We all need counseling at some point in life. There are various ways and many methods by which one can obtain counseling. Counseling is a professional relationship between two individuals, families or groups to achieve mental health, education, wellness and business goals. As a counselor, you need to first thoroughly understand the person looking for counseling from you using your effective listening skills. People who go for individual counseling have a huge set of expectations and hence it becomes the sole duty of the counselor to meet those expectations.
Let’s browse through the five stages of individual counseling:
- Therapeutic Rapport Building
In any two-way communication process (particularly counseling), relationship building is one of the key factors. It is very important to build a good rapport with the counseling seeking individual. Try sitting next to the person rather sitting in an opposite direction or be flexible with your appointment schedule as there are few people who require more time to open up.
- The Assessment Phase
Try assessing the behavior of the counseling seeker. Any emotional restrictions, health problems, sexual behavior and need, hunger for affection and appreciation and much more are parts of assessment.
- Perform SWOT
SWOT determines Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. As a counselor, you need to ask the other person to assess his strengths on a piece of paper and then write ways to overcome these. You can help him or her draw the conclusions and erase all the confusion forever.
- Counseling Interventions
Exploring the past historical events and intervening in the personal life can help a person come out of past dead events that won’t do justice to any future progress and would waste a lot of time.
- The Transformation
The fifth stage speaks of resiliency. A counselor has to deal with these situations with utmost care and patience. The other person will first b resilient and then gradually move towards transformation.
