THE CORE CONDITIONS OF COUNSELING –

INTRODUCTION

Many beginning counselors are able to accomplish the first

steps of verbal encouragement and sending the
appropriate non verbal messages across to the client with
ease. Difficulty arises when they have to respond and say
things to the client after they begin to disclose
information. As the information being disclosed is
important to the client, it becomes crucial that the
counselor convey respect and understanding for the
problem to the client.

3 purposes of disclosure:

1. Articulation or speaking of his or her experience.

2. To offer a safe place for the client to release pent up

feeling in the process of telling the experience.

3. Clarifying the true nature of the problem.

The counselor’s goal is to understand the client’s

experience as clearly and personally as possible, to lay the
foundation for change and to cement the therapeutic
alliance with the client.

New counselor’s often focus on finding the solution to a

client’s problem themselves and forget that ultimately it is
the client’s responsibility to solve the problems. The single
most important thing that counselors offer to their clients
is a good relationship that energizes the clients
themselves to use existing resources and assists them in
developing new skills to solve their problems. The last
thing that client’s want from professional counselor’s are
premature suggestions for change, as advice can even be
provided by well intentioned people around the client.
Providing premature suggestions and solutions to resolve
a client’s problem demeans the client’s ability to be self-
directing.

Carl Rogers described three core conditions of counseling;

empathy, positive regard and genuineness. He described
there as the necessary and sufficient conditions of
therapeutic personality change. Concreteness is the fourth
core condition of counseling. It is the counselor’s skill by
which he/she channelizes the client’s discussion on
specific events and diverts away from small talk or
excessive storytelling.
Primary empathy is most often communicated through an
interchangeable verbal response. These are statements
that capture the essential themes in a client’s statements
but do not go deeper than the transparent material.
Paraphrasing and restatements play a role as they convey
to the client that the counselor has understood what the
client is trying to convey. A paraphrase like, “you felt
angry and degraded as your girlfriend criticized you in
front of your friends” is a fairly typical response. It
captures the meaning and the feeling of the client’s
previous disclosure in simple language that the client can
understand. It is likely that the client will continue to
elaborate on the meaning of that or related experiences.

Statements such as “I know just how you felt” do not

communicate empathy because they contain nothing of
what the client’s have shared.

Advanced empathy is communicated through additive

verbal responses, where the counselor adds perceptions
that the client implied but did not state directly. The
ability to hear these implied meanings grows with
experience and with the quality of the counselor’s
diagnostic thinking.

Study:

Client and counselor perceptions of empathy at different

stages in the counseling process were examined in
relation to the verbal response modes used by counselors.
Each of 6 counselors (aged 32-58 yrs) at college
counseling centers was studied in counseling with 4
clients, of whom 2 were in initial sessions and 2 were in
sessions drawn from ongoing counseling relationships.
Clients perceived counselors as showing significantly
greater empathy during ongoing than during initial
sessions, and counselors perceived themselves as
showing significantly greater empathy during initial
sessions than did clients rating the same sessions. Clients
rated counselors using fewer general advisements as
more empathic, whereas counselors who rated themselves
more empathic used more explorations and fewer
reassurances. It was found that exploration was the only
category strongly associated with both client and
counselor experiences of empathic communication in both
initial and ongoing sessions.
Primary empathy is used in the first stage because:

• The client may feel threatened that the counselor can

see through his/her defenses too quickly.
• Limited knowledge about the unique experience of
the client.

Let’s now look at some Empathic Listening Techniques:

Encouragers

They can be verbal, non-verbal, or a mixture. They

communicate to the client: "I am listening", "I want to
listen", and "I want to understand more about your
experience"

Non-verbal "encourager" behaviors include nodding your

head, leaning forward, making sounds like "umm, ahh,
etc. Facial expressions are used like smiles and grimaces.

All of these non-verbal expression convey "I am with you."

Verbally, encouragers give permission, request additional

information, and provide direction.

Examples include statements like "Can you tell me more

about that"? Or "I'm curious about ......

Reflections

Reflective listening can be a powerful tool of

communication. In reflective listening you simply reflect to
the client what you think you heard, making sine to reflect
their feelings

Power of Reflective Listening

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct

forces:

As the counselor processes what the client is saying

through the counselor's own experience and reflects it to
the client in the counselor's own words, it lets the client
know that the counselor has not only heard the client but
has understood what has been said.

