What makes for a therapist excellence

Sets the Agenda With You You want your therapist to work on the things that are important to you, and they should value how you see the problem in your life and what you want to do about it. They should ask you to identify what the biggest or most important issue is which you are facing at this time. They will collaborate on identifying the problem and identifying possible steps towards the solution. Therapists should talk about new strategies you can use in a way which respects your worldview.

If you tell your therapist you are not ready or comfortable to talk about certain things, they should respect this. Non-Judgmental Therapists will listen to you and talk to you in a manner which tells you that they accept what you are saying and that they believe you.

They may suggest alternative ways of seeing things, or new ways of doing things, but they should still respect you and your history, and your worldview. They will know how difficult things are for you and will treat you with compassion.

Flexible Approach Therapists will have various kinds of training and educational backgrounds. However, they should adapt their approach to your unique circumstance. While it is true clients with depression may have some general qualities in common a feeling of hopelessness, loss of interest in day to day activities, changes to appetite or sleep , and it is true that therapist techniques may be applicable to many client situations, every client and their situation is unique and requires a tailored approach.

They should follow your lead if you change your goals or what you think on a topic. Ideally, you will feel as though your therapist is trying to understand the specific issues you are bringing up, and all of its nuance, and will be trying out unique strategies with you to see what works.

Optimistic Life does have ups and downs. The therapist should believe that therapy will likely bring about some benefit to you. They should be positive with you that there is a way forward and that maybe, with time or with trying something different, you will be in a better place in terms of managing the problem.

This can pull on your soul if you let it. Remember your first love of counseling and that will carry you through those dark moments of questioning why you are in this wonderful profession. To touch lives!

Contact him at stg wfu. I think a willingness to listen carefully, form and maintain a strong therapeutic relationship, show care empathize , be persistent energy and work with clients on mutually agreed upon goals are essential qualities of a great counselor.

If the counselor is truly a wounded healer, he or she may well go beyond what would be considered exemplary practice because of increased sensitivity and understanding of what it feels like to be hurt and what it takes to heal. I am hard-pressed to identify a counseling skill that is overrated.

I think creativity is the most underrated counseling skill. I have had to learn to be more patient and to listen more carefully while letting counseling sessions develop.

Often, I can see what a client should ideally do before he or she reaches that insight. I think most counselors grow with experience, over time, and under supervision. While many individuals have the attributes to become extraordinary counselors, skills have to be cultivated and nourished if clinicians are to reach their full potential.

Contact him at gerald. What, overall, makes a great counselor? Great counselors possess a passion to help others. They demonstrate respect for those they serve and understand their roles within the counseling process. Great counselors are also committed to the counseling profession and understand the importance of professional unity.

Concomitantly, great counselors understand themselves. They know their core values and beliefs, and they accurately anticipate how their core values and beliefs influence the counseling process. Likewise, superior counselors have appropriate fun and utilize benevolent and kind humor. Finally, great counselors exhibit a degree of tenacity that promotes continued client engagement — even when the counseling process becomes challenging.

Invitational verbal and nonverbal skills are some of the most useful skills counselors can develop. What kinds of fun things do they like to do? For me, the most overrated skill is active listening.

Some counselors mistakenly believe that active listening means remaining silent throughout the counseling session. Thus, they fail to engage clients in meaningful treatment. Their clients capriciously ramble throughout session. They incorrectly imply clients should feel a certain way e. Skilled counselors balance their techniques and interventions in a way that optimizes the counseling process and promotes client goal attainment without overemphasizing a single skill.

Counselors who merely replicate the same counseling elements over and over again likely are perfecting imperfection. Superior supervisors provide critical direction. They enable average counselors to become more satisfied and effective. Contact him at jkottler fullerton. Truly exceptional counselors are those who live what they teach to others. They walk their talk and practice in their own lives that which they consider to be most important for their clients.

As such, they are continually living on the growth edge, always looking for ways to become more effective as a professional and a person. Brutal self-honesty and self-scrutiny, forgiveness for being less than perfect [and] willingness to take constructive risks, both personally and professionally.

