A Counseling Skills Primer: 3 Minute Microskills Videos for the Visual Learner

By Ed.D Nina Spadaro, PhD Tiffany Rush-Wilson and MS Rives Whittle Thornton

 Nina Spadaro, Tiffany Rush-Wilson, and Rives Thornton virtually bring counseling skills to life in this multi-media e-book. Integrating straight-forward written descriptions with clear video demonstrations of each skill greatly enhances the learning experience of the reader. The authors explain and demonstrate microskills, which are the bu

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lentz Leadership Institute LLC
• Release date: Jul 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997439977

Book preview

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Book Reviews

Spadaro, Rush-Wilson, and Thornton bring fresh eyes to the art and science of teaching counseling skills in this innovative, multi-media text. By focusing not only on traditional microskills, but also how these microskills interact to form mesoskills, the authors move beyond the basic building blocks of skill development and truly teach how to conduct counseling sessions. Students and educators will appreciate the organization and clarity of the text. The accompanying video segments offer multiple perspectives for executing the skills as they are taught. In all, this book is a valuable contribution to the teaching and training of helping professionals!

—Donna Sheperis

A Counseling Skills Primer delivers in a simple, clear way! The authors do a masterful job presenting the necessary basic skills that need to be in all counselor’s tool box. The use of the numerous video clips certainly adds great clarity. What is so valuable about this book is there are three counselors showing three different styles of effective use of basic counseling skills. Students will enjoy and learn from this book.

—Ed Jacobs, PhD, West Virginia University

A Counseling Skills Primer: 3-Minute Microskills Videos for the Visual Learner by Spadaro, Rush-Wilson, and Thornton fills a significant gap in the preparation and training of professional counselors. Counselor educators know the importance of teaching students the appropriate clinical skills to prepare them for the field, but rarely do the resources and textbooks used break these skills down in such a methodical way as A Counseling Skills Primer.

This primer provides a developmental and hands-on opportunity for counseling students to move through key microskills and mesoskills. Through readings, video demonstrations, client monologues, and worksheets, student gain knowledge, practice skills, and assess their progress. The video clips throughout the primer provide direct examples of the concept being discussed and often provide examples of both deficient skills and proficient skills. The narrative then breaks down what was evident in each clip that the student should attend to and practice. The video clips are short, to the point, and provide examples from different counselor’s approaches that specifically target the skill being identified.

As a counselor educator for almost 20 years, I can attest to the difficulty of helping counseling students to both learn and integrate key microskills into their work with clients; both in practice, role-play settings and field experience settings. The focus on mesoskills takes the counselor in training beyond the basic skills of establishing the relationship and obtaining information and moves into how to facilitate counseling sessions towards identified goals and how to attend to the complexities occurring within each session.

In my view, A Counseling Skills Primer could be an invaluable resource for counseling students, counselor educators, and site supervisors for step-by-step information about how to replicate and demonstrate appropriate skills in counseling settings.

—Dr. Kelly Coker, Associate Professor, M.A. in Counseling Programs, Palo Alto, University

A COUNSELING SKILLS PRIMER: 3-Minute Microskills Videos for the Visual Learner

MED102000 MEDICAL / Mental Health

Copyright © 2017 by The Pensiero Press

ISBN: 978-09974399-7-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval systems or transmitted by any means-electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise—without prior permission from the authors and publisher.

Images used under license from Shutterstock.com OSIPOV/Shutterstock

Contents

Preface

How This Primer Is Organized

Accessing Video Demonstrations

The Client Monologue Videos and the Microskills Worksheet

Chapter 1: Introduction

The Therapeutic Relationship

The Counselor is the Tool

Make Your Relationships Your Laboratory

The Language of Counseling

How to Learn Counseling Skills

The Client Monologues

Chapter 2: Microskills & Mesoskills

Why Study Microskills and Mesoskills?

Chapter 3: The Nonverbal Microskills

Attending Behaviors: SOLER

Tone of Voice and Pacing of Speech

Facial Expression

Minimal Verbal and Nonverbal Encouragers

Proxemics

Touch

Chapter 4: Listening Microskills

Reflection of Content

Summarization

Reflection of Feeling

Reflection of Meaning

Questions

Open Questions

Contract Questions

Consequence Questions

Closed Questions

Scaling Questions

Checkout Questions

Chapter 5: Influencing Microskills

Validation

Reference to the Nonverbal Communication of the Client

Interpretation

Reframing

Interruption

Redirection

Clarification

Confrontation of Contradictions

Silence

Sharing Information with Clients

Directives

Self-Disclosure

Here and Now Self-Disclosure

Feedback to Client Self-Disclosure

Personal Self-Disclosure

Professional Self-Disclosure

Client Reflection

Self-Generation of Homework

Chapter 6: Mesoskills—The Tasks of Counseling

Stages of Counseling

Why Study Mesoskills?

