know, turn out bad I y for her. Judith: I can sense you felt upset and concerned. At the same time, you feel worried about the fact that you don't know just what's going to happen. Beth: You know, ah . . . I've always seen her as a healthy person and now this thing has come up, I just worry about her all over the place. You know, little things that I never used to think about get me pretty jumpy. Judith: You've got real deep feelings of caring about her. (This reflection of feeling differs from earlier reflections in that the words deep feelings of caring come more from the counselor than from the client. This reflection potentially "adds" to Beth's understanding and again emphasizes positive assets on her part.) Beth: Yes, that's really correct. It made me realize that . . . how much I love her and how much she means to me. And . . . it's all real crazy 'cause that makes me worry about her oven more. Judith: It's almost as if the more you cure, the more you worry. This feeling becomes very powerful. (In this reflection the positive feelings are pointed out as part of the problem. Specifically, positive feelings toward a person can load to oven more anxiety than if you didn't cure a lot. This, of course, is a basic human issue. The price of the joy of caring for another is possible loss, a real issue underlying the difficulty many people find in being committed to each other.) Beth: That's right it's like a vicious circle. I just . . . you know. . . realize how much she means to me and then I worry more . . . and I think you're right-there isn't that much to worry about. (Note that Beth continually begins her statements with affirmations of the counselor's reflections, such as "Yes" and "That's right." Beth's last sentence comes from Beth, not from the counselor. Through the process of working through feelings, she is beginning to resolve issues: "But . . . ah . . . it's just real hard right now.") Judith: So in one sense you feel there's really not that much to worry about. But there is . . . there's not much you can do about it. Is that correct? (This reflection of feeling is particularly important as Judith has reflected in summary form the main feelings that Beth has talked about so far. The feelings are mixed-that is, a desire to do something and anxiety and worry about not being able to, feelings of deep caring and love, and Beth's beginning awareness that she will have to accept things as they are. That acceptance is the beginning of some emotional relief in the situation.) Beth: Yeah, it's the helplessness I feel. It's that, if she is really sick, it's out of my hands... Judith: Ummmm . . . Beth: Maybe that's what's really bothering me . . . that I used to think I had a lot of control over my life and her life, and now I realize that . . . ah . . . there's nothing I really can do anything about. Judith: Sounds like it's a deeply troubling thing, but it's something that you're beginning to accept. Am I hearing you correctly there?

(The reflection of feeling focuses on the mixed feelings of being bothered or troubled and the beginning of acceptance. As the counselor is now in more murky or difficult areas, the theck-outs or perception thecks at the end of her last rwo reflections of feeling are important to ensure accuracy and more open communication. The perception thecks were not consciously planned in this interview, but at times they should be deliberately planned.) Beth: That's right. I guess I'm having to leam how to do that right now. Judith: At the same time, are there any positives in the situation? Anything at all encouraging? (The reflection of feeling was followed by an open question oriented toward the search for something positive in the situation. Some counselors and interviewers focus solely on the negative and can literally cause depression and immobility. Some attention to positive dimensions is essential.) Beth: Well . . . the doctors seem to feel that she's doing real well. She's basically made a good recovery. Most of my worry about her, Judith, is that I never know when it s going to hit again. You know. . . Judith: Um-hum . . . Beth: It's the unknown that's really leaving me up in the air. Judith: So you do feel a little bit optimistic about the fact that she has recovered so quickly, is that right? (The reflection of feeling focuses on positive feelings. This seems important so that the counselor and client can attack problem areas from a base of strength rather than pessimism.) Beth: Yeah, I feel good about that. Comment: The counselor in this case did not plan to use almost exclusively reflections of feeling. Yet this particular topic segment was such that the client seemed to want and need deeper exploration of feelings. Out of that exploration the client developed a new awareness. Now chat this phase is completed, it would be appropriate to bring in other skills and work more concretely toward thinking through content issues or deciding on specific actions. In your own practice with reflection of feeling, attempt to use the skill as frequency as possible. In the early stages of mastery it is wise to combine the skill with questioning, encouraging, and paraphrasing; most people find it awkward to use a single skill at a time. Full mastery of a skill will appear when a person can conduce a long interview segment effectively using a single skill almost constantly. Over the years the most effective interviewer, counselor, or therapist often develops-consciously or unconsciously-a level of skill such that the specific skill being used makes relatively little difference. Each is used so well that positive client benefits can be produced. Effectiveness and competence, then, do not necessarily depend on the particular skill, but on the an of using it effectively. Nonetheless, being aware of and competent in each skill facilitates general personal and professional development as an interviewer.

