This chapter focuses on skills that promote understanding of self and others. These skills fall into seven clusters:
1 Listening skills
Attending—noting verbal and nonverbal behaviors Paraphrasing—responding to basic messages
Clarifying—self-disclosing and focusing discussion
Perception checking—determining accuracy of hearing
2 Leading skills
Indirect leading—getting started
Direct leading—encouraging and elaborating discussion
Focusing—controlling confusion, diffusion, and vagueness
Questioning—conducting-open and closed inquiries
3 Reflecting skills
Reflecting feelings—responding to feelings
Reflecting experience—responding to total experience
Reflecting content—repeating ideas in fresh words or for emphasis
4 Summarizing skills
Pulling themes together
5 Confronting skills
Recognizing feelings in oneself—being aware of helper experience
Describing and sharing feelings—modeling feeling expression
Feeding back opinions—reacting honestly to helpee expressions
Meditating—promoting self-confrontation
Repeating—tapping obscure feelings
Associating—facilitating loosening of feelings
6 Interpreting skills
Interpretive questions—facilitating awareness
Fantasy and metaphor—symbolizing ideas and feelings
7 Informing skills
Advising—giving suggestions and opinions based on experience
Informing—giving valid information based on expertise
OUTCOMES YOU CAN EXPECT
The outcomes you can expect from studying this chapter are competenci9/to: (1) identify seven helping skills that contribute to self-understanding; (2) cite sub-skills in each skill cluster and give examples from helping interviews; and, with practice, (3) use seven bask skill clusters effectively in, helping relationships.
The final criterion of success will be your demonstrated performance of the skills such that the helpee feels understood and confirms this feeling with appropriate verbal or nonverbal behavior. You may expect helpees to respond positively to you when they feel you understand them. You can expect that they will talk about themselves and you more freely. They will share their new understandings with you. Later, you may expect helpees to try to change themselves or their circumstances on the basis of their new understandings, skills, and changed environments.
RATIONALE FOR SKILLS TRAINING
The skills described here and in Chapters 5 and 6 are based on the idea that, by learning the components of a skill, one can then put them together into a complex performance. By looking at specific helping skills, we can explain the total interview interaction. This approach, described in more detail in Chapter 7, is known as microskills training and is analogous to skills training in a sport such as golf, in which one learns the fundamental skills of stance, grip, and swing. Research sup¬ports the validity of this approach, but the principal problem is putting the components together into smooth, flowing, and natural performance (Ivey 1983).
SKILL CLUSTER 1: LISTENING SKILLS
At first glance the term listening implies a passive act of taking in the content of the helpee's communication, but actually it involves a very active process of responding to total messages. It includes not only listening with your ears to helpee words and with your eyes to your helpee's body language, but a total kind of perceptiveness best described by Reik's (1948) phrase "listening with the third ear." It means also that we are silent much of the time and that the helpees talk. When helpers can answer in considerable detail the question, What is going on in this person right now and in his or her life space? they are listening with all their perceptual capacities. Listening skills are basic to all interviewing whether the purpose be for gaining information, conducting structured in-depth interviews, or helping informally.
Attending
Attending has several components, which have been studied intensively by Ivey (1983) and others. It is important--initially to emphasize the cultural context of these skills. Each culture, for example, places its own norms and meanings on eye contact and distance: In a Middle Eastern setting eye-to-eye contact is permitted between two men but not between a man and a woman; sustained eye contact is considered offensive to some native American groups. In American culture a comfortable helping distance is three or four feet. The following descriptions of attending skills are based largely on experiences with middle-class Americans and should be adapted to other cultural settings.
The first component we will consider is contact principally through the eye. Looking at other people, usually at their eyes, is a way of indicating intense interest in them, because eyes are one of our key vehicles for communicating. This does not mean that eye contact must be a fixed stare to be effective. If the helper is honestly interested and at ease, he or she will look naturally at the helpee while the person is talking. Simply writing about eye contact does not do justice to the power of the eyes to communicate caring and understanding as well as to maintain attention. Think of your own experience when someone looked at you intensively. Sometimes it was done in a vacuous way just to hold your attention. At other times the person said with his or her eyes in a warm way, "Look at me; I hear you; I understand," so that you felt the person genuinely cared about you and understood how you-were feeling. At the same time the helper is picking up nonverbal messages from the helpee's eyes.
Distance between helper and helpee needs experimentation before the most comfortable distance for the two is discovered. Some helpees are very uncomfortable, for example, if the eye Contact is less than three feet or so, because they are so socially conditioned against close contact. Helpee nonverbal behavior should be watched for signs of stress or discomfort when eye contact is made.
A second element of attending is posture. Usually, the interested helper leans toward the helpee in a relaxed manner. Relaxation is important because tenseness tends to shift focus from the helpee to the helper, in addition to provoking an empathic tense response in the helpee.
A third related element of attending is gesture: The helper communicates much with body movements. If helpers flail wildly with their hands, or if they - cross them over their chests in a rather pontifical manner, they will very likely communicate some unintended messages. Try to be aware of the messages your gestures and posture send to helpees. Are the messages ones you intend to communicate?
The helper's verbal behavior, a fourth attending component, relates to what the helpee has said. The helper does not ask questions, take the topic in a new direction, nor add to the helpee's meaning, but the helper might, for example, mention a word or reflect a phrase from the statements of the helpee to focus further on an idea. Some confirming, yet not too personal, comment such as, "I see what you mean," "I can appreciate what you went through," or "That certainly seems to tie things together," often helps to keep helpees exploring and assures them that you are listening.
