Characteristics of counsellor

In this journal, I’d like to talk to talk about what kind of characteristics that’s beneficial to build a good therapeutic relationship between helper and helpee. I think patience is one of the key characteristics. Nowadays people’s mind is manipulated by social media algorithms and people are chasing for excitement and instant gratification such as likes and short comments. Now the culture is promoting a culture of didn’t read something would require too much time to understand, people are used to obtain summary or conclusion. It’s understandable why such culture is popular, but I don’t think it’s good to interpersonal relationships. It’s becoming harder and harder for people to slow down and pay attention to listen the other’s life experience, and that’s why people are looking for helpers or counsellors to share their struggle and feelings. They know that these people are all eyes and are willing to concentrate to listen with patience. Another characteristic that’s always mentioned with patience is non-judgemental. The rise of social media and instant gratification culture not only encourage a norm of restlessness, it also lead to another phenomenon, which is making judgement quickly. Now more and more people are keen on expressing their opinion and making judgement, despite they only listen a brief summary about what’s happened. Since people are used to comment on everything online, this also impact how they interact with other people in their daily life, causing more quick judgement after a short conversation. The quick response did not bring any good to people, it harm the relationship because people are judged, not being listened. As a result, non-judgemental is becoming more and more important, especially to helpers. People that are looking for having counselling relationship wish to have a non-judgemental space for them to talk about their own life experience. Some of those experience maybe full of pain and tears, and they have a great need of being listened instead of being judged. 

In the next paragraph, I’d like to discuss the three stages in the counselling process. The use of three stages outline what’d be done throughout the counselling sessions, which is very important to new counsellors and layman that rarely have counselling experience, so that both sides have a clearer picture about what to be expected. In the first phase of exploration, helper will explain what kind of rules that he will follow and details of the session will also be explained. This step is an invitation to helpee to take accountability of the upcoming sessions and understand the possible outcome about what helpee is going to share. After contract is agreed, helper will then try to explore what the helpee is struggling with by using various skills such as attending and silence. The aim is to assist helpee to find out what they’d like to talk about or what they wish to work on during the sessions. After that, it’s time for helper to further understand the feeling and underneath thoughs of helpee. Since helper have already talk about the issue briefly at the previous stage, helper will then work on identifying what’s mentioned frequently and whether there’s any patterns that worth further elaboration. After the above phases, helper and helpee should have a very fruitful dialogue. Helpee should be able to relief part of the emotions and understand himself in terms of thinking pattern, emotions, etc in a better way. Helper can then summarise what’ve been discussed and highlight key findings before ending the session.