INSTRUCTIONAL READING Many authorities argue that our thoughts and actions are only extensions of out basic feelings and emotional experience. The skill of reflection of feeling is aimed at assisting others to sense and experience the most basic part of themselves-how they really feel about another person or life event. A basic feeling we have toward out parents, family, and best friends is love and caring. This is a deep-seated emotion in most individuals. At the same time, over years of intimate contact, negative feelings about the same people may also appear, possibly overwhelming and hiding positive feelings; or negative feelings may be buried. A common task of many counselors is to help clients sort out mixed feelings toward significant people in their lives. Many people want a simple resolution and want to run away from complex mixed emotions. However, ideally the counselor should help the client discover and sort out both positive and negative feelings. At another level out work and social relationships and the decisions we make are often based on emotional experience. In an interviewing situation it is often helpful to assist the client in identifying feelings clearly. For example, an employee making a move to a new location may have positive feelings of satisfaction, joy, and accomplishment about the opportunity but simultaneously feel worried, anxious, and hesitant about new possibilities. The effective interviewer notes both dimensions and recognizes them as a valid part of life experience. At the most elementary level, the brief encounters we have with people throughout the day involve out emotions. Some are pleasant others can be fraught with tension and conflict even though the interaction may be only with a telephone operator about a bad connection, with a hurried clerk in a store, or with the police as they stop you for speeding. Feelings undergird these situations just as the more complex feelings we have toward significant others underlie more intimate relationships. Becoming aware of others' feelings can help you move through the tensions of the day more gracefully and can be helpful to other individuals in many small ways. Rather than reflecting clients' feelings about these situations, you may find a brief, simple acknowledgment of feeling is helpful. The lame structure is used in an acknowledgment as in a full reflection, but much less emphasis is given to feeling, and interaction moves on more quickly. Trust between counselor and client is necessary for full emotional exploration. But in some cultures expression of feelings is discouraged (see Weijun Zhang's comments throughout this book). You will find that a brief acknowledgment of feeling is at times more appropriate than a deep exploration of feelings. In acknowledging feelings, you state the feeling briefly ("You seem to be sad about that," or "It makes you happy") and then move on with the interview. Do not, however, use this idea, that one needs to be sensitive to cultural values, as an excuse to avoid emotion in counseling. With children, you will find acknowledgment of feelings may be especially helpful, particularly when they themselves are unaware of what they are feeling. At the same time, many children respond well to the classic reflection of feeling, "You feel (sad, mad, glad, scared) because. . ." When addressing client feelings and emotions in an interview, the following specifics are important to keep in mind.

