Psychological counseling is a special area of ​​practical psychology that is associated with providing 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 a person had to face.
Provide psychological counseling only during those hours that have been agreed with the client in advance. At the same time, for conversation, a specially equipped room is selected, isolated from strangers, in which a confidential atmosphere is created.
Who needs psychological counseling?
As a rule, those people who are not very well adapted to life come to see a specialist. Among them are many losers. It is the inability to achieve their goal that makes people who physically feel absolutely healthy look for help from a psychologist. Also, among such clients there are many such members of the society who are distinguished by various emotional deviations arising from repeated disappointments.
In what cases do people become aware that they need the help of a psychologist? Usually this does not happen at all when they have problems. People come to see a specialist in the most difficult life periods. 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, the client turns to the 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 customers themselves know how to solve their problem. They go to a specialist only in order 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 customers. These are single people who want to talk with someone heart to heart. As a rule, they have no significant psychological problems. However, from time to time they need a friendly and attentive interlocutor.
Sometimes, among clients who have turned to a psychologist, there are also such people whom only idle curiosity leads to the doctor. Some of them just sincerely want to find out for themselves who this specialist is and what he does. Others already try to tell the professional about the futility of his work. Thus, they put him in an uncomfortable position. However, the principles and rules of psychological counseling are such that a specialist needs to accept all clients and treat them humanly and kindly, regardless of what goals they pursue with their visit. With this, the professional will retain his face and authority and, being a doctor, according to the standards of medical ethics, will help all those who come to his appointment.
The 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 base that the consultant has. The latter is determined by the affiliation of a specialist 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 start living as productively as possible, experiencing satisfaction from each day spent and not paying particular attention to existing social restrictions.
- Developing skills to overcome difficulties that may arise in the face of new requirements and life circumstances.
- Ensuring effective decision-making. There are quite a few actions that a person is able to learn in the counseling process. This is the independence of actions, the rational distribution of energy and time, an adequate assessment of the consequences of the risk taken, a study of the area of ​​values ​​in which decisions are made, as well as stress management, an understanding of the influence of attitudes that change the course of decision making, etc.
- The development of the ability to tie and maintain interpersonal relationships in the future. If the relations between people are built in a high-quality manner, then they can solve the problems that arise in their life much easier and faster. And vice versa.
- Facilitation of the implementation and increase of the potential that a person possesses. Upon reaching this goal, the client will achieve 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. Specifically set goals are focused on changing customer behavior.
The tasks of psychological counseling
The main goal of the specialist is to assist the client in realizing the problem he has, as well as in finding ways and means of quickly eliminating it.
For this, the psychologist will need to solve the following problems:
- 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 situation. This will largely determine the effectiveness of the consultation work.
- In the process of conversation, the psychologist needs to expand the client’s ideas about himself, about his current life situation and surrounding reality. A similar path leads to the provision of a corrective effect of a 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, the psychologist must keep in mind that the person who came to him for a conversation is completely healthy. He is fully responsible not only for himself, but also for those relations that develop with him with people around him. In this case, the psychologist will have to work with the client so 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 have attended a psychological consultation blame someone else for their difficulties.
How effective will the work of a consultant 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 the expansion of the person’s ideas about himself and about his own 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. The first two points we reviewed above. Now it’s worth considering the general principles of psychological counseling. It is worth emphasizing that in some countries ethical codes have been developed for such specialists. They contain those principles of psychological counseling that are the key to the success of the impact of a specialist. This ensures the ethics of the professional.
What are they, the basic principles of psychological counseling? Let's consider them in more detail.
Benevolent attitude
The specialist should treat his client carefully and sensitively, without giving any assessment 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, who 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 invaluable. It is believed that the consultant will need to spend about 17 years on his implementation in a conversation. However, it should be borne in mind that lack of value does not mean indifference. It involves taking a position of careful neutrality, accompanied by a calm attitude to the facts reported by the client. At the same time, struggling with the temptation to give an assessment to another person, based on their own life standards and standards, it is always worthwhile to understand that everything is known in comparison.
Focus on customer values ​​and norms
This is the second of the principles of psychological counseling. In the process of conducting a conversation, it is important for a professional to determine what an event means for a client. At the same time, it is worth remembering that only a person himself can be competent in his life. The psychologist can’t act, think, and even more so live for his client. However, the specialist must take care to realize for himself what is a certain fact of life for the one who asked for help. And only if the professional manages to integrate into the person’s internal dialogue, it will be possible to begin to break the deadlock. 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, a conversation with the family. Such work from a psychologist will require clarification of the social roles of each member of the group. This step will be one of the most important in clarifying the content of the subject of interaction between close people. For this, the psychologist will have to formulate what the roles of the parents are from the point of view of the father and mother, as well as determining how the child understands them.
Ban tips
The methodological and ethical principles of psychological counseling indicate that a professional has no right to take responsibility for someone else's life. The prohibition on giving advice is the most promoted and widely known moment used to achieve 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 in which the correct actions will be indicated. In addition, it is quite common that a practical, child, or school psychologist 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 does not imagine what a 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 life concepts that are completely differently interpreted by people. Among them are happiness, attention, love, etc. In this regard, even very good and effective advice can be implemented as the client understood it. For example, using these principles in age-psychological counseling, a professional may advise the mother to understand the relationship that she has developed with her teenage son. After returning home, a woman is quite capable of arranging a brainwash for her child, reinforcing her notations and screams with the words that the psychologist ordered her to do.
- Advice must be timely, relevant, and relevant. A professional psychologist must give recommendations correctly, to the right person and 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. In this case, the doctor should not disclose the innermost thoughts of the client without his consent to any state or public organizations, as well as to 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 that the client must be warned about in advance. Violation of the principle of confidentiality is possible in those situations when the psychologist during the consultation finds out that there is a threat to someone’s life. Similar exceptions to this ethical principle are stipulated by law.
Distinguishing professional and personal relationships
This principle is due to the fact that entering and leaving contact with a client is much easier for a professional if there are no emotional “transactions” between him and the interlocutor. The psychologist’s work will become more effective also in the case when he doesn’t have interactions with the person who turned to him outside the consultation. Indeed, as is well known from medical practice, doctors do not operate “their own”.
Customer Activation
A person who seeks advice is in a situation of life's dysfunction. However, you should not rely on the doctor in everything. Responsible for his future fate can only be the person himself. The psychologist will, without directing the client from the dead end, still not leave him alone there. The counseling process requires mutual activity. The client all the time receiving should feel involved in the conversation, emotionally and vividly experiencing all the moments discussed with the professional. How to ensure a similar state of a person? To do this, the consultant will need to ensure that the conversation develops in a manner that is understandable and logical for the interlocutor. In this case, 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 of the above points 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 who need help.