Primary Appropriate Empathy In A Counselor

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Empathy can be defined as one who is able to understand and share the feelings of another. This is extremely important for counselors when dealing with different people and different situations. As a counselor it is extremely important for the client to know that you are human just like them. According to Amendt-Lyon & Phil (2013) Frank Stammler thought that a counselor’s understanding of empathy allowed them the chance to view the client’s world accurately without losing boundary between self and other. They should be able to talk to you freely about anything, and you as the counselor should be able to connect. The key difference in primary accurate empathy and advanced accurate empathy is how the empathy is interpreted and shown. Primary …show more content…

Advanced accurate empathy is when the counselor interprets the concerns and feelings of the client. An example of a counselor using primary accurate empathy would be if the counselor was to tell the client “you feel sad because your goldfish died.” A form of advanced accurate empathy would be the counselor saying “could it be that you feel sad because your gold fish died.” There are barriers that exist when it comes to the development of empathy and the main ones that come to mind would be: communication and trust. Communication is a barrier because often the word empathy is confused with sympathy. This is easy for a counselor to get caught up in because they are working with a variety of people and may often be put in some tough situations where they may forget to allow the client to do the work. They may want to sympathize with them and do the work for them. In order to overcome this barrier, the counselor would have to remember the focus of the session. Even though a person is coming to you to seek help not all individuals are looking for a pity party; so as a professional you have to keep in mind that this is not about you; instead you should be able to help your client come to an understanding about their situation, and focus on an intervention that can help them become …show more content…

Collaborative efforts is often seen as working with others. As a counselor this is important because you are always working with others. You may have to collaborate with a hospital if you receive a client who was sent to you through them; you will have to collaborate in getting the patients history, and may need their help when writing an intervention. Another time you will collaborate with other counselors could be when conducting research. You may be working on a subject that requires the specialties of another individual. Planning treatment programs will require a counselor to have to collaborate with others. You may have an idea of something to work on, but you will need someone to back you; in regards to funding or even to just help spread the word. As a counselor you will collaborate with people when working in or even attending conferences. Conferences can include people who share the same ideas as you, or people who can teach you or inform you of something that you may have never thought about before. Being able to collaborate with others is how the counseling field continues to grow and develop. As, a counselor you have to be willing to take the effort to consult and collaborate with like minds in order to be

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