Active Listening: A Case Study

The Egan model consists of three stages and its’ objective is to help the client achieve lasting change and empower them to manage their own problems more efficiently, while also developing unused opportunities (Egan, 2014).
The session commenced with proficient use of active listening skills, which helped in exploring the issues and concerns of my client. Active listening is a process where the counsellor can communicate verbally and non-verbally in a way that allows their client to feel understood and heard, while also having their stories and emotional feel validated (Egan, 2014). For example, when my client said, “Sometimes I feel I like I end up prioritizing my love life or my job or something else entirely over my university work….” I replied by nodding my head and saying, “Mmm-hmm”, and she continued sharing her concerns. This example indicates effective use of active listening skills as it encouraged my client to continue her story without interruptions and also

portrayed my interest in her issues. Another important counselling skill is empathy, as it helps the therapist to understand experiences and feelings from the perspective of their client and communicate it accordingly (Egan, 2014; Graybar & Leonard, 2005). In the following example I successfully demonstrated empathy and acceptance, as indicated by my client’s verbal and tonal affirmative response:
Counsellor: (leaned forward; maintained eye contact) It sounds like you’re under a lot of stress right now because of your studies and that’s understandable as you’re not only working part-time but you’re also working hard to maintain your long-distance relationship.
Client: Yes, I guess that’s right, I’ve got too much on my plate … but with my boyfriend and his annoying schedule, I feel…
Counsellor: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re feeling a lot of anger and disappointment towards his behaviour.
Client: Yes, that’s it! I certainly am extremely pissed at his umm his stupid inability to adjust and um …
This example not only demonstrates use of empathy and acceptance, but it also shows how its application helped my client to continue with her story in more detail.
Paraphrasing is when the counsellor listens to what the client says and reflects back what they heard in their own words (Geldard, Geldard & Foo, 2017).

In the above example, I captured the important details and my client’s concerns in my own words, and this was effective as it led to my client elaborating more on the issue by saying, “Yes, I do often feel anger and disappointment … he refuses to compromise … I also have to manage a part-time job and a full-time education…”. Although I used paraphrasing successfully here, looking back at the video, I feel like I could have improved the session more if I have used it more often, and this is one of my goals for the future sessions. Open-ended and probing questions invite more than one or two-word responses and these can be used to gather information, increase clarity, stimulate thinking, or create discussion (Egan, 2014). To further explore my client’s issues, I used open-ended questions to try and understand my client better, as can be seen

below:
Counsellor: Tell me about your upcoming assignments
Client: I have two tough ones coming up soon, and since I faired badly in the last ones, I’m really stressed out for my grades….
The art of questioning is a skill I needs developing, as later in the session I made the mistake of trying to ask a probing question, which made my client feel uncomfortable. I said, “You couldn’t have done that poorly, what grade did you get?” to which she replied, “Amm (not making eye contact) If you don’t mind, I don’t think it’s important, and I’d rather not say” I though having this information could help me be more empathetic and understand where my client’s stress was coming from, but instead I portrayed curiosity without respecting my client. I need to work on being respectful when asking my client’s questions and also learn to monitor my curiosity with respect to my client’s feelings.
Another skill that needs developing is normalizing. Normalizing is a technique used to help client realize that what they are experiencing is common, and that if others can handle the situation, they can too (DeFife & Hilsenroth, 2011; Egan, 2014. Although I did use acceptance and empathy throughout the session, after reviewing the session I noticed I did not use any type of normalizing. In situations where my client stated, “I feel that social media is consuming my life and I can’t do anything about it.”, if I had normalized my client’s dependence on social media instead of just replying to it with empathy, I could have helped her understand that she was not alone in this situation