Why does attending behavior work so well? It is very rewarding according to studies, and helpees like it. The effect on helpees of attending behavior is to encourage them to verbalize their ideas or feelings freely. It has a powerful reinforcing Oct, in other words. It rewards helpees' communications and tends to build a sense of responsibility for the interview. This is one difference between helping and conversation; in social interaction there is more give and take of opinions, questions, and feelings. Conversely, selective inattention by the helper can serve to discourage further exploration of the topic. For example, the helpee may be on a rambling intellectual description of an historical event. You may think it more productive to have him focus on how "he feels now about that event, so you attend when he focuses on feelings and ignore him when he is on a story-telling trip. You can see how controlling attending behavior can be. Helpees control helpers, too, by giving them verbalizations that hold their attention.
Ira helper is relaxed, the helpee will tend to be more at ease also. One of the most difficult tasks for the beginning helper is to let helpees tell their stories without profuse questioning and jumping from topic to topic in a tense manner.
Attending behavior, furthermore, is a kind of "fail-safe" method for opening an interview because it furthers the goals of helpee self-exploration and minimizes the chances of making destructive interventions. Even if an awkward silence takes place, the helper can acknowledge what has just been stated or refer to some earlier comments.
The following list is a summary of guidelines for effective attending behavior:
1. Establish contact through looking at helpees when they talk.
2. Maintain a natural relaxed posture that indicates your interest.
3. Use natural gestures that communicate your intended messages.
4. Use verbal statements that relate to helpee statements without interruptions, questions, or new topics.
An outline of a simple exercise to learn attending skills is included in Appendix A.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is a method of restating the helpee's basic message in similar, but usually fewer, words. The main purpose of paraphrasing is for helpers to test their understanding of what the helpee has said. (It is a practical test of your attending too!) A second purpose is to communicate to helpees that you are trying to understand their basic message and, if successful, that you have followed their verbal explorations. A paraphrase executed to the helpee's satisfaction is one objective definition of understanding,
The helper translates raw perceptions of what the helpee is saying into more precise wording, repeating only the helpee's message without adding any new ideas. To help in this process helpers should ask themselves constantly, What is this person's basic thinking and feeling message to me? The helper, at the time of a natural break in the flow of ideas and feelings, summarizes concisely what has been expressed. Usually the paraphrase has heavy cognitive content, although it includes feelings if these are an important part of the helpee's message. Helpers should look for some cues that their paraphrasing has been helpful. Examples of paraphrasing are:
He : I really think he is a very nice guy; he's so thoughtful, sensitive, and kind. He calls me a lot. He's fun to go out with.
Hr : You like him very much, then.
He : I do, very much.
He : I just don't understand. One minute she tells me to do this, and the next minute to do that.
Hr : She really confuses you.
He : Yeah, she sure does, and besides. ...
Paraphrasing is especially helpful in exposing and clarifying the mixed or double message. When people apparently & not want to make a direct statement about feelings, they couch their statements in obscure language. The task of the helper is to pick up the two messages from both verbal and nonverbal cues and restate them in clear form. If this restatement does not result in increased understanding by helpees, then confrontational methods where the discrepancy is pointed out more directly may be appropriate. An example is:
He : I really love my wife. She does many things for me constantly. She looks after my clothes, and she keeps track of where I am all the time because she says she's worried about me.
Hr : You appreciate your wife's attentiveness; but I detect in your tone resentment over the constant attention she is showing.
He : Yes. I have feelings both ways about her attention, I guess.
One problem in using paraphrasing and other listening component skills is that, if helpers are not careful, they develop a highly stylized way of responding that may annoy helpees. Helpers may say repeatedly, for example, "I hear you saying....". Paraphrasing seems a bit artificial at first until the helper experiences some encouraging responses from the helpee. After a while it feels like a more natural form of communication than the usual questions, opinions, veiled threats, or bland conversation fillers.
Helpees feel understood as a consequence of paraphrasing. It may clarify their perception of what they have said and give a sense of direction to their rambling statements. Helpees tend to like the helper who paraphrases skillfully. The final effect of paraphrased statements is that helpees feel encouraged to go on. When learning paraphrasing skills in. a laboratory setting, students should practice until the "helpees" indicate that the paraphrase is accurate to their satisfaction in at least two out of three trials. Appendix B contains a brief illustrative exercise to learn paraphrasing.
Here is a summary of guidelines for paraphrasing:
1. Listen for the basic message of the helpee.
2. Restate to the helpee a concise and simple summary of the basic message.
3. Observe a cue, or ask for a response, from the helpee that confirms or denies the accuracy and helpfulness of the paraphrase for promoting understanding.
Clarifying
Clarifying brings vague material into sharper focus. It goes beyond simple paraphrasing in that the helper makes a guess regarding the helpee's basic message and offers it to the helpee. A helper also may ask for clarification when he or she cannot make sense out of the helpee's responses. The message may have been so vague, the wording so confusing, the reasoning so circuitous, or the style so complex that it is a strain to try to paraphrase. Examples of what might follow a rambling helpee monologue are: "I'm confused, let me try to state what I think you were saying." "I lost you there; I'm not clear how you feel about your job; could you give me a brief repeat and an illustration?" "It seems to me you were trying to focus on something there, but the ideas just seemed to tumble over one another." "I'm not sure I understand; could you tell me more?"
