1. Chapter 9
Core Elements in Facilitating
Counseling

2. Objectives:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
To learn the core elements that facilitates
counseling
To determine environmental circumstances
that may or may not affect the counseling
process
To appreciate the importance of the different
internal conditions that affect counseling
process
To develop self-enthusiasm towards the
attitudes that contributes to an effective
counseling relationship
To exhibit the different external conditions
influencing counseling through a diorama

3. Core Elements
( gives significance to: )
Counseling process
Relationship of
counselor and client

4. A. External Conditions Influencing
Counseling
A number of considerable factors
have an impact in counseling process
and relationship – for better or for worse
these factors include the following:

5.  Structures
 Facilities
 Physical
Setting
 Proxemics
 Privacy
 Tape Recording
 Note Taking
 Professional Appearance & Concerns
 Counselee/Client characteristics
influencing counseling

6. Structure
A
joint understanding between the
counselor and counselee/client regarding
the
characteristics, conditions, procedures, and
parameters of counseling.
 Helps
clarify the counselor-counselee
relationship and give it direction; protect
the rights, roles, and obligations of both
counselors and counselees; and ensure the
success of counseling.

7. Practical guidelines are part of
building structure.
 Time
Limits ( a 50 minute session)
 Action limits (for prevention of destructive
behaviour)
 Role limits (what will be expected of each
participant)
 Procedural limits (counselee is given the
responsibility to work on specific goals or
needs)

8. Facilities
 Use/Activities
 Occupants
 Equipment/Supplies
 Space
Utilization
 Access/Circulation
 Environmental conditions
 Windows
 Sound
 Interior design
 Criteria

9. Physical Setting
The Room
The room should be comfortable
and attractive. Counseling facilities should
be designed for comfort and relaxation.

10. Colors of the Room
There can be several meanings for each
color. The most common suggested color of
a room is:
Blue: coolness, being soothing; like the
sky, water, and, ice, trustworthiness, friendline
ss
The least suggested is Black;
sophistication, formality, death, depression.

11. Seating Arrangements
What should be the seating arrangement:
face-to-face or angled?
Is there a designated seat(s) for the
client(s)?
Does the counselor decide where the
client should sit or is it the client‟s choice?

12. Counselor needs to experiment to find the
arrangement that is most comfortable
and productive.
Seating Arrangements depends with the
counselor‟s counseling technique.

13. Proxemics
Proxemics was coined by researcher E.T.
Hall in 1963 when he investigated man‟s
use of personal space in contrast with
“fixed” and “semi-fixed” feature space.
Fixed feature space – characterized by
unmovable boundaries (divisions within an
office building);
Semi-fixed space – fixed boundaries such
as furniture

14. Haase and DiMattia defined proxemics as
“the manner in which man regulates the
spatial features of his environment and
conversely the impact of that
environment on his subsequent
behaviour”.

15. Proxemics is all about the room
size, seating, physical distance between
people, seating and furniture
arrangements, and other physical features
on the counseling relationship.
Personal distance – for conversations
among good friends; from about 1.5 ft to
around 4 ft.; touch is minimal; vision and
hearing become important; distance use
to interact with friends

16. Social distance – conversations among
acquaintances; 4-12 ft; includes space
required for more formal social
interactions; hearing and vision are the
primary senses involved; often utilized in
business
Public distance – used for public
speaking; distances greater than 12 ft;
after 25 ft, interpersonal interaction is
not possible (hall); little detail involved in
communication; one-way
communication

17. Privacy
 Reduced
privacy decreased counselee
self-disclosure and that although spatial
dividers improved counselee‟s
perceptions of privacy, self-disclosure
failed to increase.
 According
to AFGA Code of Ethics, “the
counseling relationship and information
resulting there must be kept
confidentially consistent with the
obligations of the member as a
professional person”.

18. Tape Recording
 Tape
Recording has been widely used in
counselor preparation because of its
training value
 One
proviso attached to the question of
ethics is that all recordings are made
with the counselee‟s permission and
chat subsequent use of recordings is
made only with the counselee‟s written
consent.

