It has been some time since you completed DCS. Would you like to do a review where you stand in the basic Skills of a Counsellor ?
- Ability to focus on the counselee and his emotions, and not jump to conclusions, look for solutions, or concentrate on other individuals involved with counsellee
- Ability to put counselee at ease, and build rapport
- Maintain confidentiality
- Acceptance, without being judgmental
- Availability, and the ability to make the counselee feel wanted
- Supportive and Active Listening, without interruption
- Resisting the temptation to solve problems or give advice
- Giving positive strokes and encouragement
- Empathy
- Not getting emotional or drowned in the counsellee’s emotions
- Paraphrasing and rephrasing, summarizing
- Empowering counselee to understand need for change, and guiding him towards it
- Helping and supporting counselee set goals
- Ability to understand one’s limitations, accept, and refer when necessary
- Strength and stability to prevent counter-transference, and keep oneself detached
- Capacity to handle difficult counselees
- Build strong bonds with counselee, but ensure he does not become dependant
- Memory to remember counselee’s issues, initiative to keep in touch (when necessary)
And most important – a counsellor should be genuine i.e. he must have congruence between his thoughts, words and action. See how many of these skills you have, are developing, or improving. It is not important how high is your rating, what is important is whether you are continuously improving in each of these parameters.
Wishing you a Very Happy Diwali and Rajyotsava!!!