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

Common Counseling Mistakes (Part 4)

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)

The first 8 mistakes are more technical in nature and result from good-intentioned efforts to help a person, but also a lack of understanding of the psychological processes of counseling.  The last 4 mistakes are more particular to Christian counseling because they involve misapplication of moral and spiritual principles.

9.  Overlooking Client Values

The counselor might assume that the counselee has the same values as the counselor and steer him toward solutions that reflect those assumed values.  

Example:    

A counselee is complaining that she has sent her 3 siblings to school and now she is sending her nephews and nieces.  She is almost 50 and has no savings though she has been working abroad for many years.  The counselor might think the easy thing is to tell her to have good boundaries and just stop helping her family (which might be an option from an individualistic perspective)  However, this would cause even more of a problem for the counselee as she would then struggle with intense guilt and even persecution from her family.  In her value system, her family is more important than herself.  This value can be challenged, but a change of values must be intentionally made by the counselee.  And if the counselee is not ready to change her values, then the counselor must help her look for other ways to cope that are congruent with her value system.  To stay within the above value system, the counselor might look for ways to negotiate with the family that they pay half of the tuition so that the client is able to save some money for herself.

How to Avoid this Mistake:

It is very important for the counselor to try to understand the counselee’s values and beliefs by listening intently.  After acknowledging the values and beliefs, the counselor should mirror them back for clarification, affirmation and/or correction. The counselor should be careful in his counseling responses to communicate genuine empathy and caring without being condescending, judgmental, or over-identifying with the client.

The counselor cannot help people beyond their values.  For instance, the counselor can suggest they say they are sorry, but if they don’t believe they owe an apology, even if they go through the motions of saying they are sorry, it will come across as insincere and be ineffective.  However, the counselor can challenge them to adopt new values (but he cannot assume their values are what he wants them thinks they should be)

               

10.  Misuse or Nonuse of Scripture

Counseling requires time and patience in exploring the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the person.  Because of time constraints, the counselor may rush in quoting Scripture hoping that this will solve the problem so that the counselee will stop complaining about his problem.  Or perhaps because the counselor may not know how to proceed in moving the counselee from exploration, to insight and then to action plan, the counselor may share Bible verses to encourage the counselee to change behavior or put faith in God.  The counselor is hoping that the counselee will then stop talking about the problem because God will change it if only he has enough faith and does what he is expected to do.

The counselor might think that if the person puts their faith in God, then God will automatically solve all of the problems in his life.  Scripture can also be misused in a patronizing way or in cliché responses. 

 

Example:

Counselee:  I am really struggling right now.  The electric company has sent us notice of disconnection because we have not paid our electric bill for 4 months now.  Our water bill is also going to be disconnected this week.  I just really need God to provide for our needs so we can pay our bills or else we will have a hard time for reconnection of both electric and water bills.

Counselor:  I see that you are having so much stress right now.  I just want to let you know that God promise to supply your needs according to His riches.  Just trust Him he will not fail.

 

How to use Scripture appropriately:

To be effective in counseling, Scripture must be used surgically, delicately and sensitively. It should not be used to demean or punish the client.  Nor should it be used casually or argumentatively. Instead, the Word of God must be applied at the right time, in the right way and with power.  Scripture should be used in spiritual counseling either to confirm and strengthen the counselee’s Christian values or to confront non-biblical values that could lead the client to making wrong decisions.

When introducing a verse or a Scripture passage, the counselor should first ask the client if he remembers what the Bible says about his condition, issue, or circumstance.  After identifying applicable Scriptures, then the counselor should process the meaning of the Scripture to the counselee and how it could be applied in this particular problem.  Counseling is not an appropriate time for exhortation or preaching. 

11. Misuse of Prayer

The purpose of prayer in counseling is to request and receive the intervening power of God:  whether to change circumstances, forgive past sin, rebuke evil forces, heal sickness or meet other needs.  The counselor may be tempted to use prayer as a substitute for other skills and necessary development in the counseling process.

There are two common ways to misuse prayer:  The counselor misuses prayer when he uses it as a way to preach (to tell people what he thinks they should do or to try to convict people of the things he thinks they are doing wrong.)  Prayer can also be misused to communicate warmth or sympathy, which is inappropriate to the counseling process because these things should be spoken directly to the counselee instead of indirectly while talking to God.

For Example:

Counselee:  I really don’t have money to pay for my midterm exam.  My mother told me that they cannot send me money this month because my father is in the hospital.

Counselor:  What are your plans then? …. I think that is good.  Let me pray for you.  God, I ask you that you will provide the needs of my brother… I ask you God that may he knows that you are talking to him through his circumstance.  Help her not to worry but to simply trust in you.

To avoid this mistake: 

The counselor should make sure to clearly state any moral concern he has for the client, instead of trying to manipulate him through prayer.  Encouragement is better stated directly as part of the counseling process than through prayer (though there is some encouragement through prayer.)  The counselor can begin a session with a short prayer of invitation for God’s Spirit to work through the counseling process.  Prayer can also be used effectively at the end of the counseling process to commit the plans to the Lord.  Prayer should be used with discretion and not as a cure-all nor a substitute for the counseling process.

12. Misuse of Religious Symbols

Misapplication of religious symbols happens when the counselor uses symbols that have significance in his own faith or religious background, but do not have significance to the counselee.  Religious symbols need to fit to the belief system and the need of the counselee. These symbols should not be applied as a cure-all in place of counseling skills and interventions.

For example:

Counselee:  I am scared of evil spirits.  I have had nightmares a few nights in a row.  Do you have something I can use to get rid of my bad dreams?

Counselor:  I heard that if you put a crucifix under your pillow it will help get rid of your bad dreams and scare away evil spirits.

How to avoid this mistake:

Use counseling skills to explore the problem.  Explore emotion, cognition, and behaviors.  Help the counselee to gain insight and then allow him to explore all possible alternatives and design a specific course of action to achieve his goal.