In relation to others

During the previous journal, I mentioned a bit about my motivations to study the course. In this paragraph, I’d like to talk about the difference that myself and other person and what does that mean to me. During the lessons, a lot of time was given to every classmates to share their recent status and personal experience that related to counselling topic. I noticed that I’m always the last person to share during the first few weeks. I noticed that I am quite reserved and inhibited at unfamiliar environment and it takes time for me to feel comfortable to share after I get used to other people. Because of my personalities, I noticed that I rarely talk to other classmates actively at the first few weeks, until I heard more about every person and felt safe. This is a re-discovery about my personalities, especially when I am now living at a new country that different from my hometown. Although I’m reserved, that doesn’t mean that I don’t like to social. I’m not too worry that my personalities will affect how I help the others during the helping session, but that’s something that I need to acknowledge and be aware of during daily life. By identifying this, I have more understanding about myself and thus accept people have different response to the same event because of their personal difference.

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During the triad work, I’ve many opportunities to apply skills learnt from the lesson. I’d like to share some of my reflections about non-verbal communication and how I use them to demonstrate empathy. Although verbal communication is the essential element of helping session, the importance of the non-verbal skills cannot be neglected. The interesting point of non-verbal action is that communication is happening between helper and helpee, and both side shares emotions of the other party without saying anything. In my experience, I noticed that helpee tends to observe how I react at the beginning of the helping session, if helpee can feel my good will, they would have greater intention to share more and deeper with me, vice versa. When helpee mentioned some sad experience, I always use eye contact and other facial expression to let helpee know my emotion about his/her experience and I’m willing to listen further. I found that a proper facial expressions is worth a thousand words. I can see that helpee felt that they are empathically understood when I display proper facial expressions and eye contact. Another good thing about using non-verbal communication properly is that it minimised the possibility of myself as a helper to give too many advice. The key of a successful session is not about giving advice, but showing empathy and understanding to the helpee. When I put more effort on listening and non-verbal communication, that helps me not to talking too much and allowing helpee have sufficient time to share their feeling. Since I had some good feedback from my schoolmates, I think I will put more effort to do that better in future triads.