Using the basic active listening skills may take the client some way along the path of self-awareness, yet more may be needed to help the client gain a deeper understanding of the problem and its root cause.
In this chapter we provide insight into the skills the counsellor uses to facilitate understanding. These skills, unfortunately termed ‘challenging and confronting’, invite clients to examine their behaviour and its consequences.
In other words, by encouraging the client to come face-to-face with herself, she develops the skill of self-challenge and the potential to change. However, it needs to be borne in mind that in the context of counselling, challenges and confrontations are always offered with the client’s best interests at heart — as a gift, not an attack. The skills need to be used with great sensitivity, care and respect. They need to come out of a deep empathy with the client, and should not be used until trust has been well established.
Challenging And Confronting
The aim of challenging is to provide accurate information and to offer our perspective. We challenge the strengths of the client rather than the weaknesses – we point out the strengths, assets and resources which the client may fail to fully use. Challenging and confronting helps clients develop new perspectives,
figure 18 gives an overview of the skills the counsellor uses to facilitate understanding on the problem. The skills covered in this section are specific to challenging.
Fig. 18.
An overview of the skills the counsellor uses to facilitate understanding of the problem.
Confronting A Client
Many people get the misguided image of counsellors as a bunch of head nodders or do-gooders, who get paid a lot of money for just sitting and listening. Confronting a client with something she might prefer not to see, might not want to hear, or might not want to know, is not easy. It can be a painful learning process for the client, as well as a risky business for the counsellor. It takes guts to challenge a client, and the counsellor may well be left wondering whether she has said the right thing. It can also be an exhausting experience for both.
What Confrontation Is And Is Not
- Confrontation is not verbal fisticuffs or a head-on clash!
- Confrontation should be a tentative suggestion, not a declaration.
- Confrontation is an observation, not an accusation.
- Confrontation should be made only after careful deliberation.
- Confrontation should never be used as retaliation or a put down.
- Confrontation is safest when the relationship is well established.
The main areas of confrontation are:
- Discrepancies, distortions and manipulations.
- Negative thought patterns and behaviours.
- Games, tricks and smoke screens.
- Excuses: manipulation, complacency, rationalisations, procrastinations, passing the buck.
Forms of confronting:
- ’Your perspective is... mine... is’
- ’When you say/do... I think/feel...’
- ’On the one hand you are saying... on the other you are saying
- ’You have said (or done)... my reaction is...’
Examples Of Confrontations
Discrepancy
- ‘You say that being rejected has really upset you, yet you smile as you talk about it.’
- ‘When you arrived, I observed a smiling and happy-go-lucky person sitting opposite me, and yet this doesn’t seem to fit with the words I am hearing.’
- ‘On the one hand you say you love your wife, but on the other you say you have a mistress.’
- ‘You have mentioned to me several times that you hate arriving late for appointments, yet I’ve noticed that you have been late for the last two sessions, and I’m wondering what that’s about.’
- ‘You speak of your many losses, yet you smile continuously.’
- ‘You say you are fine, yet you seem to be very close to tears.’