Helping Relationships in Counselling – Identify your own values and beliefs and outline the effect they could have on helping relationships
Helping Relationships in Counselling. My own values and beliefs are honesty, communication, support, understanding, listening and trust. Communication is important to me because I think it helps if I am able to talk about problems. It helps me to talk about my problems which initially I cannot be solving if I don’t talk about it. Honesty is important to me because in a helping relationships it’s important to be truthful. I cannot see the sense in talking to someone for an hour or so without being honest. It always catches up with you if you are not. Trust is important to me as without it, you are never going to find out the real depth of the person you are talking to.
Support is important to me because it is important to be supported by others. By working together and supporting each other problems are easier to deal with especially through difficult times. Example; if you’re an alcoholic and you feel like having a drink and you know you shouldn’t, you have always got your partner to turn to. It’s unusual for both parties to be struggling or going through a bad patch at the same time; hence one would be there to support the other.
Understanding the importance
I feel understanding is an important part of any relationship to me. Understanding that everyone is different and have different needs, views and outlooks is also important to me. This is essential in any happy relationship. That’s why it’s important not to judge. If somebody thinks differently to you, it doesn’t make them wrong. It just means they have a different opinion. I understand that is their opinion.
The effects communication has on a helping relationship, I believe is the ability to talk about ones feelings which enables you to hear your own problems or the problem of others.
Trust is an important value of mine because it forms the foundation of a helping relationship.
I also feel listening is a major part of a healthy relationship. How can you help, understand or support someone if you have not listens to them. Sometimes people just need to talk and listening can be enough. There are times when people just want to get things off there chest, and by saying things out loud the answer or the way forward sometimes reveals itself.
Identify your own motivation for helping others
I feel my helping others is sending people to the right rehab centres which I have visited so I know they are getting the right help they need. By doing counselling skills, it is sign posting them to what they need.
I also feel in time with the job I am doing, there will be new laws put into place where anyone doing voluntary work on help lines etc will need to have a certain standard of knowledge about what they are doing. In my situation a counselling course is the closest thing for me for my drug and alcohol Helpline work.
Counselling is also something I have always wanted to know more about. How does a counsellor know the answers to people’s problems? How can a counsellor know how people are really feeling inside? I find the whole thing fascinating.
Identify your own blocks to listening and learning
One of my blocks to listening is derailing because when someone is talking I put them back on track to where they want it to go.
Mind reading is another of my own blocks to listening. I am continually trying to work out what the speaker is really thinking and feeling so as I can realise what help they need and where is the best help I can offer them.
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The End of the Relationship – Helping Relationships in Counselling
How we deal with the end of the relationship scenario
Relationship – The end of the relationship (the helping relationship) can have differing impacts on listener and speaker. In the speaker there could be a sense of loss of the safe and non-judgmental nature of the relationship. They might also miss the support they gained from it, especially if there are few other sources of support in their life.
Alternatively the listener may have found the helping experience to be most rewarding and to have developed a caring and high regard for the speaker, again leading to a possible sense of loss when the relationship ends.
However, if the original aims of the relationship are well defined and met and most importantly, both listener and speaker can feel this is the case, it should enable each one to move forward based on a sense of progress having been made, even though they might feel apprehensive to begin with.
A Helping Relationship?
Helping Relationships in Counselling. A helping relationship will develop through different stages towards achieving its objectives. It can be difficult for the speaker to move away from the relative protection of this type of relationship, as compared to other types of relationship they may have which feel less helpful or safe. It can therefore be easier for those involved if the ending is managed gradually rather than suddenly. Plus it is also helpful if the impending end of the relationship is openly discussed beforehand so that any feelings about it can be shared.
Counselling relationships
In a formal counselling relationship, the boundary setting at the outset of the relationship could have covered agreement to how many sessions would be required. Sometimes the boundary can include an option to continue, again for a finite period of time, if listener and speaker agree. In either case, the ending will come and is best managed on the basis of no surprises and with all expectations and concerns about it managed in advance.
In other types of helping relationship, like that between parent and child concerning a specific issue, it might help to draw the line upon how much time will be spent discussing that particular issue, so that both can move on.
Other useful strategies to end the helping relationship are:
- to summarise and agree the progress made and how far the objectives have been met
- encourage a two-way feedback about the relationship, the effect it has had on the speaker and the listener and what has been learned
- explore other means of future support for the listener which could include further counselling or other kinds of support at a future date with current or different listeners.
- accept that, sometimes, it may be the speaker who wishes the relationship to end for any kind of reason, and this should be accepted and supported by the listener
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