This method has a touch of interpreting or explaining how the helper sees the situation, and this interpreting need is one of the strong temptations to which helpers must not submit in the early stage of the relationship. The clarifying remarks are stated in terms of the helper's feelings of confusion to avoid implications of criticism at this tender stage. After all, the confusion may be due to the helper's inattention rather than to confusing helpee statements. Clarifying responses or requests should result in more clear helpee statements, such as efforts to rephrase, to summarize, or to illustrate.
General guidelines for clarifying are:
1. Admit confusion about helpee's meaning.
2. Try a restatement or ask for clarification, repetition, or illustration.
When the intent of helpers is to clarify helpee communications by giving some of their own reactions, the act is often termed self-disclosure. Here the helper takes some risks in giving persotial reactions to what is going on, but does not do so as strongly or directly as in confrontation methods.
Perception Checking
Perception checking asks helpees to verify your perceptions of what they said, usually over several statements. Ask for feedback about the accuracy of your listening. The reason that perception checking is so effective as a listening skill is that it is a method of giving and receiving feedback on the acccuracy of the communication. Assumptions that understanding is taking place are checked out with the helpee. Here again; ordinary social conversation differs from a helping interview. We are conditioned socially to chatter onward, even to deliberately confuse the meaning with innuendo, humor, irony, and metaphor. We rarely check with one another about what we intend to say. In helping relationships we reverse this process and put a heavy premium on direct and clear communication aided by frequent perception checks.
Examples of helper perception checks are: "You seem to be very irritated with me; is that right?" "I was wondering if the plan you chose is the one you really want. You expressed some doubt; did I hear correctly?" "I want to check with you what I'm hearing. You said that you love your wife, yet in the last few minutes you said that you can't stand to be with her. I detected strong contradictory feelings toward her; is that the way it appears to you too?"
The effect on the helpee is likely to be a feeling of being understood. Listening, followed by perception checking, is a method of clearing up confusing communications quickly. Perception checking thus serves to correct misperceptions of the helper before they increase to misunderstandings.
In summary, guidelines for perception checking are:
1. Paraphrase what you think you heard.
2. Ask for confirmation directly from the helpee about the accuracy of your perception of what was said.
3. Allow the helpee to correct your perception if it was inaccurate.
Listening is the key skill in this cluster. To use it naturally and effectively, helpers must want very much to understand their helpees, to communicate meaningfully with them, and to relate to them with acceptance and trust. Effective listening requires much confidence in helpees' abilities to solve their own problems and to establish their independent identities.
SKILL CLUSTER 2: LEADING
The purpose of leading is to encourage the helpee to respond to open communication. Although leading skills are used throughout the helping process, they are useful particularly in the opening stages of a relationship to invite verbal expression. The helper anticipates slightly the helpee's direction of thought as a method for stimulating talk. It is analogous to the football passer who anticipates the receiver's path so that the ball and the receiver arrive at the same point. The helper's interventions thus appear to their helpees appropriate to where they want to go.
Leading sometimes is described in helping literature as the helper's degree of impact an., or thinking ahead of, the helpee. All helping skills can be rated on the amount of leading involved in their use, but for purposes of this discussion leading will mean the more specific act of anticipating where the helpee is going and the act of responding with an appropriately encouraging remark.
More specific objectives of leading are (1) to encourage helpees to explore feelings and to elaborate on those feelings discussed already; (2) to allow helpees freedom to explore in a variety of directions and to respond freely to what is going on; and (3) to encourage helpees to be active in the process and to retain primary responsibility for the direction of the interview.
Indirect Leading
The main purposes of indirect leading are to get helpees started and to keep responsibility on them for keeping the interview going: One common use of this idea is to open an interview, for example, with: "What would you like to talk about?". "Perhaps we could start by your telling me where you're at now". "Please tell me why you are here". Later interview examples are: "Tell me more about that." "You were saying (pause)." "What do you think that means?" "How did you feel?". "Is there anything more you would like to discuss?" The generality of these leads allows helpees to project their own ideas and direction into the interview. Sometimes, pausing and looking expectantly at the helpee serves as an indirect lead.
Helpees recognize indirect leads as invitations to tell their stories or elaborate on what has been said. This lead is encouraging to most helpees, because they experience more responsibility for the relationship' To others it is threat¬ening or annoying since they often expect the expert to be more active and to do most of the talking, advising, and questioning: More ideas for opening interviews are discussed under Stage 1 of the helping process in Chapter 3.
The following are guidelines for indirect leading:
1. Determine the purpose of the lead clearly.
2. Keep the lead general and deliberately vague.
3. Pause long enough for the helpee to pick up the lead.
Direct Leading
Direct leading is a method of focusing the topic more specifically. This method also encourages helpees to elaborate, clarify, or illustrate what they have been saying. Sometimes a strong element of suggestion is included. Some examples are: "Tell me more about your mother." "Suppose we explore your ideas about teaching a little more." "How do you mean—funky?" "Can you think of an illustration that happened recently?"
The behavior of helpees in response to a direct lead usually is to comply with the specifics of the lead, particularly if the helper's attitude manifests interest to match his or her words. The main long-range consequence, however, is to enhance helpee awareness and later understanding, through more elaborate exploration of feelings.
