Active Listening - Counselling

ACTIVE LISTENING

I.               One of the major qualities required for the Counselor is EMPATHY. It is expressed through the way s/he listens to the counselee.

A.   BASICEMPATHY

1. Basic empathy involves listening to clients, understanding them and their concerns as best as we can, and communicating this understanding to them in such a way that they might understand themselves more fully and act on their understanding (Egan, 1998). 
2. Empathy literally means:

a)     in the skin of

b)     in the shoes of

c)     in the same wavelength of the other

3. Empathy has three parts:

a)     Counsellor’s accurate perception of the counselee’s world

b)     Counsellor’s accurate communication of that (through SOLER and paraphrase) to the counsellee

c)     Counselee’s perception of counsellor’s understanding of his world

4. Empathy is not: PISC

a)      Parroting or not paraphrasing.
b)  Empathy is not interpreting.
c)  Not sympathy (show pity, condolence, being nice or compassion – good qualities, but)

d)     Not using clichés or advice

5. Three types of empathy:

a)     Cognitive: leadership/business;
                       -Negatively: Narcissistic, Machiavellian, Sociopathic

b)     Emotional:

c)     Empathic concern

   II.             Listeningrefers to the ability of counsellors to capture and understand the messages clients communicate as they tell their stories, whether those messages are transmitted verbally or non-verbally.

B.    Active listening involves the following four skills:

1. Listening to and understanding the client's verbal messages. The counsellor has to listen to the mix of experiences, behaviour and feelings the client uses to describe his or her problem situation. Also “hear” what the client is not saying.
2. Listening to and interpreting the client's nonverbal messages. Counsellors need to learn how to “read” these messages without distorting or over-interpreting them.
3. Listening to and understanding the client in context.
4. Listening with empathy. The counsellor should put his or her own concerns aside to be fully “with” their clients.

C.   Active Listening put together as an acronym: BEPS:

a)  Body language:

b)  Encouraging to talk:

c)  Paraphrasing and

d)  Summarizing

❖     Orienting oneself physically and psychological

❖     Encourages the other person to talk

❖     Lets the client know you're listening

❖     Conveys empathy

D.    Empathy expressed as LISTEN and SOLER posture (used as an acronym means): 

1.	LISTEN	2.	Posture: SOLER
L:	❖     Look, eye contact, SOLER	S:	❖     Face the other Squarely
I:	❖     Inquire, probing, what?	O:	❖     Adopt an Open Posture
S:	❖     Summarize, paraphrase	L:	❖     Lean toward the other
T:	❖     Take notes, express	E:	❖     Make Eye Contact
E	❖     Express, encourage, nods	R:	❖     Be Relatively Relaxed
N:	❖     Neutralize, Be objective

5. What are you listening to? Listening is the most important skill in counselling. It is the process of ‘hearing' the other person. Counsellors during Counselling Listen to:

Content and process, i.e. the words themselves and the way they are spoken. Listening is the most important skill in counselling. It is the process of ‘hearing’ the other person. Three aspects of listening:

1. Linguistic: actual words, phrases and metaphors used to convey feelings.
2. Paralinguistic: not words themselves but timing, accent, volume, pitch, etc.
3. Non-verbal: ‘body language’ or facial expression, use of gestures, body position and movement, proximity or touch in relation to the counsellor

6. BIASES in Listening:

Active listening is unfortunately not an easy skill to acquire. Counsellors should be aware of the following hindrances to effective listening:

1. Inadequate listening: It is easy to be distracted from what other people are saying if one allows oneself to get lost in one's own thoughts or if one begins to think what one intends to say in reply.
2. Evaluative listening: Most people listen evaluatively to others. This means that they are judging and labelling what the other person is saying as either right/wrong, good/bad, acceptable/unacceptable, relevant/irrelevant etc.
3. Filtered listening: We tend to listen to ourselves, other people and the world around us through biased (often prejudiced) filters.
4. Labels as filters: Diagnostic labels can prevent you from really listening to your client.
5. Fact-centered rather than person-centered listening: Asking only informational or factual questions won't solve the client's problems. Listen to the client's whole context and focus on themes and core messages.
6. Rehearsing: If you mentally rehearse your answers, you are also not listening attentively.
7. Sympathetic listening: Although sympathy has it's place in human transactions, the “use” of sympathy is limited in the helping relationship because it can distort the counsellor's listening to the client's story.

7. INADEQUATE LISTENING: Six Reasons: 

1. Attraction: or non-attractive (tend to pay attention to your feeling and not what s/he is saying)
2. Concerns: preoccupied with what preceded in your life (an argument or failure)
3. Differences: his/her experience is very different from yours; lack of commonality can be distracting
4. Over-eagerness: so eager to respond, you are pre-occupied with your response and not the counselee’s revelations
5. Physical condition: tired, fatigue, ill (tune out some of the things s/he is saying)
6. Similarity of problems: Your mind wanders to your situation and the ways in which you reacted to.