Noting Client Verbal and Nonverbal Feelings When a client says "I feel sad"-or "glad" or "gloomy"-and supports this statement with appropriate nonverbal behavior, identifying emotions is easy. However, many clients present subtle or discrepant messages, for often they are not sure how they feel about a person or situation. In such cases the counselor may Nave to identify and label the implicit feelings. However, with skilled listening you can often help such clients label their own emotions. The most obvious technique for identifying client feelings is simply to ask the client an open question ("How do you feel about that?" "Could you explore any emotions that come to mind about your parents?" "What feelings come to mind when you talk about the loss?"). With some quieter clients, a closed question in which the counselor supplies the missing feeling word may be helpful ("Does that feel hurtful to you?" "Could it be that you feel angry at them?" "Are you glad?"). At other times the counselor will want to infer, or even guess, the client's feelings through observation of verbal and nonverbal cues such as discrepancies between what the client says about a person and his or her actions, or a slight body movement contradicting the client's words. As many clients have mixed feelings about the most significant events and people in their lives, inference of unstated feelings becomes one of the important observational skills of the counselor. A client may be talking about caring for and loving parents while holding his or her fist dosed. The mixed emotions may be obvious to the observer though not to the client. It is important to realize that different clients have different patterns of feelingword constructs, which provide you witch important information about how they think about the world. For example, Beth, the client in this chapter's example interview, used the following feeling words: worried, relaxed, real concerned, good, jumpy, love, helplessness, out of my hands, and control. Worry was used in many of her statements, and, although it has some negative evaluative connotations, it is base considered a mixed feeling representing a synthesis of all the other more specific words. The other words may be categorized into feelings of activity-passivity (real concerned, relaxed, jumpy), potency-impotency (helplessness, out of my hands, control), and positive or negative evaluation (good, love). Some possible goals for Beth would be to acknowledge and validate the general worry; to become more relaxed; to accept the fact that she cannot control her mother's illness, though she can control other aspects of the situation; and to give more weight to her positive feelings. The intentional counselor does not necessarily respond to every emotion, congruent or discrepant, that has been noted; reflections of feeling must be timed to meet the needs of the individual client. Sometimes it is best simply to note the emotion and keep it in mind for possible comment later. The Techniques of Reflecting Feelings Somewhat like the paraphrase, reflection of feeling involves a typical set of verbal responses that can be used in a variety of ways. The classic reflection of feeling consists of the following dimensions: 1. A sentence stem using, insofar as possible, the client's mode of receiving information (auditory, visual, or kinesthetic) often begins the reflection of feeling ("I hear you say you feel . . . "Feels like . . . "). Unfortunately, these

sentence stems have been used so often that they can almost sound like comical stereotypes. As you practice, you will want to vary sentence stems and sometimes omit them completely. Using the client's name and the pronoun you helps soften and personalize the sentence stem. 2. A feeling label or emotional word is added to the stem ("John, you seem to feel badly about . . . "Looks like you're happy" "Sounds like you're discouraged today; you look like you feel really down"). For mixed feelings more than one emotional word may be used ("Sally, you appear both glad and sad . . . "). 3. A context or brief paraphrase may be added to broaden the reflection of feeling. (To use the examples above, "John, you seem to feel bad about all the things that have happened in the past two weeks"; "Sally, you appear both glad and sad because you're leaving home.") The words about, when, and because are only three of many that add context to a reflection of feeling. 4. The tense of the reflection may be important. Reflections in the present tense ("Right now, you are angry") tend to be more useful than those in the past ("You felt angry then"). Soma clients will have difficulty with the present tense and need to work in the "here and now." Others may need to move back more objectively. 5. A check-out may be used to sea if the reflection is accurate. This is especially helpful if the feeling is implicit ("You feel angry today-am I hearing you correctly?). Noting Emotional Intensity: A Developmental Skill Clients have varying levels of intensity with which they describe emotional experiences. You will find that some clients find themselves overwhelmed by emotion and feelings while others are more remote and may use thinking and cognition to avoid really looking at how they feel. Ability and willingness to explore emotion varies from client to client. In developmental counseling and therapy (DCT) key observational skills have been identified to help organize the depth of client emotional experiencing (see Ivey, 1986, 1993, for elaboration of ideas presented here). Feelings are not just "feelings." They vary in intensity and how they are expressed. It is important that you be able to distinguish how a client reacts emotionally. Once you Nave awareness of a client's style of emotional expressiveness, you will have a better idea of how you can best help the client explore the complex world of affect and feeling. DCT's four emotional orientations may be described as follows: Sensorimotor emotional orientation. These clients are their emotions. They experience emotions rather than naming them or reflecting on them. They may cry, they may laugh, but emotional experience is primary and there is only limited separation of thought and feeling. The positives of this level of emotional involvement are access to the real and immediate experiences of being sad, mad, glad, or scared in the moment. On the negative side, these clients may be overwhelmed by too much emotion. If you are to help clients re-experience issues, you will often want to encourage full sensorimotor experiencing of emotion at some appropriate point. A question that may