The guidelines for direct leading are:
1. Determine the purpose of the lead.
2. Express the purpose in words that elicit specific elaboration.
3. Allow the helpee freedom to follow your lead.
Focusing
Focusing the talk on a topic that the helper thinks would be fruitful to explore is used when the helpee is rambling vaguely. Often in the early stages, helpees will wander over numerous topics, sometimes in circular fashion. Occasionally, the helper's indirect leads have encouraged this wandering, which, if allowed to continue for several minutes, tends to become confusing for both. When helpers think that their helpees have explored the main topics of their concern, then the helpers may stop the helpees and ask them to focus on one aspect, since another purpose of focusing is to emphasize a single feeling or idea chosen from a vast array of possible intellectual verbiage. Focusing is also a way of aiding helpees to get in touch with their feelings.
Some illustrations of focusing leads are: "Please elaborate more specifically on those feelings about-your mother." "You have been discussing many topics the last few minutes; could 'you pick the most important one to you and tell me more about it?" "Can you choose one word to describe the last five minutes' talk?" "We have been talking about words, words, words, but I haven't detected much feeling yet; could you name a feeling you have right now?" "What were your feelings as we've been talking?" "Let's not talk for awhile. I suggest you close your eyes and try to get in touch with what you are feeling."
Focusing can sometimes be done by picking out one word or a short phrase from the helpee's talk and repeating it with a question mark or with emphasis. For example, after a helpee has been-talking about how confusing her relationships with her supervisor have been, you might say, "Confusing?" The effect is, "Tell me more!" The one-word focusing method can be effective in keeping the helpee going. The helper can say, for example, "And?" "Then, what?" or "But?"
Focusing tends to reduce the helpee's confusion, diffusion, and vagueness. Again, the ultimate expected outcome is more meaningful verbalization and, eventually, increased understanding. Another immediate outcome expected from leads focusing on feelings is.that helpees will talk more 'about their feeling experiences. This skill, like all others in the leading cluster, has a controlling effect on the helpee, so the helper should exert cautious judgment about the degree of his or her leading.
In summary, guidelines for focusing are:
1. Use your own feelings of confusion and sense of helpee direction as a guide to decide when to focus.
2. Be alert to feedback from the helpee about priority of topics.
3. Assist the helpee to focus on feelings that may be hidden in the discussion.
Questioning
Many of the leads described above have been illustrated in the form of open questions that lead the helpee to further exploration. Such questions are not those used to obtain information nor those which can be answered "yes" or "no." They are open-ended questions that leave helpees free to explore and to take the interview where they wish rather than into areas of helper interest. This method of questioning assumes that- the questions are to assist the helpee to understand rather than to promote the helper's understanding.
Questions serve a variety of purposes in helping. Helpers use questions to ask people to expand on prints, start conversations; obtain specific illustrations, check perceptions, and obtain information. They are used more frequently early in the helping process. As a general rule, questions should be used purposefully and sparingly, otherwise, they tend to become substitutes for making statements. Asking a question such as "Don't you think divorce is a good solution in this instance?" is a safe and indirect way of making a statement. More risk is involved when the helper says directly, "I think divorce is a good solution in this instance," since he or she must take responsibility for the statement and its consequences.
Think of your personal reaction to a barrage of questions. How did you feel toward the helper? Some of the unpredictable effects of too many questions poorly phrased are that they:
1. Offend the helpee, who often feels interrogated.
2. Reduce personal responsibility for the helping process.
3. Increase helpee dependence on the helper.
4. Encourage socially acceptable answers rather than honest responses.
"Why" questions are especially accusatory and are difficult to answer candidly. It is hard to answer a question such as "Why did you say that?" since it asks for speculation about motives and often implies criticism.
Open questions avoid most of the problems cited above. An example of an open question is, "Could you explain more about your relationships with your parents?" not, "Do you get along well with your parents?" Other examples are: "What do you mean by 'failure'?" "How do they indicate their feelings?". Note that questions beginning with "how" or "what" tend to elicit elaborated responses. The effect is different from those starting with "are," "is," or "do." It would be difficult for a helpee to answer the above questions with a simple "yes" or "no."
The following list summarizes guidelines for questioning leads:
1. Ask open-ended questions that cannot be answered with "yes" or "no."
2. Ask questions that elicit /clings about what the helpee has just said rather than information.
3. Ask questions that lead to clarification for the helpee rather than information for the helper.
SKILL CLUSTER 3: REFLECTING
Reflecting is one way Of expressing to helpees that we are in their frame of reference and that we affirm their deepconcerns. There are three areas of reflecting —feeling, experience, and content. From the helper's viewpoint, the main purpose of using reflection is to understand helpee experience and to tell helpees that we are trying to perceive the world as they do.
Reflecting Feelings
Reflecting feelings involve expressing in fresh words the helpees essential feelings, stated or strongly implied. The purpose of reflecting feelings is to focus on feeling rather than on content, to bring vaguely expressed feelings into clearer awareness, and to assist the helpee to "own" his feelings. So often helpees talk about their feelings as "it" or "them," as if feelings were not part of themselves. This is why we usually begin the reflecting method with "You feel" as an attempt to help him reown the feeling. You will know when your reflection is accurate because the helpee will tend to respond with something like, "Yeah, that's it."
