Challenges of staying focused on helpees’ needs

The challenges of staying focused on helpees’ needs and issues is the desire of helper himself/herself. If helper is not able to put aside his/her own emotions, then helper may not able to stay focus on helpees’ needs but to run the session using helper’s own agenda. I talked to a helper last week to share my worry about my mum’s critical illness. At the beginning of the session, helper asked me some questions to understand what’s happened and what’s my feelings. After I shared a bit background information, helper started to move to another stage, trying to ask what’s my plan in the next few months. During that part, I can feel that helper dominated the session and was trying to guide me to the direction that she prefer. I feel stressed and found that it’s difficult to share further. In addition, I don’t have enough time and space to share my emotions underneath. At the end of the session, the helper admitted that her action was driven by the emotions of what’s happened to her mother, thus she can’t resist to direct me. I think the above experience is a good reminder to me. It’s common that helper always have own personal experience and those issues may heavily disturb their emotion. It’s impossible for helper to give up those feeling, but what helper can do is to maintain the professional helping role during the session and deal with those emotions triggered after the session. Moreover, I think it’s critical to work in partnership with helpee. Given that helpee have their own autonomy, helper should bare in mind not to manipulate neither helpee nor the helping session. 

In the next paragraph, I’d like to further discuss the above experience and talk about how I’d maintain boundaries if I am the helper during the helping session. When helpee talk about illness of his mother, it’s understandable that the emotion of helper maybe triggered and I may think of my own parents. The first thing I’d do is to focus on understanding the emotions of the helpee and trying to understand what’s helpee’s thoughts about the incident. Since helpee is the focus on the helping session, I’ve to put aside my emotions and deal with them afterwards but not to let it affect the helping session. On the other hand, it’s a temptation for helper to provide advice to helpee to respond to helpee’s situation, such as how to cure the disease, etc. However, this attempt is violating helpee’s autonomy and prohibit helper to provide unbiased support. To maintain a proper boundary, I will use various listening skills and keep unconditional positive regard, so that helpee can feel the effort I put to understand his situation. Moreover, I have to keep working under the BACP framework and consider helpee’s needs as my primary concern, so that I can fully respect helpee as a independent individual and thus work in a professional capacity. Helpee may wish to further elaborate his feeling or he may wish to talk about his worry about what to do in the future. What I should do is to assist helpee to focus on the topic that he wished to deal with during the helping session and guide him to express what’s in his mind. I believe this is the best way to respect his own autonomy and keep proper boundaries between helper and helpee. 

Boundaries of helping session & meaning of stay focused

During the last triad, the helpee was late and he requested to extend the session because of his lateness. I’d like to take chance to rethink the importance of maintaining proper boundaries in terms of time and share my reflection about the relevance of boundaries in the helping role.Time is equal to everyone and nobody have extra time, no matter who they are. As a result, it’s important for helper to utilise the time of each session and make sure the next helpee can attend the helping session at the agreed time slot. It’s understandable that the late helpee wish to have extra time, so that he can have sufficient time to talk about his case. However, what he asked for break the boundaries between helper and helpee and it might damage the therapeutic relationship that was established properly. Boundaries not only about keeping objectivity or preventing ethical dilemmas, but it’s a wider concept about how to set the framework that define how the helper and helpee should interact. Undoubtedly time is one of the key elements of boundaries, thus it’s critical for me to reject that request. However, what I can offer to the helpee is to schedule another session. I believe that should be a better solution. Firstly, we can have longer time to talk about his experience and his thought about time. Secondly, arrange another time slot can make sure the upcoming helping session can start on time and thus is fair to the next helpee that attend on time. 


In the next paragraph, I’d like to share my reflection about stay focused on helpee’s needs and issues. In most of the time, I noticed that the issue that helpee mentioned at the beginning is only tip of the iceberg. One of the possibilities is that helpee did not realise the real concern, and helper act as an essential role to assist helpee to locate the core issue by using proper skills such as asking open questions or other active listening skills and stay focus on that particular area. Take the last triad as an example, at the beginning helpee mentioned his difficulty about arriving on time and can’t understand the reaction of other colleague. It seems what annoyed helpee is the different understanding about time. However, I noticed helpee mentioned this feeling is mainly from his workplace, so I asked some open questions and tried to clarify whether helpee’s major concern is about on time or his performance at work. Helpee then mentioned what he encountered at work and his frustration about unfair appraisal by colleague. Due to time limit, I have to stop the conversation at this point. But the above scenario clearly illustrate that the importance of paying attention to listen what helpeesaid and staying focus on the real problem. Otherwise helper maybe distracted and put the focus on minor area but not helpee’s primary concern. It’s uneasy to locate the primary area. Apart from developing the sensitivity by having more practise, I think the best way is keep asking questions to clarify what helpee think and fine tune the direction of further conversation based on what helpee mention. 

Boundaries of helping session & meaning of summarising

During the triad, helpee suggested to have a drink after the helping session because he is lonely and he need someone to be accompanied. I think this is a good opportunity to discuss the boundaries needed during the helping sessions and the reason behind. As a helper, I have to follow the BACP framework and it mentioned the importance to build an appropriate relationship with clients. One of the key things is to make sure the relationship between helper and helpee is kept within the helping session but not extended to personal relationship.Being a helper means that I should put helpee first and should prevent any biases & conflicts of interest. If I agreed to go for a drink with the helpee, then I will put myself into unnecessary ethical dilemmas. Since having a drink outside is not part of the helping session, that will make the relationship become unclear. Helpee may treat me as friends going forward and thus prefer not to continue the helping session under the original boundaries. And then I will not able to act in a professional capacity in future helping sessions anymore. To prevent that happen, the best way is to refuse the invitation in a proper manner. It’s not easy to refuse the invitation from another person, but I’m sure that’s necessary act to protect both side.Moreover, I think that’d be a good idea to spend some time to explain the reason why I have to keep the boundaries carefully, so that helpee understand the responsibility of helper and the importance to establish boundaries properly. 


In this paragraph, I’d like to talk about the meaning of summarising at the end of a helping session. It’s quite common that helpee talked a lot about his/her life through the whole session and thus we cannot cover all of them within one helping session. To show that I have paid attention to listen to what the helpee said, I always summarise what we’ve discussed. I think summarising is a good way to assist helpee to recap what was discussed during the whole session and listed out main points concisely. Through this action, helpee know that I listened what he/she mentioned during the whole session. And in case I missed any points or facts, that’s a good time for helpee to clarify, so that those points won’t be ignored in the future. Moreover, the points summarised is a good starting point of the next session. As mentioned before, It’s not always possible to talk about all the points within limited time. And it’s good to continue the conversation starting from points that are not discussed last time, so that I can discuss them with helpee further and have deeper understanding about the full picture. Another advantage about summarising is to bring a session to a close smoothly, so that the helping session will not overrun. Time constraint is one of the boundaries that helper should maintain, and I think doing the summary a few minutes earlier is a good way to end the session, so that both helper and helpee will not jump into another conversation of other area. Since there are so many advantages and most of the classmates mentioned at the peer observation that my way of doing summarising is beneficial to the helping session, I always do the summarising during all triad.