Uulevel4Counselling

Uulevel4Counselling

“But feelings can’t be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.” Ann Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl
I find this a very poignant statement especially considering the trials this young girl faced and how in touch with her emotions she obviously was. It is so important that we are able to address our feelings and the way we need to explore them is to gently tease our way in behind the inner critic. Feelings or emotions fall into four categories anger, sadness, fear and joy. When dealing with clients the counsellor can build on the relationship by being understanding of how the client is feeling and thus demonstrating that they are with them, this is conveyed through the skill of reflection such as saying ‘You look sad today, why is that?’. Assessing the client’s feelings can provide the counsellor leverage and so identifying where perhaps the true problems lie. The converse to this of course is the client’s inability to express their feelings or they may have difficulty pinpointing their specific emotion such as being angry at someone because perhaps their overriding feeling of love for that person prevents them being justifiably angry for something that person did or said. Through humanistic counselling techniques such as Rogers the client gradually becomes better at experiencing and expressing their feelings, through clarifying how they really feel and showing acceptance of how they express that. ‘It’s okay to cry’ or ‘Have a laugh at it’. They become more in touch with their feelings. The counsellor must allow the client to feel and be in the moment with them before finding meaning and understanding to their feelings. At the same time we must be actively gauging the intensity of the feeling and also noting if their non-verbal communication is in keeping with what they are expressing i.e. you are looking for incongruence.
In our class exercise we explored in groups of three how we ourselves are with feelings. Our group was all male and the...