Skillful use of reflecting depends on the helper's ability to identify feelings and cues for feelings, from body cues as well as words. It is inappropriate, generally, to ask directly, "And how does that make you feel?" Most of the time, the answer should be fairly obvious. Helpees will probably respond like Louie Arm¬strong did when someone asked how to know good jazz—"If you have to ask, you'll never know."
Helpers must themselves experience feelings and be in touch with those feelings. Feelings are more subtle than emotions, such as anger, love, disgust, fear, or aggression. Examples of feelings would be affection, pleasure, hostility, guilt, or anxiety. When a helpee is expressing strong emotion, it is so obvious to both that reflecting is unnecessary. The more subtle feelings, however, are often disguised behind words. The helper looks for these hidden feelings and enables the helpee to recognize them more clearly.
The English language is notoriously deficient in varied designations for feelings. A productive activity for helpers is to list common feeling words to make them more accessible when helpees are groping for descriptive terms. Imagine a number of emotional situations and brainstorm all the feeling words you can think of.. Compare your list with others and compile a common list to broaden your descriptive language. Groups completing this activity frequently come up with over five hundred words describing various shades of feelings.
The steps in reflection of feeling, then, are to determine what feeling the helpee is expressing, to describe this feeling clearly, to observe the effect, and to judge by the reactions of the helpee whether the reflection was facilitative or obstructive. Sometimes, inaccurate reflections can have a facilitative effect, inasmuch as the helpee will often correct the helper and state feelings more dearly. Examples of reflecting feelings are: "In other words, you hate his guts." "You've always wanted to be a doctor." "He makes you feel guilty all the time.." "It really hurts to be rejected by someone you love." Sometimes two contradictory (ambivalent) feelings are expressed, and a reflection clarifies this condition, as, "He makes you angry when he punishes you; yet, you feel relieved about it, too."
Reflecting Experience
This reflection is descriptive feedback that indicates broad observations of the helper. It is done without editorializing, unlike confronting skills, described later, in which the helper tells what he or she thinks about the behavior.
Reflecting experience goes beyond verbalized feelings in that the helper also reads the implied feelings of nonverbal body language. The helper notes, for example, rapidity of speech, heavy breathing, sighing, flushing, changing postures, and darting glances as cues to the helpee's feeling. When reflecting feelings implied in body language, it is a good idea to describe some observed behavior first, then reflect the feeling. Examples are, "You are smiling (behavior description); but I sense you are really hurting inside" (reflection of feeling). "You say you really care about her (description), but almost every time you talk about her you clench your fists (description); it seems you strongly resent her" (interpretation).
Reflecting Content
Reflecting content is repeating in fewer and fresher words the essential ideas of the helpee, and is like paraphrasing. It is used to clarify ideas that the helpee is expressing with difficulty. Helpee’s lack vocabulary, for example, to express ideas simply and clearly, so reflecting content is a skill to give them words for expressing themselves. Sometimes it helps to repeat a helpee's statement, emphasizing a key word. The helpee says, for example, "His remark really cut me." The helper responds, "It really hurt."
In actual practice the three reflecting skills blend into one another. The helper is paying attention to what the helpee is saying (content), but also how he or she is saying it (feeling tone). Helpers usually respond with a mix of feeling and content to suit their process goals at that moment. They may judge, for example, that the helpee is not ready to face the deeper feelings implied in his or her body language, so they will emphasize content. Reflecting is a way of controlling feeling awareness and expression in the helping interview. On the other hand, in the early stages helpers may wish to emphasize recognition of the total feeling impressions they get from feeling words and observations of body movements and postures.
Helpees experience the reflecting helper as a person who understands what they, the helpees, are experiencing. This favorable reaction increases the possibility that the long-range goals of understanding self and others will be reached. A more immediate outcome is that helpees will be able to identify and express feelings more effectively. Furthermore, they will be able to own their feelings, as indicated by more "I feel" statements. In other words, they will be more ready to continue expressing feelings.
Common Errors in Reflecting
Some common errors in using reflecting methods are, first, stereotyping your responses. This means that helpers tend to begin their reflections in the same monotonous way, such as, "You feel," "You think," "It seems to you," "I gather that." This repetitive style gives the impression of insincerity or an impoverished word supply. We thus need to vary our styles of reflecting.
Another error is timing. Beginning helpers sometimes get into a pattern of reflecting after almost every statement the helpee makes, or they wait for a long monologue to finish and then try heroically to capture the complex feeling in one statement. It is not necessary to reflect every statement, yet it is effective to interrupt the helpee occasionally to reflect. Usually it helps to nod acceptance or give a slight "uh huh" or "I see," to encourage continuation until a reflection seems appropriate.
Overshooting with too much depth of feeling for which the helpee is unprepared may retard the interview. We may read more interpretations into statements than are there. The helpee says, for example, "I don't know if I can stay overseas for a year without her." The helper who reads more depth of feeling than is there might respond, "You feel you can't function at all unless she is with you."
The language must be appropriate to the cultural experience and educational level of the helpee. For example, the helpee might say, "I can't make it with girls; I'm so shy." An inappropriate helper response would be, "Your inferiority complex really shows with girls, then." At the same time the language of reflection must be natural for the helper too. If he or she is a traditional type, for example, the helper would appear as a phony to use "mod" language.