19. Note-Taking
 Taking
notes should not interfere with
the flow of the interview.
 The
need to explain the purpose of note
taking to a counselee should be clear.

20.  It
is very important during the first session
to explain to the counselee that the
notes are confidential. It is important to
take that explanation a step further and
talk briefly about who will have access
to the case record.
 The
counselor should always be
prepared to show his/her counselee the
notes.

21. Professional Appearance and
Concerns
Dress/ Appearance
 Dressing
appropriately is the first physical
characteristic that affects the
counseling process (Meier and Davis).
 An
appearance that matches that of
other colleagues is fitting.

22. Credentials
 Counselor
should provide some
information about his/her credentials
and position. The rule is to be
completely straightforward.
 It
is important to let the counselee know
something about the counselor. This is
also one way of making the counselee
comfortable since the counselor will not
be a stranger to him/her anymore.

23. Time
 Arranging
the session for the same time
each week or day can signify the
counselor‟s commitment to the
relationship. Some counselees measure
their importance to the counselor by
how often their sessions exceed the
scheduled time.
 Be
explicit with counselee about the
length of a session. A typical individual
counseling session lasts45 or 50 minutes.

24. Confidentiality
 The
extent and limitation of
confidentiality must be explained to the
counselee during the first session. Many
organizations provide confidentiality
information in writing.
 The
counselees also need to understand
the kinds of information that cannot be
kept confidential.

25. Record-keeping
A
school counselor is required to keep
accurate, detailed, appropriate and
organized records of all counseling
sessions, meeting, and discussions.
 It
is important to ensure that the
counselor is aware of the school‟s
existing record-keeping system and
procedure.

26. Stress Management
Interviewing or counseling is stressful. It‟s
particularly stressful when counselors are
in the early learning stages.

27. Client Characteristics Influencing
Counseling
Most successful candidates for traditional
approaches ten to be YAVIS:
young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and
successful.
Less successful are HOUNDs:
homely, old, unintelligent, nonverbal, and
disadvantaged; or DUDs –
dumb, unintelligent, nonverbal, and
disadvantaged.

28. B. Counselor Attitudes that Influence
Counseling
The attitudes of counselors, their
approaches to the individual, and what
they do all influence the counseling
relationship to a marked degree.

29. Attitudes
An attitude is a point of view about a
situation. It is a relatively lasting cluster of
feelings, beliefs, and behaviour
tendencies directed towards specific
persons, ideas, objects, or groups.
It has three components: Cognitive
Component, Behavior Component, and
Affective Component.

30.  What
you think. (Cognitive Component)
-Beliefs people hold about the object of the attitude
-A person‟s perceptions, opinions, and beliefs
 What
you do. (Behavioral Component)
-Predispositions to act in certain ways toward the
object
-The tendency for a person to act in a certain way
toward someone or something
 What
you feel. (Affective Component)
-Emotional feeling stimulated by the object
-The emotional component and often learned

31. Beliefs
 Fundamental
among the counselor‟s
philosophical attitudes is a belief in the
worth and value of each counselee.

32.  Another
important part of the counselor‟s
philosophical orientation is the belief in the
need for freedom. Erich Fromm says that
people have freed themselves from the old
bonds of slavery and feudalism and
become individuals, enjoying certain right
and liberties, but have not gained freedom
in the positive sense of realizing their
intellectual and artistic possibilities. Fromm
sees the root of this problem in the nature
of modern industrial civilization.

33. A
third cardinal principle of the
counselor is the belief in the desirability
of liberty. Liberty means more than the
absence of external restraint. It includes
the power to act positively to achieve
one‟s chosen goals.

34. Belief System
 All
counseling theories propose an
interpretation of human nature, from
which a certain style arises.
Ultimately, one‟s beliefs about how
people interact and how they are
motivated to achieve will determine what
counseling orientation one formulates.

35. Values
Patterson points out that the counselor‟s
values influence the ethics of the
counseling relationship, the goals of
counseling, and the methods employed in
counseling.

36. He believes in consciously and directly
manipulating or influencing counselee because:

Each individual‟s philosophy of life is
different, unique, and unsuited to adoption
by another.