enhance or open sensorimotor, deeper emotions is "What are you feeling/experiencing at this moment?" You may also suggest that the client develop a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic image: "Can you develop an image of that experience-what are you seeing/hearing/ feeling at this moment?" This imagery exercise can be powerful. Use with care and a clear sense of ethics. Concrete emotional orientation. The skills of reflection of feeling as presented in this chapter are primarily focused on a concrete emotional orientation. Feelings are named (early concrete) via statements such as "You seem to feel sad." Late concrete emotion is emphasized when we add causation statements to the reflection-"you feel sad because. .." Many of your clients will come to you with only a vague sense of the emotions underlying their concerns. The concrete emotional orientation helps clarify issues and the resulting crispness can form a foundation for moving to more in-depth emotional exploration at the sensorimotor level or for helping clients understand repeating emotional patterns at the formal level. Note that as we make emotions concrete or examine their patterns, we move away from direct sensorimotor emotional expression. For clients who need to become self reflective, this is most useful. But for clients who avoid really looking at how they feel, concrete and formal emotional reflection can be a way of avoiding feelings. Most of this chapter is focused on concrete emotional experience. The first task is concretely naming or labeling the emotion-"What are you feeling?" If necessary, ask, "What name would you give to that feeling?" The simplest, most direct concrete reflection of feeling is "You are feeling (or felt) X?" For example, "You feel sad" (or glad, mad, or scared). This naming of feelings itself can be very therapeutic to some clients as they may be very out of touch with their emotions. Another type of concrete reflection entails context and situation and may even become causal: "You feel X because Y," or "You feel X when Y happens." For example, "You feel sad because your teacher scolded you." "You feel scared when you encounter a new situation." Abstract formal-operational emotional orientation. The client becomes less concrete and more abstract, reflecting on emotions and thus may avoid experiencing them. Formal clients may be quite effective at seeing repeating patterns of emotion. You may find that some clients are very good at reflecting abstractly on their feelings, but never ~low themselves to experience emotion at the full sensorimotor level. Reflection is very useful in helping clients understand their patterns and modes of emotionality. "As you look back on your situation/your- self, what types of feelings do you notice?" "As you reflect on that feeling you just talked about, what do you think?" "What are your patterns of emotion?" "Do you feel that way a lot?" At this point emotion is more abstract. Clients think back rather than directly experiencing their feelings. Abstract dialectic/systemic emotional orientation. Clients at this level are very effective at analyzing their emotions, and their emotionality will change with the context. A client may say, "I am terribly sad to lose my lover through AIDS, but I am proud of how he/she have effectively despite it. In a way, I am joyful at the triumph over adversity my lover has demonstrated." Note that this is a more analytic and multiperspective view of emotionality, which moves even farther away from direct, here-and-now experiencing.

Dialectic/systemic emotions are complex, and change in context. The style tends to be theoretical, and emotions are analyzed more than experienced. "How do your emotions change when you cake another perspective on your issue(s)?" "Where do you think you learned that pattern of emotional expression-in your family or elsewhere?" These are only two of many possible questions that lead to multiperspective thought on emotional experience. Proponents of DCT argue that all four levels of emotion are valuable. With clients who are predominantly abstract in orientation, it may be helpful to aid them in experiencing emotion at the concrete or sensorimotor levels. For example, a person experiencing significant loss (divorce, death, job loss, illness) will usually benefit from talking about her or his issues at all four emotional levels. With concrete clients, a long-term interviewing goal may be to help them get more distance on their emotions and think more abstractly. Emotion is holistic, and no one way of experiencing emotion is best. Box 6-2 presents techniques for working with emotion in the session. Note that specific ways to help clients get in touch with their feelings are suggested. And, at other times, you may want to assist clients in slowing down the emotional flow. Each of the questions associated with the emotional orientations can expand or contract emotional discussion depending on the timing of the skill. As you become more experienced in dealing with client emotions, you may find these guidelines helpful. Box 6-1 Does He Have Any Feelings? by Weijun Zhang Illustration: A student from China comes in for counseling, referred by his American roommate. According to the roommate, the client quite often calls his wifes name out loud while dreaming, which usually wakes the others in the apartment, and he was seen several times doing nothing but gazing at his wifes picture. Throughout the session the client is quite cooperative in letting the counselor know all the facts concerning his marriage and why his wife is not able to join him. But each time the counselor tries to identify or elicit his feelings toward his wife, the client diverts these efforts by talking about something else. He remains perfectly polite and expressionless until the end of the session. No sooner had the practicing counselor in my practicum class stopped the videotape machine, than I heard comments such as "inscrutable," and "He has no feelings!" escape from the mouths of my European-American classmates. I do not blame them, for the Chinese student did behave strangely judging from their frame of reference. "How do you feel about this?" "What feelings are you experiencing when you think of this?" How many times have we heard, or used, questions such as these? The problem with these questions is they stem from a European-American counseling tradition, which is not always appropriate. For example, in much of Asia, the cultural rationale is that the social order doesn't need extensive consideration of personal, inner feelings. We make sense of ourselves in terms of out society and the roles we are given within the society. In this light, in China, individual feelings are ordinarily seen as lacking social significance. For thousands of years, out ancestors have stressed how one behaves in public, not how one feels inside. We do not