It may be reassuring to realize that helpees usually are not as critical as these illustrations imply. As helpers, we can reflect incorrectly, but if our sincerity and interest shine through, helpees are amazingly tolerant of bungling efforts. Occasionally, an inaccurate reflection will elicit a correcting response from the helpee so that the net effect is clarification and progress even though the reflection was not accurate.
A summary of guidelines for reflecting is as follows:
1. Read the total message—stated feelings, nonverbal body feelings, and content.
2. Select the best mix of content and feelings to fulfill the goals for understanding at this stage of the helping process.
3. Relect the experience just perceived.
4. Wait for helpee's confirming or denying response to your reflection as a cue about what to do next.
SKILL CLUSTER 4: SUMMARIZING
Summarizing skills include attention to what the helpee says (content), how it is said (feelings), and the purpose, timing, and elect of the statements (process). Most helping interviews wander widely over many ideas and feelings. This may be part of the helpee's manner of showing discomfort by resisting direct discussion, or of keeping the helper at a safe emotional distance for awhile. It may reflect also the helpee's unwillingness to terminate the interview. Summarizing involves tying together into one statement several ideas and feelings at the end of a discussion unit or the end of an interview. It is much broader, therefore, than paraphrasing a basic message, as indicated in the following example. Following a discussion of the helpee's vague feelings of inadequacy the helper says, "From your talk about family, school, and now your new job of selling, you appear to have experienced feelings of personal failure in all of them."
Summaries of an interview, or a series of contacts, may include a long paragraph, but the idea is to pick out the highlights and general themes of the con¬tent and feelings. Summaries of process include statements of where the helping process has been going and where it is now. The helper may say, for example, "You've been discussing your ideal jobs and what things you have liked and disliked about your past work; you've also talked about your plans for more training. Are you ready to take a look at some other considerations in planning for a new career?"
The main purpose of summarizing is to give the helpee a feeling of movement in exploring ideas and feelings, as well as awareness of progress in learning and problem solving. Summarizing also helps to finish an interview on a natural note, to clarify and focus a series of scattered ideas, and to clear the way for a new idea. It has the effect also of reassuring helpees that you have been tuned in to their messages all along. For the helper it serves as an effective check on the accuracy of perceiving the full spectrum of helpee messages. Summarizing-the previous sessions at the beginning of an interview often provides needed continuity.
The helper tries to get helpees to do the summarizing, if possible. This is a test of their understanding as well as a method of keeping responsibility on them. The helper may say, for example, "How does our work look to you at this point? Try to pull it together briefly." "Let's take a look at what we've accomplished in this interview; how does it appear to you?" When a relationship is terminated, summarizing will probably be a joint effort to capture the essential points explored, progress achieved, and next steps planned.
Guidelines for summarizing are:
1. Attend to the various themes and emotional overtones as helpees speak.
2. Put together the key ideas and feelings into broad statements of their basic meanings.
3. Do not add new ideas to the summary.
4. Decide if it would be more helpful to state your summary or ask them to summarize the basic themes, agreements, or plans. In deciding, consider your purpose:
- Was it to warm up helpees at the beginning of the interview?
- Was it to focus their scattered thoughts and feelings?
- Was it to close discussion on this theme?
- Was it to check your understanding of the interview progress?
- Was it to encourage them to explore-themes more completely?
- Was it to terminate the relationship with a progress summary?
- Was it to assure them that their interviews were moving along well?
SKILL CLUSTER 5: CONFRONTING
Constructive confrontation involves a complex cluster of helping skills, consisting of:
1. Recognizing feelings in one's self as a helper.
2. Describing feelings in one's self and sharing them with the helpee.
3. Feeding back reactions in the form of opinions about his or her behavior.
4. Meditating as a form of self-confrontation.
5. Repeating as a form of emphasizing and clarifying.
6. Associating as a method of getting in touch with feelings.
The idea of confronting is to recognize honestly and directly and to point out to helpees what is going on or what you infer is going on. The effects are challenge, exposure, or threat Resulting emotional effects are sometimes anxiety when challenged with feedback from the helper, and sometimes pleasure with his or her honest opinions and expressions of caring. In other words, confronting skills involve risk—resulting either in unwanted resistance from helpees or in desired openness of communication. It is a "telling it like it is" method that may threaten or thrill, depending on the timing and readiness of the helpee to be confronted with feedback honestly offered. We will look at the subskills of the confronting skill cluster in more detail below.
Recognizing Feeling
It is very apparent that one's ability to recognize and respond to feelings in helpees is based on the ability to recognize feelings in oneself. What do tenseness, sweating palms, twitching muscles, and fluttering eyelids say about one's own anxiety, guilt, anger, pleasure, or pain? Helpers must be aware of fine shades of feelings in themselves, which frequently are reactions to what the helpee is saying and can serve as guides to responses. For example, if helpers experience annoyance at what their helpees are saying, they must decide whether the goals of the relationship would be enhanced or retarded by expressing those feelings. As indicated in earlier discussions of counter transference feelings, the helper must make two judgments: Does this annoyance indicate problems. I have as a person, or is it a reasonable reaction to what the helpee is saying? Depending on their theories of what is helpful, helpers usually express feelings they are aware of experiencing since their helpees sense them anyway from cues such as frowns and agitation.
