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Introduction To Counseling And Characteristics Of A Counselor PDF Free Download
What Is Counseling
Counseling is distinguished from other mental health disciplines by both its history and its emphasis.
It focuses on the development and prevention of serious mental health problems through education and short-term treatments.
It emphasizes growth as well as remediation. It focuses on providing therapeutic treatments to clients who experience a wide variety of symptoms.
It is also one of the largest specialty areas within psychology. Counseling as a profession is relatively new.
It grew out of the guidance movement, in opposition to traditional psychotherapy. In order to understand what counseling is, you must first understand these concepts.
Counseling is often performed face-to-face in confidential sessions between the counselor and client(s).
However, counseling can also be undertaken by telephone, in writing, and, these days on the Internet, by email or video conferencing.
Counseling can and may take many different formats to bring a person to a better understanding of himself and others.
It can therefore be seen that counseling can be of benefit to a person experiencing problems in finding, forming, and maintaining relationships.
It is the ability to listen and respond in a way that will help others solve their own problems and attain their potential.
It is the art of helping others arrive at the right answer through their own analysis of the situation and the facts.
It has to be done skillfully without an attempt to influence the values and beliefs of the client.
Counseling involves talking with a person in a way that helps the person solve a problem or helps to create conditions that will cause the person to understand and/or improve his behavior, character, values, or life circumstances.
It is a process that enables a person to sort out issues and reach decisions affecting their life.
Often counseling is sought out at times of change or crisis, however, it need not be so as counseling can also help us at any time of our lives.
It emphasizes exploration and understanding of the problem and stresses the idea of the professional relationship and the importance of self-determined goals (of course by the client).
It should be differentiated from advice-giving or directing. It should be noted that counseling is a principled profession.
Biswalo (1996) defines counseling as a process of helping an individual to accept and use information and advice so that he/she can either solve his/her present problem or cope with it successfully. Counseling depends heavily on information.
According to the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (2002), counseling takes place when a counselor sees a client in a private and confidential setting to explore a difficulty a client is having, distress that the client may be experiencing, or perhaps the client’s dissatisfaction with life or loss of a sense of direction and purpose.
Both the American Counseling Association (ACA) and Division 17 of the American Psychology Association have defined counseling on numerous occasions.
These definitions contain a number of common points, some of which are as follows:
• Counseling is a profession.
• Counseling deals with personal, social, vocational empowerment, and educational concerns.
• Counseling is conducted with persons who are considered to function within the normal range. • Counseling is theory-based and takes place in a structured setting.
• Counseling is a process in which clients learn how to make decisions and formulate new ways of behaving, feeling, and thinking.
• Counseling encompasses various subspecialties.
Counseling and Guidance Let us now see the difference between counseling and guidance.
“Guidance is a term used to denote the process of helping an individual to gain self-understanding and self-direction (self-decision making) so that he can adjust maximally to home, schools or community environment.” (Biswalo, 1996).
Guidance is giving leadership, supervision, direction, or professional guidance for future actions.
Guidance has more to do with something that you are not sure of or something that you don‘t know about and you have someone who is familiar with explaining it to you while counseling has something to do with something that you have trouble with.
Someone who provides guidance offers you suggestions on how to explore various alternatives.
Counseling may also offer suggestions, but it also tries to teach you methods for reaching your goals and can help you determine what your goals are.
In practice, there may be no difference between the two, because it depends on how people practice each technique and how they interpret their skills Guidance is a pre-problem, that is there is no specific problem that is identified in an individual.
Counseling is post problem, meaning a problem has already been identified and therefore the counselor helps to address the problem but not to solve it.
Counseling is not giving opinion, instruction, or advice, it is using facilitative listening and questioning to allow the client to choose the best solution for a problem.
Counseling is based on a wellness model rather than a medical model.
Authors such as Hershenson and Strein (1991); and Palmo, Shosh, and Weikel (2001) emphasized that counselors are concerned about the client’s environment with a more global view than other professionals as well as a concern that goes beyond treating dysfunction or pathology and dealing with the clients’ self-awareness, personal growth, and wellness.
The guidance refers to the act or process of guiding. Guidance is a type of counseling, such as that is provided for students seeking advice about vocational and educational matters.
Characteristics of Guidance
Guidance is a continuous process such that it is a regular service, which is required at every stage for every person, not only for problematic situations and abnormal people.
It is a positive program geared to meet the needs of all people. It is needed right from early childhood, adolescence through adulthood, and old age.
It is both a generalized and a specialized service. It is a generalized service because teachers, lecturers, advisors, deans, parents, and elders, all play a part in guidance.
It is a generic term as it includes information-giving and research activities.
It is a specialized service because specially qualified personnel such as counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists join hands to help Individuals adjust to the environment.
Thus we see that guidance is more information-oriented and addresses developmental issues. On the other hand, counseling is more remedial in nature, aimed at helping the person deal with the problems and conflicts in his life.
| Author | – |
| Language | English |
| No. of Pages | 15 |
| PDF Size | 0.1 MB |
| Category | Subject |
| Source/Credits | egyankosh.ac.in |
Introduction To Counseling And Characteristics Of A Counselor PDF Free Download