The Counseling Process Summary

The counseling process is a collaborative progression of the therapeutic alliance into addressing treatment goals and moving a client from a state of distress or dysfunction into a state of effective functioning. Ethically speaking, from initial contact from a potential client, the counselor assumes responsibility for initiating procedures to begin intake with the client or providing an appropriate referral for this client if they cannot ethically care for the client. Once the client and counselor agree upon entering the counseling process together an intake is to be performed. This intake should serve the purpose to create that safe space for the client by identifying boundaries and outlining confidentiality within the therapeutic relationship

This therapist pictures the counseling process to take efforts from both counselor and client. As this therapist is person-centered it is important to let the clients lead the session and direct the therapeutic efforts toward areas that they deem appropriate and necessary. This process is entirely collaborative as the counselor also takes steps to keep clients focused on their expressed and agreed upon treatment goals, to make changes to the treatment plan, or to aid in guiding the sessions as clients may not be able to lead sessions depending upon many factors, such as acuity of symptoms. Throughout this process it is important to look at diversity dimensions and work to address social justice and advocacy factors in play within a client’s experience. This author believes the best use of counselor’s efforts is to brainstorm with the client of ways to be involved on both micro and macro levels that work to help the client. These are social justice and advocacy efforts that will take place within the session, perhaps calling a client out about minimizing experienced microaggressions, and outside the session, like work in the community to destigmatize mental health

This author believes that as the client is the expert that they will get a sense of when this counseling process is wrapping up; perhaps it will be identified as accomplished goals or a feeling of stagnation. This feeling may manifest in several ways for clients. It is also the job of the counselor to raise awareness and acknowledge the improvements the client has made, highlight accomplishments, and have open conversations with the clients about meeting their goals and exploring those feelings that accompany achieving a goal. Furthermore, at times clients may be hesitant to leave counseling. Particularly if there is strong rapport, counseling may be a great source of comfort that not all clients want to terminate. At this point the counselor would need to again work on raising the consciousness level of the client and share with them the perception that perhaps they are avoiding termination and discuss with the client what termination looks like. There may be lingering fears that they cannot function without counseling, that they are concerned for upcoming challenges, and are nervous to think about leaning on their support systems more. The author imagines termination to end with utilizing fading, or spacing