Contact him at clee5 umd. As such, as counselors, we are the inheritors and guardians of a timeless wisdom. People look to us to use this wisdom to help them solve problems and make decisions. Don W. Contact him at locke mc. The underlying quality that supports great counselors is the genuineness they can convey both in how they respond to the client and how they view themselves and others.

In addition to being genuine, the second most useful skill is to truly not only have empathy but [also] to be able to communicate that empathy to the client.

A third critical skill is to be organized to the point that you can assist the client in viewing the presenting problem clearly and determining choices or options. Effective counselors have a multitude of skills. That multiple skillset is necessary because each client offers a different and many times unique concern. For that reason, what might be considered an overrated skill may be the very skill needed by a counselor to address an individual client, but not necessarily with another.

The key is to have the critical three, listen carefully and then have strong additional skills to select from when necessary. The most difficult skill I have dealt with throughout my career is having patience.

By patience, I mean the ability to match the pace of the session to the client and not pre-diagnose or rush to assist in a decision or move in a specific direction before the client is ready. Great counselors are always learning.

Each client presents new challenges and experiences. Each workshop or conference or conversation with another counselor provides new insights and approaches. Great counselors are always open to another tool to incorporate into their portfolio. Great counselors realize that the next client will probably extend them in a direction that they did not anticipate and they need to be prepared for any and all options. Contact her at patricia. Overall, a great counselor is someone who is empathetic, creative and truly cares about others…but cares about empowering others, not creating dependencies.

The ability to be genuine, self-aware of weaknesses and bias, and capable of building a trusting relationship with another. Overrated and underrated: the ability to listen. Yes, I have rated the same skill as both underrated and overrated. Let me explain why.

People who say listening skills are what make a great counselor are overrating the skill of listening! Yes, being a great listener is important, but there is so much more than just an auditory function. It is the ability to hear what is being said — and what is not being said. Or, what needs to be said. Or, what are the implications of what is being said. And yes, the ability to listen is [also] underrated. Without it, we have no relationship with our client. We have no common ground on which to reach our client.

We have no basis for development of the trust that is essential in a counseling relationship. Yes, definitely underrated. When I think back, I had to work the most on developing patience.

I have always been more solution-focused then process-oriented, and it is natural for me to want to resolve issues brought to me. While I am not a practicing rehabilitation counselor today, I will tell you that I use my counseling skills each and every day in my current job.

Strong counseling skills can be used throughout your lifetime, in so many ways, to help clients as well as others you encounter on a day-to-day basis.

When we are not fully present with ourselves, we may be denying or justifying what we feel. Because of this, we are not truly present with ourselves or with our clients. We become more attuned to how our client is absorbing or resisting our support and how open or closed they are to exploring how their defensive organization co-creates the dilemma that they are bringing to therapy. We also become increasingly aware of their unspoken emotions and attitudes, their hidden resistances, their unformed negativity and defeating energies.

We can then give up working hard to get the client to give up their resistance and instead, help them see how their resistance and unformed defeating or their way of adapting, where they seem to be in agreement with us but actually are not, has been an ally in helping them survive. We need to realize that everything about our client is also inside of us. What we are unaware of in ourselves, we will be unaware of in our clients. The more that we can understand and accept all of who we are, the more that we can understand and accept our clients.

Denial never occurs in only one direction. In this third key, we are focusing on understanding the underlying energetic, emotional, and body dynamics that create what our clients consider to be the problems that they bring to therapy. We can learn how different childhood traumas create specific dynamics and the illusions clients have about their own emotions and what is necessary for them to do, feel, or believe in order for them to feel whole.

We can emotionally and energetically hold in our self and with our clients their lack of awareness of how their unresolved childhood traumas perpetuate their inability to resolve and heal the issues that they bring to therapy. The more that we understand this paradigm the easier it is to be with our clients. The origin of these ideas was given to Naomi during a time of Adrenal Failure that she had twenty years ago. Quantum Physicists have discovered that Subtle Energy is the energy that connects everything in the universe.

