Psychological counseling is a special area of practical psychology, which is associated with the provision of assistance in the form of advice and recommendations. Their specialist gives his client after a personal conversation with him, as well as during a preliminary study of the life problem that the person had to face.
Conduct psychological counseling only during those hours that were agreed with the client in advance. At the same time, a specially equipped room is selected for the conversation, isolated from strangers, in which a confidential environment is created.
Who needs psychological counseling?
At the appointment with a specialist, as a rule, those people who are not very well adapted to life come. There are many failures among them. It is the inability to achieve their goal that makes people who physically feel absolutelyhe althy, seek help from a psychologist. Also among such clients there are many such members of society who are distinguished by certain emotional deviations that have arisen as a result of repeated disappointments.
When do people begin to realize that they need the help of a psychologist? Usually this does not happen when they have problems. People come to see a specialist in the most difficult periods of their lives. They come at those moments when a person does not know what to do in the future or has already lost all hope of coping with his own problems on his own. So, a client turns to a psychologist if he is very upset and it seems to him that something terrible is happening to him or to the people closest to him, which is fraught with unpleasant consequences.
What are people trying to find by contacting a counseling psychologist? It is worth noting that some clients themselves know how to solve the problem that torments them. They go to a specialist only to get emotional support from him. But there are also clients who themselves do not even know how to get out of a difficult life situation. To solve their problem, they turn to a psychologist. The specialist will need to direct their activities in the right direction, persuading them to follow the proposed path.
There is another category of clients. These are lonely people who want to talk heart to heart with someone. They usually do not have any significant psychological problems. However, from time to time they need a friendly andattentive interlocutor.
Sometimes among the clients who turn to a psychologist, there are also people who are led to the doctor only by idle curiosity. Some of them just sincerely want to find out for themselves who this specialist is and what he does. Others are already trying to tell the professional about the futility of his work in advance. Thus, they put him in an uncomfortable position. However, the principles and rules of psychological counseling are such that a specialist needs to receive all clients and treat them humanely and kindly, regardless of what goals they pursue with their visit. By doing this, a professional will save his face and authority and, being a doctor, in accordance with the norms of medical ethics, will provide assistance to all those who come to see him.
Goals of psychological counseling
What questions can a person solve with a psychologist? The goals of the client's appeal will depend both on his needs and on the theoretical basis that the consultant has. The latter is determined by the specialist's belonging to a particular school.
However, any psychological counseling has several universal goals. Among them:
- Change in customer behavior. Achieving such a goal allows a person to begin to live as productively as possible, experiencing satisfaction from every day lived and not paying much attention to existing social restrictions.
- Developing skills to overcome difficulties that may arise when faced with new demands and lifecircumstances.
- Ensure effective decision making. There are quite a few things that a person can learn in the process of counseling. This is independence of actions, rational distribution of energy and time, an adequate assessment of the consequences of the risk taken, the study of the area of values in which decisions are made, as well as overcoming stress, understanding the influence of attitudes that change the course of decision-making, etc.
- Developing the ability to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships in the future. If the connections between people are built qualitatively, then they will be able to solve the problems that arise in their lives much easier and faster. And vice versa.
- Facilitating the realization and increasing the potential that a person has. Upon reaching this goal, the client will reach a state of maximum freedom. In addition, he will develop his ability to control the environment, as well as those reactions that are provoked by people nearby.
The goals of psychological counseling are also more global. In this case, they are aimed at restructuring the personal qualities of a person, changing his worldview. Specific goals are focused on changing customer behavior.
Tasks of psychological counseling
The main goal of a specialist is to assist the client in understanding the problem he has, as well as in finding ways and means to eliminate it as quickly as possible.
To do this, the psychologist will need to decidethe following tasks:
- Listen carefully to the person who has come. This aspect of the consultant's activity is of great importance. The psychologist needs to patiently listen to the client, using special techniques. Such actions will allow the specialist to familiarize himself with the problem. They will also help the client in understanding the current situation. This will largely determine the effectiveness of the consulting work carried out.
- During the conversation, the psychologist needs to expand the client's ideas about himself, about his current life situation and about the surrounding reality. A similar path leads to the provision of a corrective impact of the psychologist on his client. As a result, a person begins to evaluate and see his situation in a completely new way, formulating alternative options for his behavior in it.
- When conducting a consultation, a psychologist should keep in mind that the person who came to him for a conversation is perfectly he althy. He is fully responsible not only for himself, but also for the relationships that he develops with the people around him. At the same time, the psychologist will have to work with the client in such a way that he is not afraid to take responsibility for what is happening in life. This task is not easy. The fact is that most people who visit psychological counseling blame someone else for their difficulties.
How effective will the consultant's work be? In many respects, this will depend on the solution of the most important tasks related to listening to the client, as well as on expanding the person’s ideas about himself and aboutown situation.