All counselors cannot be expected to have a
fully developed, adequate philosophy of life.

The appropriate places for instruction in
values are the home, school, and church.

37.  An
individual develops a code of ethics, not
from a single source or in a short period of
time, but over a long time and from many
influences.
 One
ought not to be prevented from
developing one‟s own unique philosophy
because it will be more personally
meaningful.
 The
counselee must have right to refuse to
accept any ethic or philosophy of life.

38. Importance of Value
 Value
is built-in in an individual. It is
something positive.
 Values
are things, persons, ideas or
goals which are important to life.
Anything which enables life to be
understood, evaluated, and directed
are values.

39. Modern Classification of Values
 Instrinsic
and Instrumentsal
 Accidental and Natural
 Primary and Secondary
 Moral and Ethnical Values
 Religious Values
 Cultural Values
 Social Values

40. Value System
Rev. Bachmeyer describes the value systems
which every individual has are his self-image
and experience. Self-image, as defined by
Tomas Andres, is a set of assumptions about
who we are, about what we expect the
future to bring about, whether we succeed
or fail, about how we are/ are not
competent, about how we should and
should not relate to one another.

41. Acceptance and Understanding
“by acceptance, I mean a warm regard for
him as a person of unconditional self-worth – of
value no matter what his condition, his
behaviour or his feelings. It means a respect
and liking for him as a separate
person, willingness for him to possess his own
feelings in his own way. It means an
acceptance of and a regard for his attitudes
of the moment, no matter how negative or
positive, no matter how much they may
contradict other attitudes be has held in the
past”.
-Rogers

42. Characteristics of Acceptance: Tyler
identified two components of
acceptance
– “willingness to allow individuals to differ
from one another in all sorts of ways”
– “a realization that the ongoing
experience of each person is a complex
pattern of striving, thinking, and feeling”.

43. Understanding: ability to perceived another‟s
relationships, meanings, content, and
structure. Tyler defined understanding as
“simply to grasp clearly and completely the
meaning the counselee is trying to convey”.

44. Characteristics of Understanding:
 Experiencing
is felt, rather than
thought, known, or verbalized
 Experiencing occurs in the immediate
present
 Experiencing can be directly referred to
by the individual
 Experiencing guides conceptualization
 Experiencing is implicitly meaningful

45. Fiedler’s description of ideal relationship:
 The
counselor is able to participate
completely in patient‟s communications.
 The counselor‟s comments are always right
in line with what they patient is trying to
convey.
 The counselor is well able to understand tile
patient‟s feelings.
 The counselor really cries to understand the
patient‟s feelings.
 The counselor always follows the patient‟s
line of though.

46. Levels of Understanding (Davis):
 Knowledge
about other individuals
 Verbal or intellectual understanding and
behavioural or operational
 Derived directly from individuals themselves
and is an attempt to step into their
perceptual world, to know their internal
world, their fears, loves, and anxieties.
 Self-understanding

47. Grace, Character, and Culture
Helping grace seems to have five key
attributes: warm concern for and acceptance
of the other; openness and atonement to the
other‟s experiential reality; a grasp of what the
other needs for his/her essential flourishing; an
ability to facilitate the realization of such
needs in the right manner and at the right
time; and an authentic presence.

48. Emotional Competence
One of the hallmarks of the self-creating
person. A person who has it is able to
manage their emotions aware in terms of
the basic skills of
control, expression, catharsis and
transmutation, plus one or two others.

49.  Zero
level – when a person‟s helping is
always contaminated by hidden, distorted
emotion and has an
oppressive, interfering, and inappropriate
quality.
 When
a person does help in an emotionally
clear and clean way at some tomes, but
also slips over at other times into
compulsive, intrusive “helping” without
realizing that he or she has done so.
 When
a person makes this kind of slip much
less often, knows when it has happened and
can correct it.

50. C. Internal Conditions that Influence
Counseling
These are growth-facilitating qualities in all
counseling relationships, regardless of the
counselor‟s theoretical orientation. Four
conditions are – rapport, empathy, counselor
congruence or genuineness, and
attentiveness.

