Client Journey
Precontemplation
People do not believe that they have a problem. Therefore, they neither recognize the inherent risks of their behaviors nor have a desire to change.
Problem exploration
Empathic responding skills—reflection of feelings, thoughts, needs, and values, paraphrasing, affirmation, perception checking, periodical summarization, and advanced empathy.
Probing skills, including focusing, probing, and clarifying statements
One-Upper
One-uppers talk as if every conversation is a competition. If someone says they twisted an ankle, the one-upper says they have a broken leg.
“Canned” Counselor
Canned counselors talk as if they care, even though they are not emotionally present. All they supply is a phony veneer that hides their laziness or indifference.
Contemplation
People at this stage begin to acknowledge that they may have a problem and allow the awareness to grow.
Awareness Cultivation
Empathic responding skills.
Influencing skills which include identifying patterns, self-disclosure, caring confrontation, giving feedback, and immediacy.
Basic and advanced intervention techniques.
Discounter
A discounter dismisses others’ experiences and feelings with indirect put-downs, sarcasm, or reassurance.
You are thinking too much. It is all in your head.
Problem Solver
Problem solvers feel responsible for analyzing others’ problems, as well as providing solutions. Similar to the advice givers and the experts, the problem solvers assume that others are unable to solve their own issues, therefore needing the problem solvers to offer solutions.
Preparation
At this third stage of readiness, the client has developed a commitment to change and has begun to entertain the idea of overcoming the barriers to change.
Problem Resolution
Empathic responding skills.
Influencing skills.
Advanced intervention techniques, such as role playing, role reversal, mindfulness training, guided imagery, experiential techniques, part dialogue, empty chair technique.
Other specialized techniques drawn from various theoretical approaches.
Expert
The expert gives out the aura of one in authority. The expert may talk to another person just like a parent to a child, a boss to an employee, a teacher to a student— appearing to know more than the other person does.
Empathizing
Strive to understand other people’s experiences and perspectives.
Listen attentively, suspending their own opinions and judgments during the
interaction.
Put themselves in the other person’s place, feeling the other person’s world.
Reflect what the other’s true struggles or feelings might be.
Strive to nurture the ongoing dialogue.
Help clients discover their own inner truth.
Even when a question is needed, they ask open-ended questions or a reflexive
question, and not a closed question. When the question is answered, they follow it up with another reflective response.
Action
Client is highly motivated to do the work and to initiate tangible behaviors to change for the better.
Termination
The counseling skills used in the termination stage include all skill levels.
Advice Giver
Advice givers operate from a position of a guide or a lecturer, using keywords such as “should” and “ought”—telling others what to do. Advice giving seems to be the most common response style in our society.
Maintenance
The client learns how to take cautious steps to prevent relapse.
Cross-Examiner
Cross-examiners ask question after question with the good intention of obtaining further information, in order to better understand the situation. Unfortunately, the response style of asking many probing questions often backfires. The person on the receiving end often feels uncomfortable, thinking, “What did I do to deserve this interrogation?”