Describing and Sharing Feeling
Sharing personal feelings about the helpee is a more intense form of self-disclosure than clarification responses. The principal value in describing feelings in one's self as a helper is that such a description helps to clarify how the helper feels. It also serves as a model for helpees to recognize and express their feelings. Helpees frequently do not understand the idea of expressing feeling, especially to near strangers—as helpers often appear to them initially. The condition of trust is dependent on an open sharing of feelings. Again, helpers can accelerate the process of building trust by sharing their own feelings. This "sharing of experience," as described in Brammer and Shostrom (1982), is one of the best ways to model the idea of "being a person." Some examples are the helper saying, "Your continuing on and on like that is boring me and I find myself getting sleepy." "I feel angry when you talk so much about wanting to hurt other people and not giving a damn about them." "It makes me feel good when you talk about yourself that way." You can see that this kind of response could have a reinforcing effect on helpees, because they are getting some rewards in the form of helper response for expressing feelings even when that response has a critical tone.
The values for helpees of sharing feelings are considerable. They experience relief from tensions (sometimes called emotional catharsis), satisfaction that they had the courage to face the feelings, and release of new creative energies.
The limitations of free-expression of feelings by helpees (often called ventilation) are that they feel so good afterward that they consider it unnecessary to go on actively solving their problems. Sometimes, as we will see in the next chapter, expression of feeling is a goal in itself to provide relief from suffering. Most helpees have protective mechanisms for preventing them from revealing more feeling than they are able to tolerate, but helpers should be alert to occasions when helpee defenses are overwhelmed, and where their behaviors' deteriorate under prolonged emotional catharsis. Helpers offering their services need colleagues, or specialist referral resources, to call on in such emergencies.
Some guidelines for knowing how far to let helpees ventilate and some cautions to observe follow. Be cautious about free expression of feeling if:
1. they are know to have severe emotional disorders—hysterical tendencies, delusional thinking, extreme anger, for example;
2. their lives are fraught with crises and emotionally demanding pressures such that discussing them mobilizes more feeling than they can handle;
3. their past history. in dealing with emotional crises is known to be shaky;
4. strong resistance to exploration of feelings is noted;
5. the adequacy of your own experience as a helper of disturbed people is doubtful;
6. your own emotional life is in turmoil
7. the time available for working through the feelings all the way is not adequate;
8. specialist support services are not available or adequate;
9. the policies of your agency are to discourage exploring the intense emotional life of clients;
10. the attitudes and expectations of parents or guardians of young helpees are not explored.
These guidelines are 'included to enhance your awareness of possible hazards in free expression of feeling, not to discourage you nor make you fearful about dealing with helpee feelings; they are included also because of the common idea in helping circles that sharing strong feelings always has desirable outcomes. If you find that sharing your own feelings, or working with helpees who are sharing their feelings, is uncomfortable or interferes with your effectiveness, it is a signal to do more work on your own feelings through means described in earlier chapters.
An issue more common than excessive sharing of feelings is the helpee's underexpression or ignoring of feelings. This condition is manifested when the helper focuses on content or when the helpee uses the phrase "I feel" when referring to an idea rather than a feeling. Thus, helpees are unaware that they are avoiding feelings. An example is "I feel that the best thing to do is not to go to college at this time." Depending on the tone, this statement expresses an opinion or a conclusion rather than a feeling. A feeling statement would be more like "I'm afraid of going to college now:. High school was such a bore." The principal goal of the helper in using the confronting skill is to challenge helpees to include honest feelings in their statements. One of the keys to this condition is to model expression of feeling yourself.
A confrontational way to get helpees to express feelings is to ask them to do so. Some examples are: "What are you feeling right now?" "You've described some facts about your situation; how do you feel about it?" "You have been saying what you think about your job, but I haven't sensed your true feelings about it yet. How do you feel about it?"
In summary, guidelines for describing and sharing feelings are:
1. Share your own feelings as a model.
2. Ask helpees to share their feelings.
3. Be cautious about the depth and extent of sharing.
Feedback and Opinion
Feedback is a term borrowed from electronics and physics where information is fed back into a system so that corrections can be made. Examples are thermostats that use information about temperature to activate the furnace switch, or guidance systems in space vehicles that feed information into the navigation equipment to correct the astronauts' course. Similarly, we give information in the form of opinions and reactions to helpees. As a result, they have a better idea of how they are performing, and they can use the information, if they so wish, to change their behavior.
One of the most valuable confrontational skills for developing understanding is honest feedback to helpees on how they affect you. We acquire our definitions of who we are by the reactions of other people to us. Our personalities are the total of our parents' opinions, chidings, and praises. Our helping relationships merely continue this basic process in a more focused fashion. Effective feedback from people they trust and know to care deeply about them can assist helpees to fill in gaps in their self-awareness. Reflect for a minute on a situation when you received feedback from another person. What were the factors that made it useful or not useful for you?
The main guidelines for giving feedback are:
1. Give opinions in the form of feedback only when helpees are ready. This means that in most cases they will ask for feedback, but, if not, the helper will ask if they would like some reactions. An example is, "We have been talking about your plans for the future; while you were listing your limitations I had some reactions." (Helpee's interest is aroused and the usual response is, "Oh? Tell me."). "Well, I' m convinced from what you have told me about yourself that you are vastly underestimating your capabilities here; from my observations 'I think you express yourself very clearly and concisely, for example."
