RHS301

Main Content

Module 1: Introduction to the Person and Profession

How to Become a Good Helper

To be successful as a helping professional, it is essential to have a good therapeutic relationship, or alliance, with the person you are helping. To ensure a healthy therapeutic relationship and success, you, the helping professional, must remember that the most important tool is you! The following are skills necessary for creating a therapeutic alliance:

having a good foundational knowledge of the counseling microskills,
using the counseling microskills (the basic skills used in therapy, such as eye contact, body language, and questioning),
understanding and using the counseling theories and techniques,
knowing that there are multiple ways to help,
being flexible in your helping style, and
perhaps most importantly, being committed to continuous self-exploration and personal/professional development.

After all, if you as the helping professional are not committed to the continual examination of yourself and seeking out ways to grow, then how can you help others to examine themselves and be motivated to grow?

To become a good helper, you must attain certain conditions. Carl Rogers (1957), the developer of person-centered therapy, stated that helping professionals must be genuine. To be genuine means to show the real you; if you hide the real you when working with clients, your clients will hide their real selves. Genuineness also means being willing to take risks. While risk-taking can make you feel vulnerable and increase the chance of making mistakes, risk also pushes you to grow and develop as both a person and a professional. Risk is what encourages you to express your emotions, care about others, and be involved not only in your own life, but also in others' lives.

To be effective as a helping professional, it is also important not to engage in value judgements; instead, according to Rogers (1957), you should have unconditional positive regard toward a client. To do so, you must become aware of your own personal values and biases. When you strive to know your values and biases, you can then work to avoid bias and putting your values on others. Additionally, by learning your values and biases, you can assist others in developing successful goals that line up with their own values. Finally, you will be able to better manage differences between yourself and the people you serve, ensuring that you do no harm.

To become an effective helper, you must also be multiculturally competent. This requires the exploration of your own cultural norms, values, and traditions and of how they influence your thoughts, actions, feelings, and reactions toward various situations and people. You must be willing to learn about cultures and people who are different from you, seeing the world through others' eyes. What is the historical background of other cultures and people? What are the traditions, values, and expectations of others? It is important to learn how possible experiences with stereotypes, discrimination, racism, and oppression have affected individuals, groups of people, and whole communities.

Finally, all of these conditions are combined to create empathy. Empathy is the ability to accurately sense and reflect a client's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and values. Empathy, at its best, is the combination of all the conditions discussed above, along with the effective use of microskills and theory, that demonstrates that you are truly listening to a client and truly care. As in our clients' lives, true empathetic listening in our own lives is rare. A person who has truly been heard empathetically will open up more and be more willing to make changes in his or her life. The therapeutic relationship, then, will be more likely to be successful.

Video Case Scenario 1.1

Watch the following video and think about how you would respond.

Loading the player

Length: 00:01:51 Video Case Scenario 1.1 Transcript

Transcript not available.

Where would you focus? Choose one of the following five options. Click on the arrow button to reveal what might result from your selection.

+ Option 1: Focus on the client’s emotions and say, “You’re so stressed out. Tell me more about how you’re feeling.”

By focusing on emotions in a general format, you allow the client to self-select not only what emotion(s) to focus on, but also a specific situation and its resulting emotions. From here, you could also more thoroughly explore the client’s emotions—for example, ask the client to explain to you what exactly stress feels like, both emotionally and physically.

+ Option 2: Focus on the couple’s relationship and say, “Tell me more about your relationship with your partner.”

By asking a very general question such as this, you allow the client to select the direction of the conversation; it helps to alleviate you from asking many specific questions, allowing you pay attention to what the client says, as well as to his or her body language. For example, does the client say a lot about the relationship, or very little? Does the client talk about mostly positive or negative experiences with the partner? What type of body language does the client display? For example, does the client appear relaxed, happy, tense, sad, fidgety, scared, or angry when talking about the relationship?

+ Option 3: Focus on what the client wants to see happen and ask, "So, what would you like to see happen?"

This type of question allows the client to potentially pick one problem and think through possible solutions. The client has probably thought of many possible solutions at this point but feels stuck. The client may think and feel very negatively right now, seeing only barriers to any possibilities. By asking this type of question, you can begin to understand what the client sees as the biggest problem, what possible solutions the client has thought of, and whether the client has a positive or negative thought process.

+ Option 4: Focus on the son and say, “Tell me more about what is going on at school with your son.”

By focusing on the son, you can learn more about whether the school problems are related back to the home, as well as whether the school environment is healthy. By asking about the son and his school, you can learn more about his home life: how well the family functions, whether the couple is fighting in front of the son, whether the son displays inappropriate behavior in the home or community, and even whether there are consequences for the son’s behavior.

+ Option 5: Focus on the couple’s finances and say, “Tell me more about your financial situation.”

Finances are one of the main causes of stress and arguments in relationships (and of divorce). Many couples also do not keep good track of their finances. By focusing on this topic, you can lead the client into a discussion of possible solutions, such as developing a budget plan, or into a discussion of other employment, going back to school, or receiving some other type of training.

Reference

Rogers, C. (1957).The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Consulting Psychology, 21, 95–103.

Top of page

Contents

Header

RHS301

Main Content

Module 1: Introduction to the Person and Profession

RHS301:

Module 1: Introduction to the Person and Profession

How to Become a Good Helper