On our most fundamental level, the human mind and body is a packet of pulsating waves and particles constantly interacting with this vast energy field. Wave—particle duality is the concept that every elementary particle or quantic entity exhibits the properties of not only particles, but also waves.

Therefore, waves and particles of energy are interchangeable. As Einstein postulated, matter and energy are also interchangeable. The science of our psychotherapy is rooted in these discoveries about the Subtle Energy makeup of everything that exists, including human thought and emotion. It is at the sub-atomic, subtle level that trauma impacts us most profoundly, and it is at that level that healing needs to take place. The process of our therapy works within this world of pulsating waves and particles and allows healing to take place at the level of physical and emotional DNA.

To repeat this essential point, the source of all emotions, thoughts and feelings is energy. Awareness or consciousness is also pure energy and therefore, it too is made up of waves and particles. A short hand way of expressing this is that we are conscious beings made up of molecules of awareness. Because of having shut down elements of our consciousness as a result of childhood trauma, many of us are disconnected from this truth and live various levels of unconsciousness.

All transformation occurs when any two molecules interact with one another. An example of this is when egg and sperm come together creating new life or when molecules interact with one another producing an altogether new substance such as hydrogen and oxygen creating water.

The same is true when we shine the light of our consciousness, when we bring a molecule of awareness, a moment of understanding, to whatever thought, sensation, or emotion that opens in us.

As we allow ourselves to be conscious of our thoughts, sensations, or emotions, we embody acceptance, for the nature of consciousness is acceptance. There is no judgment in consciousness. When we can accept and love ourselves for whatever it is that we feel, sense, or think, transformation is immediate.

It is immediate because the molecules of consciousness vibrate at a higher frequency than the dense molecules of trauma. This may seem an over simplification of a complex process. In fact, it is as simple and complex as any two molecules coming together that produce an alchemical reaction.

As therapists, we need the firsthand experience of accepting our own thoughts, emotions, or body experiences and to have experienced the immediate transformation that occurs.

Also, we need to be clear about the difference between acceptance and justification. Acceptance leads to openness, warmth and wholeness, justification brings us to levels of hardness, density and rejection.

When we know these experiences deeply inside of ourselves, we can then help our clients learn these simple and profound truths about the nature of transformation. Each time our clients accept whatever they are experiencing, they automatically release outdated beliefs and outdated defensive patterns.

They are now fully present to themselves without judgment and therefore, feel whole. Whatever experience that they have accepted has become a part of their wholeness. They have transformed and come home to themselves.

We become part of a live process that we co-create with our client. How we employ the five keys is flexible, not meant to be lived hard and fast as if they are cast in stone. We will also discuss the importance of practicing various techniques in order to become versed in when and how to utilize them. As therapist, how we live within our self becomes an essential part of the therapeutic process. The more we practice the Five Keys with an open mind and open heart, the more we can utilize the various colors in our palette of possibilities.

Our practice then comes from flexibility, technical understanding, and artistry. Remember, the first key is the ability to be intimate with ourselves by living mindfully in every moment of a session. Living mindfully is about a commitment to developing our professional self through the evolution of our personal self. We need to be engaged in a process of being intimate and accepting of every aspect of our ever-unfolding present experience.

As we get to know and accept every one of our emotions, senses, body reactions and thoughts simply as waves of experience that can pass through us, we remain grounded and centered more of the time.

We radiate authenticity and genuineness. Our commitment enables us to know how we feel each moment of a therapy session and to develop support to have compassion and acceptance for whatever it is that we feel and think. We understand and appreciate that there are no good or bad feelings, sensations or thoughts. All feelings, sensations and thoughts are part of the flow of life and need to be welcomed as a part of our wholeness.

Without this ability to know and support all of what we feel and think, we lose ourselves and we become less embodied, as our focus is only on our client and what to do. If we lose track of our sense of self and, therefore, are unconscious of our own experiences, we easily become fused with our clients in a counter-transferential relationship.