Managing Time During the Session

Greeting the Client

Orienting the New Client to Counseling

Opening a Session

Broaching Diversity Issues

Developing and Maintaining Rapport

Contracting for Change with the Client

Focusing the Session

Funneling the Session

Closing the Session

Calming Clients

Building Subsequent Sessions

Closing the Counseling Relationship

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Appendix A: Microskills Worksheet

Appendix B: The Emotion Wheel

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

References

Index of Video Demonstration Links

Preface

This multi-media counseling skills primer presents the microskills and the mesoskills necessary for a beginning counselor to learn how to confidently and competently engage in a beginning-to-end counseling relationship with a client. This book uses a multisensory approach to make this material easily accessible to those who learn by observing as well as by reading.

How This Primer Is Organized

A Counseling Skills Primer is a resource for learning about skills of counseling. The material is organized into six chapters. In Chapter 1 readers are oriented to learning the skills of counseling. This chapter discusses the therapeutic counseling relationship; the role of the counselor; the role of personal relationships in the learning process; the lexicon of counseling; and the five step process of mastering counseling skills. Chapter 2 introduces the organization of counseling skills into the categories of microskills and mesoskills. Chapter 3 presents the nonverbal microskills. Chapter 4 presents the listening microskills, and Chapter 5 completes the microskill presentations with the influencing microskills. Each microskill is presented with its description, its intended effect, and a video demonstrating its use in a counseling session. Chapter 6 presents the mesoskills. Each mesoskill is presented with its description, its intended effect, and a video demonstrating its use in a counseling session.

Accessing Video Demonstrations

Provided throughout the text are video links to demonstrations which isolate each counseling skill. Within every 2-3 minute video clip each skill is demonstrated two or three times, each by a different counselor-client pair. If this primer is being read on a computer the reader can simply click on the video link and the video will open in a web browser. If this primer is being read on an e-reader device (e.g. Kindle, Nook, Kobo) then the address will need to be typed into a computer’s web browser. On a computer all the skills videos can also be accessed from the video index page within this primer and on the Impact Education & Therapy website where the videos are stored.

http://impacteducationtherapy.com/acounselingskillsprimer/

The Client Monologue Videos and the Microskills Worksheet

The video skill demonstrations are crafted so that each skill is isolated. While this is helpful for learning how each individual skill appears and sounds, this fragmented approach does not capture the enormity of information often provided by a client. To better prepare the viewer for listening to the wealth of information that a client provides there are three five-minute video clips in which the mock clients introduce themselves and their concerns. The clients do this in monologue form, as they role-play meeting their counselor for the first time and are asked to tell their story. These client monologues orient the viewer to the bigger picture of each client’s story. Viewers can use these client monologues in conjunction with the microskills worksheet (see Appendix A—http://bit.ly/2unfiFE) to practice writing down their own formulations of how these counseling skills might be phrased.

Chapter 1:

Introduction

Welcome to the study of counseling skills. Counseling skills are the conversational foundation upon which therapeutic relationships are built. A Counseling Skills Primer is intended for those who want to enhance their learning to use conversational skills in a therapeutic way within a professional helping relationship. This primer is a multimedia reference to therapeutic skills as it includes both written descriptions and video demonstrations. While this primer is not a stand-alone textbook, teachers and students will find this text a practical supplement to any course of study or laboratory that aims at developing the techniques of the helping professions.

There are several helping professions which rely upon the use of interpersonal relationship skills to nurture change in clients. These include mental health counselors, marriage and family counselors,

Reviews for A Counseling Skills Primer

[Laurel Hoff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Nina's Primer is a great text to pair with traditional textbook-style manuals on the skills and tasks of counseling. This text provides short examples of skills in action and gives a thorough summary on the mechanics of each skill and intended outcome. For students who learn best through watching a skill in practice, this text can be integral to their learning of the skills of the profession. As a graduate counseling student, even after having completed my techniques of counseling course, I return to this text often and utilize the videos to retain my knowledge of each skill.