Learn counselling techniques to gain self-awareness and the ability to assist others.
- Online course for counsellors that is self-paced.
- Learn from a group of qualified psychologists and counsellors from the UK and Australia.
- The Association of Coaching and the Complementary Medicine Association both recognise ACS as a member.
- Improve your skills for voluntary work or begin your career training.
What Does a Therapist Do?
The counselor’s job is to help the client resolve these problems while respecting their values, cultural traditions, and freedom of choice. In a safe and predictable setting, counselling can give people a regular time and place to discuss their issues and work through challenging emotions.
Counselors often don’t give counsel; instead, they provide insight into their clients’ thoughts and actions and, if required, assist them in changing their behaviour. They accomplish this by listening to the client’s input and offering professional commentary on it. An individual who uses counselling techniques in the course of their work, such as a nurse, youth leader, personal trainer, or teacher, falls within the broad category of counselling.
Taking Notes and Reacting
“It matters how we listen to and respond to others in our daily lives. Nevertheless, do we actually listen and pay attention when we say we do? A helpful course in counselling skills examines how we interact with others, looking at active listening, paraphrasing, feedback, and more. A beneficial training for anyone who works or interacts with others in their daily lives.”
Tracey Jones is an ACS tutor who holds degrees in psychology, social work, and education. She also has a PGCE in education and a PGD (Learning Disability Studies).
Lesson Structure
There are 8 lessons in this course:
- 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 & 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
- Listening & 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
- Reflection:
- Non Directive Counselling
- Paraphrasing
- Feelings
- Reflection of Feeling
- Client Responses to Reflection of Feelings
- Reflection of Content and Feeling
- Case Studies
- Questioning:
- Open & Closed Questions
- Other types of Questions (Linear, Information seeking, Strategic, Reflective, Clarification, etc.)
- Questions to Avoid
- Goals of Questioning
- Identification
- Assessment
- Intervention
- Case Studies
- Interview techniques:
- Summarising
- Application
- Confrontation
- Reframing
- Case Studies
- Perspective
- Summary
- Changing beliefs and normalising:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
- Changing Self-Destructive Beliefs
- Irrational Beliefs
- Normalising
- Case Studies
- Designing a Questionnaire
- Finding solutions:
- Moving Forward
- Choices (Reviewing, Creating, Making choices)
- Facilitating Actions
- Gestalt Awareness Circle
- Psychological Blocks
- Case Study
- Ending the counselling:
- Terminating the session
- Closure
- Further Meetings
- Dependency
- Confronting Dependency
- Chronic Callers
- Terminating Silent Phone Calls
- Silent Endings
- Case Study
- Other Services
Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school’s tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims
- Describe the procedures used to teach counsellors in micro skills.
- Describe how to start the counselling process and how to evaluate minimal and nonverbal responses.
- Discuss the appropriateness of both topic and feeling for the counselling process.
- In order to grasp the hazards associated with certain types of questioning, multiple questioning approaches should be demonstrated.
- Showcase how to apply a variety of micro-skills, such as summarising, confronting, and reframing.
- Provide examples of destructive attitudes about oneself and how to challenge them, even by normalising.
- Describe how a client receiving counselling might enhance their psychological health by making decisions, overcoming psychological obstacles, and facilitating activities.
- Explain effective ways to terminate a counselling session and provide examples of how to deal with dependency.
How You Plan to Act
- Report on a simulated or actual counselling session that was witnessed.
- Describe the learning strategies the aspiring counsellor can use.
- Showcase the challenges that could come up when learning and using micro talents for the first time.
- Determine the possible causes of a trainee counsellor’s reluctance to discuss personal issues during training.
- Determine the dangers that may develop if student counsellors are reluctant to reveal their personal issues.
- Talk about various modelling techniques as a sort of counselling.
- Analyze the spoken and unspoken language used in an observed interview.
- Describe the counselor’s main responsibilities (in a generic sense).
- Demonstrate how to listen with intention by using minimal responses as a key strategy.
- Describe the significance of several non-verbal cues in the counselling process.
- Report about the conversation you had with a stranger about a small issue you were having.
- Provide an illustration of how paraphrase can be used as a simple way to express emotions.
- Describe how paraphrase is used in counselling.
- Distinguish between catharsis and confused feelings and thoughts.
- Provide an illustration of a sentence that reflects both content (thinking) and feeling back to the listener.
- In a fictitious counselling session, demonstrate or observe several replies to a range of closed and open queries.
