Common Counseling Mistakes (part 1)

Counseling is a learning process where an objective and empathic listener provides unconditional acceptance and confidentiality that allows the hurting person to have space, time, and safety to examine personal issues, grieve over their losses, and embrace private pain.  It is also a place where defenses are challenged, maladaptive belief systems are examined and opportunities are provided for corrective emotional experiences.  The counselee is encouraged to take responsibility for his or her own behavior and is helped to make better decisions that would bring more fullness of life.  The goal of counseling is to help the counselee become what he or she is potentially capable of becoming.

While at Alliance Graduate School of Counseling, I had the privilege of studying under Dr. John Cheydleur.  In his book Called to Counsel* (Tyndale, 1999), Dr. Cheydleur addresses 12 specific counseling mistakes that lay counselors and non-professional Christian counselors tend to make.  He also suggests ways to avoid or correct these mistakes.  I will summarize his 12 points here:

1.  Patronizing or Cliché Responses 

A cliché response is a stereotypical expression that has lost its original meaning and impact through overuse.  

Example: 

Counselee:  I really struggle with my work.  I feel like I give all my time and energy, but I just don’t feel that my boss cares about me and my family.

Counselor:  I think you are just too discouraged – you have to keep in mind that sweet is the pleasure after pain.

A patronizing response is an attempt to encourage the counselee by emphasizing the positive.  It puts the counselee higher than he is or higher than what he thinks he can achieve.  The problem is that this is not how he sees himself at that moment (even though what the counselor sees or has observed may be true.) 

Example:

Counselee:  I want to quit my job.  It is very difficult; I don’t think I can bear the pressure they are putting on me.

Counselor:  I know it is difficult, but you can do it.  Don’t you remember you were able to complete the project that no one else at your job could do? 

Explanation:  On the cognitive level these responses makes sense to the well-meaning counselor.  However, psychologically the counselee gets confused because of the incongruence of how others perceive him and how he actually feels deep inside.  For the counselee, it deepens his struggle.  Some counselees would learn to hide by riding on to the encouraging comment and keeping a mask that shows that he is strong enough to face the challenges of life instead of admitting his insecurities and fears.

On a superficial level, these responses seem caring of the counselor, but on a psychological level, they are an attempt to control and limit the counselee’s feeling and expression of painful emotions.  Because of the inability of the counselor to understand how to help the person go deeper in examining the problem, they cut the counselee from the opportunity to express him or herself that could bring some emotional healing.

How to correct these mistakes: 

Instead of cutting the person off with patronizing or cliché responses, let the person talk.  And show that you care by reflecting not only the content, but also the emotion with which the person is struggling.

2.  Questions and Probes Too Soon

In good counseling practice, the counselee needs to be able to hear what he feels and thinks about his situation.  By bombarding the client with too many questions (probes), the counselor appears to be an expert on an awareness level, but on the psychological level, the counselor is very controlling and overly anxious.  By stacking questions, the counselor prevents the client from discussing areas that are important to him.  Another problem that arises from asking too many questions is that the counselor might lead the counseling in the direction the client is not yet ready to face. Probing too soon also inappropriately narrows the focus of the interview.

How to correct this mistake: 

Instead of asking so many questions, the counselor should:

·         Pay attention and listen

·         Slow down and allow the client to talk freely

·         Reflect and clarify statements to keep on track with the counselee’s process.

3. Giving Advice Instead of Lending Information

A major mistake commonly made by new or untrained counselors is to confuse the necessary process of introducing new information to the client with the negative process of giving advice.

When we give advice, we assume the role of an expert. (i.e.  “Follow what I say because I know what is best for you.”)  We assume (incorrectly) that we completely understand the person, his feelings, fears, hesitations, the nature of his struggle, and the obstacles he will face when following through with our advice. 

Reasons why counselors should NOT give advice:

·         Most of the time when receiving advice the person feels coerced to follow you and may come to resent you for making him do certain things. 

·         Some counselees actually like this because they are so dependent on other people thinking for their lives that they don’t want to take time to ponder it on their own.  Through advice giving, the counselor can just reinforce their tendency to not own their own thoughts and feelings in a way that is required to make a personal decision.  The counselor can empower them to blame others for their lives.  Later you hear them say, “I just followed your advice.  Look what happened…”  (and they are implying, “How do you feel now? You made a mess of my situation.”)

·         Others will listen to the advice of the counselor, but will not do it.  When asked why, they will present an alibi, like what if it will not work?

How to correct this mistake: 

·         Evaluate the receptivity of the client before giving new information.

·         Avoid using “you should” statements.

·         Always try to give the counselee two or three alternatives so that he has to choose for himself what he thinks is the best alternative.

·         It is always good to process the counselee to see their perspective on the issue.

I will be discussing other common counseling mistakes in upcoming posts  . . .

*Cheydleur, John R. 1999. Called to Counsel. Wheaton. Illinois: Tyndale

Common Counseling Mistakes (Part 2)

Information in this post comes from Dr. John Cheydleur's book Called to Counsel, in which he describes 12 Common Counseling Mistakes that lay counselors and nonprofessional Christian Counselors tend to make. (Used with permission)

4. Inappropriate Self-Disclosure
Selective and focused self-disclosure on the part of the counselor unlocks difficult areas for the client.   It can also build a stronger bond between the counselor and client, help to break down the client’s sense of isolation, and provide a very real hope. However, one of the most common counseling mistakes is for self-disclosure to occur too early in the interview.