believe that feelings have to be consistent with actions. Against such a cultural background, one might understand why the Chinese student was resistant when the counselor showed interest in his feelings and addressed that issue directly. But I am not suggesting here that Asians are devoid of feelings or strong emotions. We are just not supposed to telegraph them as do people from the West. Indeed, if feelings are seen as an insignificant part of an individual and regarded as irrelevant in terms of social importance, why should one send out emotional messages to casual acquaintances or outsiders (the counselor being one of them)? What is more, most Asian men still have traditional beliefs that showing affection toward one's wife while others are around, even verbally, is a sign of being a sissy, being unmanly, or weak. I can still vividly remember when my child was four years old, my wife and I once received some serious lecturing on parental influence and social morality from both out parents and grandparents, simply because out son reported co them that he saw "Dad give Mom a kiss." You can imagine how shocking it must be for moss Chinese husbands, who do not dare oven touch their wives' hands in public, to sea on television that American presidential candidates display such intimacy with their spouses on the stage! But the other side of the coin is that not many Chinese husbands watch television sports programs while their wives are busy with household chores afire a full day's work. They show their affection by sharing the housework! Allen Ivey comments: Not only is the expression of feelings as demanded in counseling inappropriate in many Asian cultures and among many Asian-Americans, but you will also find that Native Americans, Latino men, African American men, and many European-American men will resist or have difficulty in exploring emotions. Furthermore, soma women may also resist sharing emotions, particularly if the helper is a man. Many cultures and family traditions require people to mask the expression of feelings. With clients who do not easily express emotion, you will need to have patience and first spend time developing trust and rapport. This may cake more than one session, and in the meantime using brief acknowledgments of possible emotions may be helpful. And when you sense the time is ripe to tackle the client's feelings, proceed little by little and with cultural and gender sensitivity. Box 6-2 Helping Client Increase or Decrease Emotional Expressiveness1 Observe nonverbals Breath directly reflects emotional content. Rapid or frozen breath signals contact with intense emotion. Also note facial flushing, pupil contraction/dilation, body tension, and changes in vocal tone, and note, especially, speech hesitations. You may also find apparent absence of emotion when discussing a difficult issue. This might be a clue that the client is avoiding dealing with feelings or that the expression of emotion is culturally inappropriate for this client. You can pace clients and then lead them to more expression and awareness of affect. Many people get right to the edge of a feeling, and then back away with a joke, change of subject, or intellectual analysis.

Pacing clients

This box is adapted fom a presentation by Leslie Brain at the University of Massachusetts in spring 1988

Some of the things you can do are the following: - Say to the client that he or she looked close to something important. "Would you like to go back and try again?" - Discuss some positive aspect of the situation. This can free the client up to face the negative. You as counselor also represent a positive asset yourself. - Use here-and-now sensorimotor techniques, especially in the present tense: "What are you seeing/hearing/feeling?" Use Gestalt exercises or anything to enable a client to become mo.reaware of body feeling. Use the word do if you find yourself uncomfortable with emotion: "What do you feel?" or "What did you feel then?" starts to move the ,client away from here-andnow experiencing. Your comfort level with your own emotional expression will affect When tears, rage, despair, how a client faces emotion. If you arent comfortable with a joy, or exhilaration come up particular emotion, your client will likely avoid it also and you may handle the issue less effectively. A balance between, on the one hand, being very present with your own breathing and showing culturally appropriate and supportive eye contact and on the other, still allowing room to sob, yell, or shake, is important. You can also use phrases such as: I'm here. I'm standing right with you in this. These feelings are just right. I see you. I've been there too. (Let it out...that's OK.) I hear you. Breathe with it.

