Feedback to others

 

In this paragraph, I’d like to review my response when I give feedback to others. I think I’m a good observer in terms of catching some key moments from the whole triad and provide feedback to the classmates. It’s not difficult for me to provide comment using the ‘feedback sandwich’ approach. In most of the time, I think I can provide objective comment and some suggestion which is beneficial to the classmates. For example, I suggested a helper to assist helpee to recognize and name the emotions instead of just repeat the action. I know that it’s useful to defang helpee’s negative emotions. On the other hand, I noticed that I’m not good at memorizing the whole conversation during the triad when I am an observer. That means it’s quite difficult me to separate the entire session into small parts and analysis each part in a detailed way. As a result, I’m not able to reviewing the whole dialogue that throughout the triad and comment how helper can do better when responding to helpee. In my point of view, good constructive feedback should consist of observation from both micro and macro way, covering the way of dialogue, body gesture and counselling skills. In this way, the observer can offer comprehensive comment that assist helper to understand himself better. If I have a chance to study higher level course, I think I will need to put some effort at this area. 

In the next paragraph, I’d like to discuss the importance of sensitivity around ending a helping session. As a helper, I’m trained to help the helpee to achieve what he wish to achieve or solve within the agreed timeframe. And it’s important for helper to apply various skills throughout the session to accomplish this main goal. During the whole session, there’re always unexpected situations and helpee may find that what he raises at the beginning is not his real concern and a new area come up and worth further discussion. For example, helpee may wish to talk about his anger to his partner at the beginning. But he may discover the grieving from the family of origin. In this scenario, the time left maybe insufficient for helper to explore this new area fully with the helpee. If helper insist to talk about the new area within a tight schedule, helper might not able to express his thought and feeling completely when the session comes to an end. And helper will then fall into a dilemma of what to do next. To prevent this scenario, it’d be better to end the current session appropriately and suggest to continue the dialogue about the new findings at the next session. To achieve this, helper should always be aware of the time remaining throughout the session and seek the best timing to end the session smoothly. In this way, helpee can tidy up his emotion a few minutes earlier and ready to wind up the session. Besides, a proper ending can ensure the helping relationship is well maintained, thus helpee can come back and talk about the unfinished area later if he wish to.