Principles of psychological counseling
Many professions differ in their requirements, which are necessary for their implementation by specialists. Psychological counseling has its own goals, objectives and principles. We have read the first two points above. Now it is worth considering the general principles of psychological counseling. It is worth emphasizing that in some countries codes of ethics have been developed for such specialists. They contain those principles of psychological counseling, which are the key to the success of the impact exerted by a specialist. At the same time, the ethics of the professional's activities are ensured.
What are the basic principles of psychological counseling? Let's take a closer look at them.
Goodwill
The specialist must treat his client carefully and sensitively, without giving any assessments of his behavior. This is one of the principles of psychological counseling. A benevolent attitude is a contrast to the excessive active and noble activity of a professional, which are often imposed on a person, as well as generous, but at the same time primitive empathy and sympathy.
One of the most difficult principles of psychological counseling is non-estimation. It is believed that the consultant will need to spend about 17 years to implement it in a conversation. However, it should be borne in mind that non-judgmental does not mean indifference. She isinvolves taking a position of considerate neutrality, accompanied by a calm attitude to the facts reported by the client. At the same time, while struggling with the temptation to give an assessment to another person, based on your own life standards and standards, you should always understand that everything is known in comparison.
Customer Values and Norms Focus
This is the second of the principles of the foundations of psychological counseling. In the process of conducting a conversation, it is important for a professional to determine what this or that event means for the client. At the same time, it is worth remembering that only the person himself can be competent in his life. A psychologist cannot act, think, and even more so live for his client. However, the specialist must take care to realize for himself what a certain fact of life is for the one who asked for help. And only in the case when a professional manages to integrate into the internal dialogue of a person, it will be possible to start to get out of the impasse. The skill of the doctor in this case lies in his ability to give a person the opportunity to express the truth to himself.
There are similar principles of psychological counseling in working with a group. For example, talking to family. From a psychologist, such work will require clarification of the social roles of each of the members of the group. This step will be one of the most important in clarifying the content of the subject of interaction between loved ones. To do this, the psychologist will have to formulate what the roles of parents are from the point of view of the father and mother, as well as determining howthe child understands them.
Prohibition of advice
Methodological and ethical principles of psychological counseling indicate that a professional has no right to take responsibility for someone else's life. The prohibition against giving advice is the most promoted and widely known moment used in achieving goals. Of course, all this is true. However, it is worth remembering that a person comes to a psychologist precisely for advice. The client is ready to exchange his freedom for a clear instruction, which will indicate the correct actions. In addition, the situation is quite common when a practical, child or school psychologist still gives advice. He calls them recommendations. In this regard, the basic principles of socio-psychological counseling stipulate the following:
- A specialist should give advice if he knows exactly what a person needs to do. In many cases, he would be happy to do this, but he himself has no idea what the way out of the impasse should be.
- The client has the right to listen to advice, and then act in his own way.
- There are certain concepts of life that are interpreted by people in completely different ways. Among them are happiness, attention, love, etc. In this regard, even very good and effective advice can be implemented in the way that the client understood it. For example, using these principles in developmental psychological counseling, a professional can advise a mother to understand the relationship that she has with her teenage son. Afterreturning home, a woman is quite capable of giving her child a puzzle, reinforcing her lectures and screams with words that the psychologist told her to do so.
- Advice needs to be timely, relevant and relevant. A professional psychologist must give advice to the right person at the right time.
Features of professional secrecy (briefly)
Ethical principles in psychological counseling state that any person has the right to anonymity of treatment and confidentiality of the information provided. At the same time, the doctor should not disclose the client's innermost thoughts without his consent to any state or public organizations, as well as private individuals, including relatives and friends.
However, a professional may not always adhere to such ethical principles in psychological counseling. There are some exceptions to this rule, which the client must be warned about in advance. Violation of the principle of confidentiality is possible in situations where a psychologist learns during a consultation about the existence of a threat to someone's life. Such exceptions to this ethical principle are provided by law.
Distinction between professional and personal relationships
This principle is due to the fact that it is much easier for a professional to enter and exit contact with a client if there are no emotional “deals” between him and the interlocutor. The work of a psychologist will become more effective in the event thatwhen he does not have interactions with the person who turned to him outside of the consultation. After all, as is well known from medical practice, doctors do not operate on “their” ones.
Client activation
A person who applied for a consultation is in a situation of life trouble. However, you should not rely on the doctor for everything. Only the person himself can be responsible for his future destiny. The psychologist has to, without directing the client out of the impasse, still not leave him there alone. The counseling process requires mutual activity. The client must feel included in the conversation all the time of the reception, emotionally and vividly experiencing all the moments discussed with the professional. How to ensure such a state of man? To do this, the consultant will need to ensure that the conversation develops in a way that is understandable and logical for the interlocutor. At the same time, the client should be interested in what is being discussed with the psychologist. This will allow a person to experience the situation, analyze it and look for a way out to resolve it.
These are briefly the goals, objectives and ethical principles of psychological counseling. A specialist who impeccably adheres to all the points listed above is able to solve the problems of a person who has contacted him. At the same time, he will be ethically responsible for his actions, fulfilling professional obligations to people in need of help.
