Table of Contents
What do you mean by communication in counselling?
Communication can successfully strengthen relationships in therapy and counseling by gathering feedback from the client and incorporating it into treatment. Taking note of feedback is likely to improve therapeutic outcomes and reduce client dropout (Angelis, 2019). While essential in all aspects of our lives, effective communication is particularly valuable in therapy and counseling, impacting the treatment alliance and outcome. Direct, clear, and positive communication can help confirm treatment goals, encourage and provide feedback, and repair breakdowns to the overall process. Counselling skills are interpersonal and technical traits that a counsellor uses to better understand and listen to their clients. Using these skills, a counsellor helps a client overcome obstacles that are preventing them from leading a happy life. In our daily life, communication helps us build relationships by allowing us to share our experiences, and needs, and helps us connect to others. It’s the essence of life, allowing us to express feelings, pass on information and share thoughts. Effective communication examples can be stated as active listening, giving and taking feedback, empathy, and respectfulness, responding to messages, having volume and clarity in messages, understanding non-verbal data, building friendliness and confidence, adapting your communication style to the audience, and so on.
What are the two types of communication in counselling?
Two types of communication skills can be addressed through therapy, verbal and nonverbal. Verbal skills include written or spoken words. Nonverbal skills are communicated using means such as body language, eye contact, and gestures. The act of communicating involves verbal, nonverbal, and paraverbal components. The verbal component refers to the content of our message‚ the choice and arrangement of our words. The nonverbal component refers to the message we send through our body language. Communication is a process that involves sending and receiving messages through the verbal and non-verbal methods. Communication is a two-way means of communicating information in the form of thoughts, opinions, and ideas between two or more individuals with the purpose of building an understanding. Communication is a two-way process which involves transferring of information or messages from one person or group to another. This process goes on and includes a minimum of one sender and receiver to pass on the messages. These messages can either be any ideas, imagination, emotions, or thoughts.
Why is communication skills important for Counsellors?
Building rapport with a client increases their willingness to be vulnerable and honest during a counselling session. Counsellors can build trust by expressing a genuine interest in their client’s well-being. The goal of the counseling is to enable the individual to make critical decisions regarding alternative courses of actions without outside influence. Counseling will help individuals obtain individuals obtain information and to clarify emotional concern that may interfere with or be related to the decision involved. Verbal skills used in counseling are: focusing, which leads the client in a direction where progress can be made; verbal tracking, where a counselor paraphrases the client’s information to demonstrate support and empathetic listening; questioning, which involves deepening the therapeutic relationship, and confrontation … Listening/Observing: Listening is one of the most valuable counseling skills in the therapeutic relationship.