That is, we are so focused on helping our client that we lose our sense of presence. Without the ability to ground ourselves in our own thoughts, emotions, and body experiences we often express unreal warmth and understanding. In the same way that we allow all of who we are to be a part of the unfolding present, we focus on helping our clients bring consciousness and acceptance to whatever they feel or think, so that it all becomes a wave of experience that can pass through them.

Focused on helping our clients only seek relief, we can become easily frustrated and controlling, or wind up being distant and uninvolved, overly tactical and technical. This constant outward focus also leads to exhaustion and burnout. To emphasize this essential point, it is through the acceptance of all of our feelings and thoughts, we come to know that the essence of integration and wholeness is being conscious of each feeling and thought as a wave of experience rather than a concrete reality.

We develop a first-hand understanding of our own process of acceptance and non-acceptance and what we need for our next step of coming home to ourselves. The more that we accept our own feelings and thoughts the more that we are able to understand what it is about our client that touches us in the way that it does.

In being conscious of all of our feelings, we have room to understand what it is about our client that touches us in a way that we feel accepting or rejecting, open or withdrawn, happy, engaged, sad, angry, confused, blank, stupid, ineffectual, unfocused, helpless, wanting to take care of the client, cautious, sexual, fully alert, or about to fall asleep? We now have an infinite range of feelings that have become a part of the therapeutic process.

Again, integration occurs as we embody all of our thoughts and feelings. In turn, embodiment occurs by bringing support to each experience so that we know in our bodies that everything that goes on inside of us is simply an experience that we can be conscious of, make room for and live into. This allows us to avoid living in denial of anything that we feel and think or being at war with certain feeling.

We then bring acceptance and kindness to each thought and feeling. It is worth reiterating that the more that we accept and are compassionate with all of our thoughts and feelings, the more that we accept and are compassionate with our clients.

Where we are blind to our own trauma and how we learned to organize ourselves in relation to it, we will be blind to the same thing in our clients. We are not attempting to ignore or deny any of our feelings. We are not attempting to act and live in the role of a caring and compassionate therapist. It is just the opposite. We want to be conscious of how we are being impacted so that we can look deeply into what it is that our clients are doing that impacts us in the way that it does.

At the same time, we also need to understand what our experiences are here to tell us about ourselves in order to use our feelings diagnostically and, at the same time, not blame our clients our self for how we think or feel. Living in this way would be like having a constant ticker tape of self and other awareness going on inside of us that is moving us toward understanding our client and ourselves at deeper and deeper levels.

Now, we can acknowledge that we are corporal beings that absorb information through all of our senses, through our body and emotions. These primitive ways of knowing can inform us before our mind does.

This is our primitive animal nature letting us know about danger and safety. We instantaneously know when to stand our ground and fight, when to run, and when to soften and open in a welcome to another. An example of knowing and trusting our own reactions and being able to use our emotions and body reactions diagnostically can be seen when our client feels that nothing we are doing is helpful. Underlying their blame that we are the problem is their energy that they want someone to pay for the abuse they have suffered.

They are displacing the anger that is meant for their abusive parents onto the rest of the world. Furthermore, if we are open and accepting of our own feelings, we then can see how our client is still living as a victim and acting out the revenge and the unformed, unspoken desire to be saved.

In fact, without dealing with this issue the therapy will easily become bogged down. They will also respect your privacy and not share what you say with anyone, barring their supervisor or if they are legally bound to do so. Supervision also helps a counsellor or psychotherapist keep their own ego and emotions in check. Many therapists also attend therapy themselves, or have in the past, which is something you are free to ask about should you so wish. About to seek therapy for the first time?

Harley Therapy connects you with warm, empathic, and highly experienced therapists in four London locations. Not in England? Skype Therapy helps you no matter where you are. Have a question about what to look for in a therapist? Or want to share your experience of seeking therapy with our readers? Share in the public comment box below. Your email address will not be published. Currently you have JavaScript disabled.