4 Prerequisites for Psychological Counseling

The client's mental state at the time

During the counseling process, the client cannot avoid describing his own situation or memories, and there is an opportunity to mention some of his own psychological trauma. The counselor should consider the possible impact of these experiences on the client, and the client's current psychological state. Whether it can be supported. For the convenience of understanding, we can use the concept of ratio to try to explain, assuming that there is a ratio between the good and bad of a person's life experience, 50% good and 50% bad is a qualified ratio, if a person's life experience so far can be said to be 70% 30% of good or bad, even if you bring up some unpleasant experiences during the counseling process, it will cause a psychological burden on the client, and the chance that the ratio will fall below 50% is still not high, or the counselor still has room to observe the client. If it is found during the counseling process that the client may not be able to support, the pace of treatment can be adjusted or the method of intervention can be changed. But if the client ratio is found to be 50% good or bad or lower at the outset, counselling does not seem to be the most ideal choice for intervention.

Can the client develop a relationship with the counselor?

In the research on the success factors of general psychotherapy, the transformation of the client outside the treatment is the most important factor, accounting for 40%, and the second most important factor is the relationship between the staff and the client, accounting for 30%. In addition, the client's positive expectations and the therapist's skills each accounted for 15%.

Therefore, co-workers engaged in psychotherapy or counseling cannot ignore the importance of building a relationship with the client. Generally, both service users and social workers can establish a relationship after a period of cooperation. But there are personal factors on both sides that can affect the relationship, for example:

1. If the client particularly hates certain people due to personal experience, and then projects his feelings about those people onto the staff before or at the beginning of counseling, it may affect the establishment of the relationship.

2. Another example is in mental rehabilitation services, some delusional patients who have been persecuted may also have difficulties in establishing relationships with staff. First, their trust in people may be low, and second, staff may also become objects of delusions.

3. In the process of growing up, the relationship with the people around him is not close, and in the experience, he has been betrayed by family members or friends, or witnessed family members and friends being betrayed by others.

Whether the client voluntarily

Referring to the description of the relationship with the client in Solution Focused Therapy, the people who come to see the counselor can be divided into passers-by, complainants and clients.

The passer-by itself has no appeal, and came to see the counselor because of the request of a third party. Those who are asked to see a social worker by a teacher and those who are asked to see a psychological counselor by a court belong to this category. The client understands that he is facing some difficulties, but he thinks that the problem is not himself, so it is not himself who needs to change, so the counseling cannot be carried out. On the other hand, customers recognize that there is a problem and are willing to change. Under this circumstance, there are basic conditions for the development of counseling work. In addition to the above-mentioned relationship forms, there are also clients who just want to chat with the staff at work. If the staff contact the client with the mentality of counseling at this time, it can be said that Misallocation of resources, on the other hand, both the client and the counselor may not be able to meet each other's "role expectations"

The client's cognitive and language skills

In the process of counseling, there are many opportunities for the client to recall, think and reflect. The dialogue also has the opportunity to use language skills such as metaphors and induction. The client needs to have a certain cognitive and language ability to participate in it. Therefore, when the counselor considers whether to carry out work, this is also a factor to be considered.

Epilogue

Counseling is one of the most important intervention methods in helping people, but the state of the client needs to be considered when intervening, so that the work can be carried out effectively. If you are a social worker, please note that counseling is one of the many intervention options for social workers. When encountering cases that are not suitable for intervention by counseling, other methods should be actively considered for intervention.