CS101 Basic Counselling Skills

• Introduction to Counselling
• The Counselling Role

• The Counsellor’s role
  Qualities of a counsellor; Creating core conditions;
  What do you want to get out of counselling?
• Skills used in Counselling
  Sharpening our awareness; Use of questions, empathy; 
  Awareness of body language; reflecting skills & more advanced skills.
• The benefits of acquiring Counselling skills
  The use of communication skills in personal relationships, etc.
• A deeper understanding – training to a professional level
  Acquiring skills; developing self-awareness; supervision, professional considerations.
• Course components
• The three major approaches
  The Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approach; the unconscious; development psychology; transference & countertransference; resistances and defences; dreams; the therapeutic relationship; the Rogerian core conditions model; cognitive behavioural approaches; intervention techniques or methods.
• Demystifying the jargon
• Dealing with Anger
  Gestalt method; appropriate & inappropriate expression of anger; the psychodynamic perspective.
• Underlying Issues
  Grief; Depression: the suicidal client; self-harm; abuse; confidentiality and client disclosure.
• Cultural Issues
  The concept of culture, self; family, community and gender roles; a creative integrative approach, institutionalized racism.
• Working online

• The aim is to give the student an overview of the main theories, skills and applications of one-to-one counselling.  The course covers the basics of counselling, for example its origins, the role of the counsellor, the practical use of counselling skills.  A chapter is set aside to deal with the different counselling orientations.
• The course will inform the individual who is interested in learning about counselling skills with a view to communicating with others more effectively, both in the workplace and in their private lives.
• The first part of the course begins by focusing on the roles of counselling and on the counsellor. Skills and the core conditions of the person-centred approach are introduced and discussed in relation to their use in other areas of life outside counselling.
• The second part of the course takes the student a stage further into the theories, concepts and techniques of counselling.  It includes an outline of the three main approaches to counselling; that is, the psychodynamic approach that originates from the psychoanalytical model; the person-centred approach that represents the humanistic model and the behavioural/cognitive behavioural approach.
• The course demonstrates that we learn fundamentally how to be with our clients (or people we hope to help) from the clients themselves – if we listen, attend, and respond in a skilled way. These subjects are introduced to provide insight into the challenges that are inherent to the work. Self-responsibility and the development of personal resources are central themes and goals of counselling that apply equally to the counsellor.