51. Rapport
 Described
as a condition essential and
unconditional relationship between
counselor and counselee.
 Rapport
is generated by the smoothness
(lack of awkwardness, bumbling) with which
the counselor opens and interacts within the
relationship.

52. Empathy
 Said
to exist when counselors recognize the
feeling a client presents as being the client‟s
and not of their own feeling, and are able to
communicate back to the client the same
feeling so the client can recognize its similarity
to the one expressed.
 Rogers
defined it as “as if it were you own, but
without ever losing the „as if‟ quality”.

53. Buchheimer identified dimensions of empathy:
 Tone
– an expressive and nonverbal
dimension reflected when two people
interact in expressive harmony and unity
 Pace
leads
or appropriate timing of counselor
 Flexibility
or the counselor‟s ability to discard
previously thought out tactics or goals if they
do not fit the counselee‟s situation

54.  Perception
of the counselee‟s frame of
reference – ability to abstract the core of the
counselee‟s concern and to formulate it
objectively and palatably so that the person
can elaborate
 Repertoire
– resourcefulness with which
counselors vary their leading in appropriate
ways to apply to both manifest and dynamic
content of the counselee‟s expression

55. Five levels of empathic understanding:
Level 1 – verbal and behavioural expressions of
the helper either do not attend to detract
significantly from the verbal and behavioural
expressions of the helpee in that they
communicate significantly less of the helpee‟s
feelings than the helper has communicated.
Level 2 – while the helper responds to the
expressed feelings of the helpee, he does so in
such a way that he subtracts noticeable affect
from the communications of the helpee.

56. Level 3 – the expressions of the helper in response to the
expressions of the helpee are essentially
interchangeable with those of the helpee in that they
express essentially the same affect and meaning.
Level 4 – the responses of the helper add noticeably to
the expressions of the helpee in such a way to express
feeling a level deeper than the helpee was able express
himself.
Level 5 – the helper‟s responses add significantly to the
feeling and meaning of the expressions of the helpee in
such a way as to accurately express feeling levels below
what the helpee himself was able to express or in the
event of ongoing deep self-exploration on the helpee‟s
part, to be fully with him in his deepest moments.

57. Personal characteristics or behaviours that enhance a
counselor‟s ability to provide empathic understanding
include, but are not limited to, the following:

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own
values, attitudes, and beliefs and the emotional and
behavioural impact they have on his/ her own life

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own
feelings and emotional response patterns and how
they manifest themselves in interactive patterns

Has knowledge and awareness of his/her own life
experiences and his/her personal reactions to those
experiences

Possesses the capacity and willingness to
communicate these personal reactions to his/her
clients

58. Counselor‟s Congruence or
Genuineness
According to Capuzzi and Gross, genuineness
and congruence describe the ability to be
authentic in the helping relationship.

59. Five levels of genuineness or counselor’s self-congruence
Level 1 – the helper‟s verbalizations are clearly
unrelated to what he is feeling at the moment, or his
only genuine responses are negative in regard to the
helpee and appear to have a totally destructive effect
upon the helpee.
Level 2 – the helper‟s verbalizations are slightly
unrelated to what he appears otherwise to be a feeling
at the moment, or when his responses are genuine they
are negative in regard to the helpee and he does not
appear to know how to employ his negative reactions
as a basis for inquiry into the relationship.

60. Level 3 – the helper provides no negative cues
between what he says and what he feels, but he
provides no positive cues to indicate a really
genuine response to the helpee.
Level 4 – the helper presents some positive cues
indicating a genuine response (whether positive
or negative) in a non-destructive manner to the
helpee.
Level 5 – the helper appears freely and deeply
himself in a non-exploitative relationship with the
helpee.

61. Attentiveness
Requires skill in listening and observing, though
which the counselor comes to know and
understand the core of content and feeling
presented by the counselee.

62. Concreteness
Concreteness enables the counselor to remain
close to the client‟s level of feelings and
experiences; it eliminates misunderstandings
and permits clients to correct distortions in their
expressions; it fosters client attention to specific
problem areas.

