Understanding The Counseling Process Paper

When understanding the counseling process, it may be understood as having a beginning, middle and end. It is a process that involves achieving different tasks and goals that are built upon a solid foundation. Throughout the process, there are six different stages that the therapist and client will encounter. These stages include: relationship building, assessment and diagnosis, formulation of counseling goals, intervention and problem solving, termination and follow up, and research and evaluation. These stages are usually always present to some degree throughout the counseling process and are vital tasks that the therapist must be able to reach with the client. Therapy can be quite successful just by ensuring that these six stages have been

Overall, this is the therapist’s attempt to help the client reach the goals that have been established. Throughout this stage, clients learn new empowering skills that help support growth and change. There is however, a certain point to keep in mind. Pierce, (2012) states, “It is important to note that, while in the clinical setting we may find ourselves attempting to solve problems for patients and to advise them on what we think they should do, this is not PST (problem solving therapy). Essential to PST, as an evidence based therapeutic approach, is that the clinician helps the patient to become more empowered to learn to solve problems for themselves.” While this article is specific to PST, this particular idea is important to keep in mind in all therapeutic settings. Depending on the therapists’ approach, different interventions may be used. Therapists will often use techniques based around their client’s specific needs and goals. For example, in cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapist may attempt to modify maladaptive thinking with modeling. This would involve engaging the client in role-playing exercises in which the therapist may act out appropriate behaviors and responses to situations. Another example would be to use cognitive rehearsal. This is where the client would begin to imagine a difficult situation and the therapist would then help guide the client step by step in successfully dealing with it. The client would then practice those steps mentally and when situations occur in real life, the client will have those previously rehearsed ideas to help address the problem in a more meaningful way. Interventions and problem solving are fundamental to the counseling process, as clients initially come to therapy to reach a higher sense of awareness or to solve problems in relation to the situations they are faced