Sometimes it is helpful to keep emotion expression within a fixed time; 5 minutes is a long time when you are crying. Afterward, helping the person reorient is important. '"" Tools for reorienting the interview include: Slowed, rhythmic breathing Counselor and client discussion of positive strengths inherent in the client and situation Discussion of direct, empowering, self-protective steps that the client can take in response to the feelings expressed Standing and walking or centering the pelvis and torso in a seated position Positive reframing of the emotional experience Comment that the story needs to be told many times and each time helps A caution As you work with emotion, there is always the possibility of reawakening issues in a client who has a history of painful trauma. This is an area where the beginning interviewer often needs to refer to a more experienced professional. Even the 5 minute expression of emotion suggesteQhere may be too long. Be sure that you are working with the client and obtain permission for the depth of emotional experi- encing desired. In such situations, seek supervision and consultation. SUMMARY CAUTION Reflection has been described as a basic feature of the counseling process, yet it can be overdone. Many times a short and accurate reflection may be the most helpful. With friends, family, and fellow employees, a quick acknowledgment of feelings ("If I were you, I'd feel angry about that . . ." or "You must be tired today") followed by continued normal conversational flow may be most helpful in developing better relationships. In an interaction

with a harried warier or salesperson, an acknowledgment of feelings may change the whole tone of a mea or business interchange. Similarly, with many clients a brief reflection of feeling may be more useful than the more detailed emphasis outlined here. Identifying implicit feelings can be helpful, and as clients move toward complex issues, the sorting out of mixed feelings may be a central ingredient of successful counseling, be it vocational interviewing, personal decision making, or in-depth individual counseling and therapy. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that not all people will appreciate or welcome your noting their feelings. Clients tend to disclose feelings only after rapport and trust have been developed. Less verbal clients may find reflection puzzling at times or may say, for instance, "Of course I'm angry; why did you say that?" With some cultural groups, reflection of feeling may be inappropriate and represent cultural insensitivity. Some men, for example, may believe that expression of feelings is "unmanly," yet a brief reflection may be helpful to them. Be aware that an empathic reflection can sometimes have a confrontational quality that causes clients to look at themselves from a different perspective; it may therefore seem intrusive to some clients. Though noting feelings in the interview is essential, acting on your observations may not always be in the best interests of the client. Timing is particularly important with this skill. Box 6-3 Key Points Why? What? Emotions undergird out life experiences. Emotions are the source of many of out thoughts and actions. If we can identify and sort out clients' feelings, we have a foundation for further action. Emotions and feelings may be identified through labeling client behavior with affective words such as sa, mad, glad, and scared. The counselor will want to develop an array of ways to note and label client emotions. In labeling client feelings, it is important to note the following: 1. Emotional words used by the client 2. Implicit emotional words nor actually spoken 3. Nonverbally expressed emorions seen through the observation of body movement 4. Mixed verbal and nonverbal emotional cues, which may represent a variery of discrepancies Emotions may be observed directly, drawn out through questions ("How do you feel about that?" "Do you feel angry?"), and then reflected through the following steps: 1. Begin with a sentence stem such as "You feel . . ." or "Sounds like you feel . . ." or "Could it be you lee . . . ?" Use the client's name. 2. Feeling word(s) may be added (sacZ bappy, g4ad). 3. The context may be added through a paraphrase or a repetition of key content ("Looks like you feel happy about the excellent rating"). 4. In many cases a present-tense reflection is more powerful than one in the past or future tense. "You feel happy right now rather than "you felt" or "you will feel." 5. Following an implicit identification of feeling, the theck-out may be most use ful. "Am I hearing you correctly?" "Is that lose?" This lets the client correct you if you are either incorrect or uncomfortably close to a truth that he or she is not yet ready to admit.

How?