LifeLine Reflection - in terms of being a helper

I was helped by a helper 17 years ago. I experienced how counselling skills can help the others, and I decided to be a helper and help friends and other people I met. I wish to share what I've experience with people.

I faced great doubt from people that I trusted. I lost my passion of being a helper and I gradually fade out from the helping work. I spent a lot of time to deal with the emotions and rethink the heping work that I did and the meaning of being a helper.

I met another helper and he helped me to summaeise what's happened and the reason why I'm frustrated for the last few years. And I realised I have to forgive those people who made me suffer. Beside, I met helpee that I helped and I heard her appreciation about my work and how I changed her life, I regain passion to be helper. 

Reflection about feedback

 

Feedback skills to provide constructive feedback to other learners.

Since I have more and more chance to work with the classmates, now I’m able to provide feedback to compare and contrast the performance at the earlier stage and now. I think it’s a good way to encourage people that they have great improvement throughout the training period  and thus have motivation to keep the good work. On the other hand, I wish to keep improving my skills of providing feedback, so that I can give beneficial comment to the others instead of just say something that can’t help people to further develop his skills.

Strong areas of feedback and areas you feel could be improved/are a challenge

I got a reminder from a classmate and he reminded me that I should keep calm when I heard strong emotional expression from helpee. He noticed my performance when we worked on a very bad situation, he reminded that I have to try my best to control myself and use the counselling skills to do whatever I can to assist helpee. I think what he said is constructive. Probably I will not face such difficult scenario a lot, but it’s worth to be prepared before it happen. And I think that’s something that I can do better if I wish to helper the others in the future.

Feedback that aided your skills improvement/re-enforced something you do well

A feedback that I found useful is about what’s the best timing for helper to respond to helpee. Because of my personal experience, I always think that I should give sufficient time helpee to express himself before I say anything. But from another point of view, that will shorten the time that I as a helper to get involved in the helping session using the counselling skills. While I’m still struggling aboiu this, now I try to react differently during the triad. I wish I can find out the best timing for myself in the future.

你所愛的人病了

如非因為功課的緣故，我想我整個2024的上半年應該一點文字也不會留下。

我應該怎樣形容現時的狀態？我也不太清楚。或許應該算是失語？

自上一次經歷神一的思想衝擊後，我很久沒有經歷過這種的感覺了。

直到如今，我還未能完全處理背後的那些感受

因我所恐懼的臨到我身，我所懼怕的迎我而來。我不得安逸，不得平靜，也不得安息

每當我在夢中想起你被病魔摧殘的樣子，我的淚水就不住的湧出來

－－

感謝疼愛我以及我的家人的你們。教會的諸位在我和我家的重要時刻從沒有缺席，真的非常感謝大家言語上的關愛問候與及行動上的支持。雖然相見的時間不多，但我記得你們所做的一切的。

除了引用shirley 常說的「無言感激」外，我也不知有沒有更好的字句

－－

或許我也會做一樣的事，說一樣的話

「人若想與你說話，你就厭煩嗎？但誰能忍住不說呢？…… 這理我們已經考察，本是如此，你須要聽，要知道是與自己有益。」

－－

頭腦上我理解話語的表面及底層意思，也明白字裡行間的關心。但實際上我卻感到不斷被否定。

那怕我以接近透支的方式去做我能夠做的事，仍然是不夠、不夠、不足夠。

「你已做得很好，但你還可以做得更多更多更多更多更多更多更多……」

－－

世界最遙遠的一種相距中

處境都變, 情懷未變

留下只有思念

一串串永遠纏

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. 

Signposting

When I have helping sessions with helpee, I noticed that some of the issues that they’re facing are quite practical. Some helpee mentioned that they’re having difficult financial situation for the last few years due to increasing cost of living. As a helper, I think active listening is a good way to show that I pay attention to listen and understand what helpee are facing. On the other hand, I think that it’s important for helper to recognize the meaning of signposting helpee to other supportive network if that may help them to deal with the issue. Take the above money issue as an example, I think helper can help to find out the reason why helpee feel worry about the future and the helpee’s feeling due to money concern. But to solve the issue permanently, it’s required to study the spending pattern of helpee and review the existing debt, which requires input from parties have related knowledge. I know that there are various charities such as StepChange Debt Charity and National Debtline that are specialized to provide debt advice and help people to deal with debts. If I have chance to talk to helpee that have money issue in the future, I think I will help them to deal with the emptions first, then I’ll suggest them to seek additional support from these charities, so that someone can assist them to look into their situation and see how to sort the financial issue in the longer term.

In this paragraph, I’d like to share how my personality affect the helping work. I was grown up in a Christian family and awareness about emotions were not emphasized. I experienced the power active listening when I was sixteen years old. I had some love problems at that time and I wished someone to understand my feeling. At that time, my church mentor demonstrated how to be a good helper and the transforming power of using listening skills properly. The mentor spent almost a year with me and she helped me to deal with my emotions and my struggles. After that, I wished to be a good helper and help the others that were having struggles in their life. And I tried to repeat what I’ve experienced when I tried to be a helper. First of all, I tried to provide as much space as I can when I talk to a helpee, so that they can share safely. The reason is because I understand the importance of creating a safe place for helpee to share their feeling and thoughs, which is hard to find in big city. When helpee felt they’re safe to share, they always shared a lot of their feelings with me. The second thing that I learned from the mentor is the significance of self-care. When I tried to be a helper, I had many chances to talk to different helpee and I became exhausted after a year. The reason is because I listened too much negative things but I didn’t aware that. My mentor reminded me it’s crucial to take care my own mental health, otherwise it’s easy for me to burnout. Because of her word, I tried to spend more effort to take care of my own mental health and understand my underneath emotions. When I looked back, I found that I greatly affected by this mentor and what she showed me affect my action when I help the others as a helper. I wish to keep those suggestions in my mind and use them to help more people. 

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.