- In a counselling role play, evaluate the open and closed questions you used.
- Determine the primary dangers posed by having too many inquiries,
- Why is it important to steer clear of “why” queries in counselling?
- Describe how using various micro-skills may be beneficial for counselling in the observed communication (written or oral).
- Suggest instances where confrontation between the counsellor and the client would be appropriate.
- Using case studies, discuss when confrontation is acceptable.
- Demonstrate how reframing can be used to alter a client’s point of view.
- Provide a system for determining whether self-destructive beliefs (SDBs) exist.
- Recognize individuals who hold self-destructive beliefs (SDBs) within a community.
- List the techniques that can be used to test SDBs.
- In a case study, define what “normalising” means.
- Showcase the safety measures that ought to be taken when utilising normalisation.
- Identify and assess potential solutions to various conundrums.
- Provide an example of how the “circle of awareness” can be used to help a client.
- Describe the causes of psychological roadblocks and how a counsellor could assist a client in overcoming them.
- Provide an example of the steps a counsellor would take with a client to help them achieve a goal.
- Find interdependence in the interactions you have noticed.
- Justify the need of time management in the counselling process.
- Contrast ending a session with ending the therapeutic process.
- Show the risks that arise from client and counsellor interdependence, as well as how dependency can be handled.
- In a case study, describe any negative elements of dependency.
Various Assisting Personnel
A lot of people use counselling techniques on a daily basis. Nonetheless, there are situations when using one’s typical forms of assistance may not be acceptable. They might not want to talk about their issues with a friend or member of their family. They might believe the person is too close, they don’t want them to know about their private issues, or the person they typically confide in might be a contributing factor to the issue. Counselors are taught how to be helpful in trying or delicate circumstances. They must protect our privacy and be impartial, impartial, and independent. With counselling, people can clarify their issues, identify changes they want to make, gain new insight, consider alternative solutions, and examine the effects of life events on their emotional wellbeing.
Counselors don’t deal with the deeper depths of the psyche; instead, they offer clients support and advice. Some therapists, on the other hand, specialise in helping those who are struggling. A person who has received training in the concepts and methods of psychoanalysis is referred to as a psychoanalyst. They would have received their first training as a doctor, psychiatric social worker, or psychologist. Personal analysis will be a part of their training. The term “psychoanalysis” refers to Freud’s body of beliefs about human behaviour as well as the method of mental disease treatment he developed. Although since Freud’s time, psychoanalysis has advanced significantly.
An expert in psychotherapy is a psychotherapist. Typically, they are a psychiatric social worker, clinical psychologist, or psychiatrist. Using psychological methods to address psychological disorders is known as psychotherapy. Behavioural, cognitive, humanistic, and psychoanalytic treatment are the four primary types of psychotherapy. The four strategies come in numerous iterations.
A clinical psychologist is a professional in the field. Also, they might be psychotherapists, however this is not required. They could work in clinics or hospitals or have a private practise. The area of psychology known as clinical psychology is focused on using psychological theory and research to treat and diagnose mental, emotional, and behavioural issues.
A specialist in psychiatry is known as a psychiatrist. The area of medicine that deals with mental illness is psychiatry. Clinical psychology and psychiatry share many topics, with the primary distinction being in the educational backgrounds of the two professions. A psychiatrist employs the medical model to treat mental illnesses and has only received training in psychopathology. The clinical psychologist tends to see normal and aberrant behaviour as existing on the same continuum despite lacking medical training, being unable to prescribe medications, and not having medical training.
ACS Graduate comment:
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
How This Training May Be of Use to You
The basis for becoming a counsellor is developing counselling abilities. Every counsellor needs to be aware of the many micro-skills and how to apply them effectively. This course offers a framework to let students learn and practise as they go, from hard skills like confrontation and listening and attending skills to influencing skills like meaning reflection. Graduates will feel confident using the tools in their arsenal as intended.
Individuals who are interested in working in:
- Counselling
- Psychotherapy
- Psychology
- Health professions
- Caring roles
Do you want to develop your counselling abilities? Would you like to interact and work with people more effectively? Do you care about people? Why not enrol in this course to develop your interpersonal skills?
- Become more adept in supporting or counselling people as they go through processes of personal development and growth.
- This course will provide you with the knowledge and skills you need to assist people in overcoming their own mental limitations and replacing feelings of helplessness with useful behaviours such as goal-setting.