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct

forces:
The counselor is telling the client what he is saying in an
accurate way, it is clear the counselor has been listening
and not distorting what the client has told the counselor.

The power of reflective listening lies in three distinct

forces:

As the counselor reflects to the client what the counselor's

understanding is, the client has an opportunity to hear him
or herself in a new way.

Empathic Comments

Rogers wrote: "To be with another in this way

(empathetic) means that for the time being you lay aside
the views and values you hold for yourself in order to
enter another's world without prejudice. In some ways it
means you lay aside your self'.

Empathic comments include using a running commentary

while the client is talking, this would include encouragers
and reflective listening. Another approach is to wait until
the client finishes speaking and then summarize with
reflective statements.

Why Do We Use Empathic Listening?

To show an interest in the client

To encourage the client to gain a better understanding of

himself

To support the client in his attempts to resolve conflict

It is therapeutic in and of itself

It leads to an increase in client satisfaction

To discover the client's needs and concerns

The most important reason we use empathic

listening is because it maintains the client as the
primary problem solver, which is essentially the
essence of the counseling process.

Barriers to Empathic Listening

Cultural differences

Seeing the client as an object

Your inner-world (inscape)

Your preconceived ideas and beliefs

You may be uncomfortable in the presence of the client's

strong emotions---grief, anger or pain

To elaborate on cultural sensitivity and diversity, and also

to explain how a counselor can tackle a situation like that,
I will be using the example of Rob, an African-American
adolescent. Rob lived in the inner city and was a middle
school student participating in a diversity program. In the
first two sessions with the counselor, communication was
limited and strained, with the exception of a derogatory
comment toward the counselor or the school. Even when
the counselor would follow up these derogatory
statements, Rob refused to talk further. The counselor and
Rob had reached a therapeutic impasse. It then occurred
to the counselor that he has to address the obvious
differences between the two that were left unstated. With
some hesitation and unease, the counselor said to rob that
as an older white guy living outside of the city, he
probably did not have much of an idea. Almost
immediately, Rob began to scornfully point out the
differences between them. He expressed the view that the
counselor would never be able to understand to be under
the constant fear of being assaulted. After this, he began
to talk about personal issues, and a therapeutic
relationship began to develop.

Thus, from this we see that demonstrating an interest in a

client by learning more about his or her culture can
promote empathic understanding. From a clinical
perspective, cultural differences have been shown to bias
the accuracy of a therapists diagnostic impressions of
clients from diverse cultures.

IMPORTANCE OF EMPATHY

• Expresses caring and affirmation to the client. “I care

enough for you that I want to work hard to
understand you clearly.
• Feedback makes the client see his or her own themes
more clearly.
• Positive expectations about the whole counseling
experience. Explore, search and perceive oneself
more clearly. Active engagemet of all participants.
Not simply conversation. Self discovery. Nothing bad
 will happen as a result of communication, something
helpful is likely to occur.
• Communicates to the client that the counselor has
special expertise to offer. A counselor who can make
empathetic contact establishes himself or herself as
having some special skill. Optimism about future. For
client success in counseling, empathy is the most
important counselor quality.

EMPATHY V/S SYMPATHY

I would now like to give u a very brief distinction of

empathetic and sympathetic statements.

Empathy is, "I recognize how you feel."

ALTERNATE VIEW

While researching the internet I came across a very

interesting website, which gave me an entirely different
perspective on empathy. I will be giving u the website
address when I am done but I would like to first share with
you what caught my eye the most. The author says:

In human-speak, if you say that you are sad and I

empathize with you it means that we have an agreement.
I regard you as my object. You communicate to me a
property of yours ("sadness"). This triggers in me a
recollection of "what is sadness" or "what is to be sad". I
say that I know what you mean, I have been sad before, I
know what it is like to be sad. I empathize with you. We
agree about being sad. We have an intersubjective
agreement.

Alas, such an agreement is meaningless. We cannot (yet)

measure sadness, quantify it, crystallize it, access it in any
way from the outside. We are totally and absolutely reliant
on your introspection and on my introspection. There is no
way anyone can prove that my "sadness" is even remotely
similar to your sadness. I may be feeling or experiencing
something that you might find hilarious and not sad at all.
Still, I call it "sadness" and I empathize with you.
Sympathy is, "I'm sorry for your sadness, I wish to help."

