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Counselling Theory & Process

Treatment Steps in Behaviour Therapy

Behaviour therapy/counselling is used to help “clients acquire new coping skills, improve communication, or learn to break maladaptive habits and overcome self-defeating emotional conflicts” (Corsini & Wedding, 2000). The behavioural therapist/counsellor focuses on interpreting the client’s behaviour, emphasising a collaborative and positive relationship with the client and values the use of objectivity to assess and […]

Motivational Interviewing Techniques

The fundamental approach to motivational interviewing interactions?contains the following four elements: Open-ended questions Affirmations Reflective listening Summaries Motivational interviewing creates an acronym OARS from this and the goal in using OARS is to assist the person to move forward, creating change talk and motivation from within. This change talk contains statements that the client may […]

The Value of Empathy in Counselling

A requirement for being an effective counsellor is being able to practice and impart the skill of empathy in the client-counsellor interaction. Being empathetic ensures you are listening and dealing with the clients concerns as they present them. You are not judging them. In this post we’ll look at how empathy can assist counsellors when […]

The Psychology of Addiction

Almost all substance use affects the “reward mechanism” in the brain. The main chemical messenger involved in the brain’s reward mechanism is dopamine. Each time the person uses a substance they will tend to feel ‘good’, which makes them want to use the substance again. Over time, changes in the brain occur (e.g. less dopamine […]

Graded Exposure with Anxiety

When a person has experienced anxiety in a certain place or situation previously, they are more likely to anticipate the anxiety recurring under similar circumstances. This can lead to avoidance, which further reinforces the anxiety and its association with the particular place or situation where the anxiety initially occurred. The decrease in anxiety, when the […]

Passionate About Helping Others

It’s rare these days to hear people talk about their work with true passion. You hear so many stories of people working to pay the bills; putting up with imperfect situations; and compromising on their true desires. That’s why it’s always so refreshing to hear regular stories from graduates living their dream to be a […]

Grief Counselling through Questioning

Questioning is used for therapeutic assessment and to facilitate the client’s expression of emotion, which is a crucial part of the therapeutic process in complicated grief counselling. Examples of questions and their purposes are outlined below. Questions “Can you tell me about the death?” “What happened that day”? “Where were you when you found out […]

Cognitive Restructuring with Anxiety

Cognitive restructuring, straight thinking or logical reanalysis is based on the belief that the way we feel, behave and respond to situations is based on the way we think. This approach attempts to modify unhelpful thought patterns and beliefs. Cognitive restructuring, also known as cognitive reframing, is a technique drawn from cognitive therapy that can […]

Anxiety and Conditioning

Anxiety that is produced as a result of an actual situation (e.g. being in the dentist’s chair getting a tooth drilled) can become associated to events that surround the incident even when the component that originally activated the fear (a noisy drill that results in pain) is no longer present. For example, just sitting in […]

How to Build Rapport with Parents

Parents can play the key role in initiating and generating behaviour change in their children. Parents have the potential to inspire their children directly (by applying reinforcers and other behaviour modification strategies) and indirectly (by providing a safe, supportive and encouraging environment). As counsellors, working with parents can enhance our potential to promote successful outcomes […]

3 Advantages of Online Counselling

Online counselling, once termed alternative therapy, is now becoming a common practice preferred by both clients and therapists (Elleven & Allen, 2004). It has been praised for bridging the gap that existed with traditional face to face therapy around issues such accessibility, convenience, affordability and more. Accessibility Web counselling is easily accessible to all those […]

The General Adaptation Syndrome

General adaptation syndrome describes the body’s short-term and long-term reaction to stress. Originally described by Hans De Solye in the 1920s, the general adaptation syndrome describes a three stage reaction to stress covering our initial reaction to the stressor, our resistance and adaptation to coping with the stressor and our eventual exhaustion after dealing with […]