63. Five levels of concreteness:
Level 1 – helper appears to lead or allow all
discussion with the helper to deal only with
vague and anonymous generalities
Level 2 – helper frequently appears to lead or
allow even discussions of material personally
relevant to the helpee to be dealt with on a
vague and abstract level
Level 3 – helper is open and at times facilitative
of the helpee‟s discussion of personally relevant
material in specific and concrete terminology

64. Level 4 – the helper appears frequently helpful in
enabling the helpee to fully develop in concrete
and specific terms almost all instances of
concern
Level 5 – helper appears always helpful in
guiding the discussion so that the helpee may
discuss fluently, directly, and completely specific
feelings and experiences.

65. Respect or Caring
The concept of unconditional positive regard
refers to the acceptance and positive feelings
that the counselor has for the child are not
conditional upon the child‟s actions or
behaviours.

66. Levels of the scale of unconditional positive regard or
respect/caring:
Level 1 – verbal and behavioural expressions of the
helper communicate a clear lack of respect (or
negative regard) for the helpee
Level 2 – helper responds to the helpee in such a
way as to communicate little respect for the
feelings, experiences, and potentials of the helpee
Level 3 – helper communicates a minimal
acknowledgement of regard for the helpee‟s
position and concern for the helpee‟s
feelings, experience, and potentials

67. Level 4 – helper communicates a very deep
respect and concern for the helpee
Level 5 – helper communicates the very
deepest respect for the helpee‟s worth as a
person and his potentials as a free individual

68. Personal characteristics or behaviours that
enhance a counselor‟s ability to provide respect
and positive regard include, but are not limited to
the following:
 Respects
himself/herself
 Views himself/herself as having worth and
potential
 Can model and communicate this positive selfimage to clients
 Can recognize his or her own control
needs, and has the ability to use this recognition
in a manner that allow clients to direct their
own lives

69. Trustworthiness
Stability and reliability are essential ingredients
in most therapeutic relationships and can offset
some of the confusion and chaos that many
counselee experience in their lives.

70. Persuasiveness (Social Influence)
Process of encouraging counselee to take
reasonable and growth-promoting risks, to
make thoughtful decisions and healthy
choices, to disclose and process feelings and
experiences that may reawaken pain, and to
move forward toward their goals.

71. Humor
Handled with care, humor can be a vehicle for
insight, an affirmation of the working alliance, a
true moment of meeting in the person person-toperson relationship or a gentle means of
confrontation.
Warmth
Ability to communicate and demonstrate genuine
caring and concern for clients.

72. Immediacy
Ability to deal with the here-and-now factors that
operate within the helping relationship

73. Personal characteristics or behaviours that
enhance a counselor‟s ability to use immediacy
effectively include, but are not limited to, the
following:
 Has
perceptive accuracy in interpreting
his/her own feelings for, thought about, and
behaviours toward clients
 Has perceptive accuracy in interpreting
client‟s feelings for, thoughts about, and
behaviours toward him/her
 Has the capacity for and willingness to deal
with his/ her own issues related to clients on a
personal as opposed to an abstract level

74. Hope
 Final
essential condition of psychotherapy
 Empathy,
trustworthiness, caring, congruen
ce, and persuasiveness all facilitate the
development of hope in counselee.

75. D. Counseling Relationship – The
Common Denominator
Most experts agree that the relationship is a
necessary condition for bringing about change
in the individual. Counselee who perceive their
counselors as empathic, caring, and
credible, and who feel understood by them are
likely to progress in treatment; while those have a
negative perception of their counselor, whether
or not the perception is grounded in reality, are
less likely to make progress.

76. Main Stages of the
Counseling Process

77. 1
• Introduction
• Set the context with the child, how does he feel about being here?
2
• Listen to his issues and concerns
• Remember this may be the first time he has openly expressed there.
3
4
5
6
7
8
• Try to clarify his problems and concerns by asking open and closed problems
• Consider the impact that his concerns are having on him and on his
relationships.
• Look at his beliefs about his problems.
• Look at his attempted solutions
• Offer further thoughts and interventions
• Monitor and assess change

78. The Stages of the Counseling Process
 Building
a Counseling Relationship
 Working in Counseling Relationship
 Termination of Counseling Relationship