LACK OF EMPATHY

Some psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientists

believe that not all humans have an ability to feel
empathy or perceive the emotions of others. For instance,
Autism and related conditions are often (but not always)
characterized by an apparent reduced ability to empathize
with others

http://samvak.tripod.com/empathy.html empathy -
understanding, sympathy – reaction, sharing.
http://www.glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/E
mpathyQuotient.aspx

EMPATHY

The word "empathy" has been derived from the German

word "einfuhlung”, the correct translation would be "in
feeling" or "feeling into something". It was used in the
context of art. For example, when a person observes a
piece of art, he or she may have the urge to be one with
that piece of art on a physical level, and lose a sense of
self awareness.

Carl Rogers defined empathy as the counselor’s ability to

enter the client’s phenomenal world, to experience the
client’s world as if it were the counselor’s own, without
ever losing the as if quality.

Bohart and Greenberg have described three categories of

empathy:

To illustrate further, I will be referring to the three

categories in the context of an abandoned pregnant
teenager.

1. Empathic rapport – if pregnancy out of wedlock is

against the moral beliefs of the counselor, the
counselor will still have to maintain kindness towards
and understanding of the client’s situation. The
counselor must display tolerance and acceptance of
the client’s situation and feelings.

2. Experience near understanding of the client’s world –

the counselor must be aware and conscious of the
client’s life situation; being pregnant at 16 and being
abandoned by the father of the baby – he/she should
be able to feel what the client is going through, what
led to the clients life situation and all in all, what it is
to be like her.
 3. Communicative attunement – the counselor tries to
put him/her self in the situation of the girl at the
moment, the highlight of which is being pregnant and
being abandoned at 16. The counselor tries to
understand the kind of trauma the girl is going
through with her family, at school, among her
friends, and the reality of possibly bringing up a child
single handedly at the age of 16.

An individual’s inscape can be explained as a culmination

of a person’s inner reactions which include one’s
memories, dreams, hopes, fears and aspirations. Empathy
is entering into the other persons inscape. Allowing
another to enter your inscape is a great act of trust. With
the clients permission and the counselors own will, the
counselor enters into the inscape and helps the client to
explore more fully.

The counselor must ask him/herself the following

questions before beginning the process of client
exploration.

• Can I step into his private world so completely that I

lose all desire to evaluate and judge it?
• Can I let myself enter fully the world of the client's
feelings and personal meanings and see these as he
does?
• Can I enter it so sensitively that I can move about it
freely, without trampling on meanings that are
precious to the client?
• Can I sense it so accurately that I can catch not only
the meanings of the client's experience which are
obvious to him, but those meanings which are only
implicit, which he sees only dimly or as confusion?

To stimulate client exploration the level of empathy

communicated should match client’s level of readiness.

Empathy involves two major skills, perceiving and

communicating. Perceiving involves an intense process of
actively listening for themes and issues. Themes are
recurring patterns such as, fear of failure, search for
personal power. Issues are questions of conflicts with
which the client is struggling. If related to the example
before, an issue would be a question like, “How will I tell
my parents that I'm pregnant?” “How will I take care of my
baby alone?”

George Kelly described the perceptual element of

empathy as understanding the client’s personal
constructs. Personal constructs are the unique set of
thoughts a person uses to process information giving
meaning to life events explain cause and effect
relationships and make decisions.

Beck and Meichenbaum through automatic thoughts and

internal dialogue respectively have explained how
empathy includes knowing not only what events have
occurred in the clients life but also how his or her
cognitive structure has led to interpretation of the events
and to consequent feelings. Often as the counselor listens
to the client’s story the counselor will see errors in the
client’s logic, construct, different cause and effect
relationships from the clients and identify the basis of the
clients distressed feelings. Going back to the example of
the APT, if the girl feels that her parents will actually kill
her if she tells them about her situation, the statement
would reflect on illogical thinking.

The counselor must communicate to the client that their

feelings and meanings have been understood. If the
counselor listens carefully and understands well but says
nothing, the client has no way of knowing what is in the
counselors mind and may misinterpret the counselors lack
of response as a negative judgment about what they have
said. In the case of APT when the girl was communicating
hurt about being rejected and abandoned because she
was pregnant, if the counselor did not respond, the girl
might begin to think that the counselor too, is viewing her
in a negative respect and that she is worthy of being
rejected and abandoned.

The counselor should use restatements and paraphrasing

as often, hearing ones own meanings and feelings helps
the client to take another look at life events and perceive
them differently.