When this happens, you can end up with role reversal.  The role of the counselor is to pay undivided attention in order to listen to both verbal and non-verbal messages of the client.  However, with inappropriate self-disclosure, the counselee is now listening and processing the counselor.

Example: 

Counselee:  Have you ever experience being betrayed?

Counselor:  Oh!  That is a long story, but I will share 

a short  version with you.  When I was 18, I fell in 

love… I could not  believe what she did in spite of  

all my sacrifices… (5 minutes have already passed 

and the counselor is still telling his own story.)

Counselee: Tell me more. . . What else?  What 

happened next?

Another problem arises when self-disclosure is too intense.  The counselee can feel uncomfortable with the material being disclosed, and this can also trigger memories of traumatic events that the counselee has experienced.  Or the counselee might feel obligated to tell his or her own story as a response to the counselor’s self-disclosure.

How to correct this mistake: 

Process the counselee's thought and feelings in reaction to your testimony and/or your interpretation of his problem.

Principles to Follow in Counselor’s Self-disclosure: 

1. Self-disclose for the client’s need, not your own. 

2. Keep your sharing brief, then go right back to what the counselee was sharing, allowing him or her to continue to work on the issue. 

3. When you share, don’t seek to have the client respond to your feelings. 

4. Listen to the client’s spirit and the Holy Spirit, not just your own spirit 

I will be discussing more common counseling mistakes in upcoming posts . . .

Common Counseling Mistakes (Part 3)

Information in this post comes from Dr. John Cheydleur's book Called to Counsel, in which he describes 12 Common Counseling Mistakes that lay counselors and nonprofessional Christian Counselors tend to make. (Used with permission)

5. Poor Challenging Skills
The counseling process needs to reach the action-planning stage in order to make significant impact on the counselee’s life.  It is very comfortable for counselees to stay in the exploration or insight stages where they talk about the people or situations that are bothering them, but not yet looking at their personal contribution to the problem. The counselor needs to look deeply into the motives behind the behaviors of the counselees and examine the factors that can sabotage them from following through with their plans for change.  Then the counselor can appropriately challenge the counselee to take bigger risks, set narrower boundaries and establish specific goals to address the issues that are troubling him.

How to avoid this mistake:

• Avoid yes or no questions, irrelevant comments, and inappropriate emphasis on secondary issues.
• Ask appropriate, precise, accurate, timely questions.
• Slowly direct the counselee to decide for himself and take responsibility for his problem.           (Be careful not to fall into the trap of premature plans.)

6.  Superficial Decisions

This happens when the counselor asks the counselee to make decisions toward the beginning of the counseling session before the problem has been thoroughly explored. The decision may be the "right thing" to do, but the counselee has not processed their emotions and weighed their options, so they will still have many adverse emotions when trying to implement the decision, and likely will not persevere in the decision. 

Example:   

A counselee is a very good worker, but his boss is quite abusive.  During counseling he decides to confront his boss.  However, he has not taken time to process his emotions.  When he confronts his boss, he is overwhelmed with emotion (for different people, it may be different emotions: fear, anger, breaking down or appeasing) and does not state his problem clearly.  The boss does not get the point and continues to look down on him and not treat him well.

How to avoid this mistake:

Do not ask the counselee to make decisions early in the counseling process.  Instead explore the problem and look at other factors that caused this problem to arise:  Who are the people involved?  When did this specific problem begin?  How did this problem affect the counselee’s functioning level?  Look at how the person perceives the problem, his subjective distress, and his coping skills. 

7. Artificial Action Plans

Sometimes the counselee may simply choose the accepted course of behavior as an action plan without getting to the root cause.  He is just trying to appease.  The counselor may tend to push the client to make a decision or create an action plan too soon in the counseling process, before emotions and values are sufficiently explored and clarified.  Sometimes a counselor stays on the superficial level of the problem without looking at the core issues.  When the counselor focuses only on the presenting problem, he may be treating only the symptoms instead of treating the real cause of the problem or dysfunctional behavior. 

Example: 
A client says that his boss is abusive.  After talking with his counselor.  He decides to set a meeting with his boss and bring up the matter.  He has decided he will take the risk of confronting his boss and has plans to accept a lower paying job if his boss fires him.  However, the counseling never got to the root of the issue that the counselee is quite irresponsible at work.  He has a pattern of poor performance and his personal life has been interfering with his work performance.  But there is nothing in the action plan to address that.

How to avoid this mistake:

• Explore the counselee’s emotions and values, not just the content of the current problem 
• Compare and contrast the counselee’s values with Scripture.
• Brainstorm with the counselee in order to create a wide number of options and possibilities.
• Prune and organize all of these ideas to end up with a functional set of behavioral goals and programs to accomplish these goals. 
• Work as a coach, helping the counselee to create a realistic action plan based on values you can support and to which the counselee is committed.

8.  Overlooking Accountability

Sometimes there is an assumption that after the counseling that everything will be all right.  The counselee went away feeling relieved and having good advice to follow.  However, the chances of the counselee resolving the problem without some kind of followup and accounability are slim.

Explanation:  In short-term pastoral counseling, the selection and commitment to an accountability partner is very important.  This step supports, reinforces, and maintains the new decision and the actions that go with it.  Accountability to you as the pastoral counselor is not enough.  

How to avoid this mistake:

Each counselee’s decision and plans should be: 

• Clearly endorsed by the client
• Submitted by the client to God in prayer
• Communicated to at least one other significant individual who can serve as an accountability partner