Crisis counselors must be able to demonstrate the relevant skills that will provide them with tools that will assist them to be first response and to aid individuals in crisis. James and Gilliland (2013) noted that, counseling skills aid in crisis intervention to bring about a sense of direction in helping the client to cope. With this being said the skills I will highlight that will help me as a crisis counselor would be, engaging skills problem exploration skills, and listening and empathy skills.
Brief description of counseling skills in Crisis Intervention
Engagement
When counselors are able to engaged their clients in such way that they can see the interventions working for them is consider an excellent task has accomplished (James &Gililiand,
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Being in the moment with clients who are traumatized is of utmost importance as it is a way to show to your clients that they are being understood. Hartley (1995) also see empathy as a vicarious introspection which means attending to your clients. For counselors, the implication is, how empathy is used with clients which should not be in manipulative or confusing way (Hartley, 1995). It is imperative that at all times the use of empathy in the counseling environment should be used to benefit the clients …show more content…
Listening skills in my view is an art and creative discipline of the counselors’ therapeutic relationship. James and Gilliland (2013) points out that, listening skills is an essential characteristics of the counsel which should be used to encourage the client that you are listening. In watching the video with Drs. Drs. Christine Wallace and Kristin Wilkinson on occasion the counselor was not demonstrating active listening skills as she paraphrase statements that the clients made wrongly. This type of behavior could allow the client to lose trust in the counseling relationship. Being an active listener takes into consideration several other factors such as using encouragers, open ended questions, open body language, paraphrasing, reflecting and summarizing (Rautalinko, 2013). James and Gilliland (2013) further suggest that, one important aspect of listening skills is for the counselor is picking up on the client’s readiness to enter into the emotional contact with the crisis