Feedback may be in the form of critical commentary, also, as in the following illustration: "We have been talking about your problems in getting along with people. You may be interested to know that I have been feeling increasingly irritated with your persistent quibbling about almost everything I say. I feel that I don't want to listen to you anymore. Do you think my reaction is typical of those of other people you know?"
Giving opinions without helpee readiness to make use of them is only likely to arouse resistance, resentment toward the helper, or outright denial since it would not fit the helpee's current self-opinion.
2. Describe the behavior before giving your reaction to it. Note in the illustrations above that the helper described the specific instance and then gave his or her feeling about it. This description keeps the responsibility for opinions on yourself. Often it is difficult to determine when the feedback is a projection of your personal prejudices and-problems and when it is the kind of reaction that the helpee would get from most people. Feedback must be given cautiously, and with the dear understanding that the helper is offering his or her personal reactions to the helpee's behavior. Keeping reactions descriptive rather than evaluative leaves helpees free to use them as they see fit. Emphasizing strengths is another starting point.
3. Give feedback in the form of opinions about the behavior rather than judgements about the person. It may seem like quibbling to separate the behavior from the person, but it is vastly different to say, "I don't like the way you constantly interrupt me," from "I don't like you because you are constantly interrupting me."
4. Give feedback about things that helpees have the capacity to change. It is not helpful to give feedback about physical characteristics or life circumstances, for example, which they would find very difficult to change.
5. Feedback should be given in small amounts so that helpees can experience the full impact of the helper's reaction. Too many items may overload them and create confusion and possibly resentment. An example of such an overload would be, "I didn't like the way you spoke to me; I felt put down. Besides, you have been late consistently to our staff meetings and your progress reports have been getting skimpier, which has been irritating me even more." Feedback given in this cumulative manner serves more as ventilation of hostility for the giver and less as a helpful gesture to the helpee.
6. Feedback should be a prompt response to current and specific behavior, not unfinished emotional business from the past. Being told, for example, that one is "too forceful" is not as helpful as saying, "Just as we were about to decide what to do, you pushed your idea and seemed not to hear the other suggestions. I was conflicted about whether to resist you or just give in."
7. Ask the helpee for reactions to your feedback. How do you react? Was it helpful or not? Did it enhance the relationship or diminish it?
The main attitudinal pitfalls in giving constructive feedback are:
1. A subtle demand for change.
2. A patronizing implication that "I'm doing this for your good."
3. A judgment about the goodness or badness of the person.
Praise, under the guise of positive feedback, often is interpreted as a judgment about the person. Negative feedback, such as admonition or reprimand, is not used in a helping framework. However, it has its place in supervisory relationships when the person conveying the feedback on performance has power over the person (Ivey 1983).
Meditating
Meditating is a form of self-confrontation with ancient origins. Many philosophical groups in the Orient such as Zen, Yoga, and Sufi, along with the Christian and Hebrew traditions of the West, emphasize the values of self-understanding inherent in meditational forms. The main feature and principal value of meditation for the helping process is that it stops the active flow of ideas and actions and allows helpees to get in touch with themselves. The goal is psychological well-being. Meditation also opens the possibilities of awareness of self in relation to the world, which is a different process from the usual rational sensory types of awareness. Our Western languages have few forms in which to express these nonrational or esoteric experiences. Zen, for example, emphasizes awareness through a state of "no mind" where the flow of consciousness stops. Various styles of meditation are aided by special posture, mantras (repeated vocalizations), contemplating an object, or breathing exercises, but the basic idea of stoping action and thought to allow other forms of experience is the same among them. Finally, meditation practiced diligently is a vehicle for transformation to higher levels of consciousness (Walsh 1983).
If you decide that this meditational form of self-confrontation would be useful to your helpees for enhancing their self-understanding, you should become familiar with at least one of the styles mentioned above and experience it first yourself. A few general principles can help, even if you are relatively unsophisticated about specific meditational forms. Helpees who flit from topic to topic and who have difficulty getting in touch with their feelings, for example, might be helped through some kind of meditation. You can ask your helpees to stop talking, close. their eyes, get in a comfortable position, and just be quiet awhile. You might ask them to focus on their 1Dreathing—how they inhale and exhale and to let the ideas flitting across their awareness just fade away.
The value for helpees of this method is that it should open new doors to their feelings and awareness of themselves in relation to others and their physical environment. If nothing else, it should help them to calm down and should prepare them for a new approach to their problems. To obtain maximum value from meditational methods, helpees should practice them in everyday life also.
Here is a summary of guidelines for using meditational forms of self-con frontation :
1. Be familiar with one or more styles through personal experience.
2. Explain the value of the method to the helpees.
3. Ask them to assume a relaxed comfortable position with eyes closed.
4. Ask them to be quiet and to let their thoughts fade away.
5. Ask them to focus on their breathing as a means of getting in touch with their body processes and feelings.
6. After a few minutes ask them to open their eyes and describe the experience using leads from feeling statements to encourage further exploration.
7. Ask them to practice this confrontational form at home if they find it productive and satisfying.
Repeating
Repeating is another method of self-confrontation, prompted by the helper, which comes out of the gestalt tradition. The helpee is asked merely to repeat a word, phrase, or short sentence one or more times. The helper suggests that helpees focus on one of their statements that appears to have intense meaning for them. The helper then asks them to repeat it in simple direct form. The purpose is to generate more feelings associated with those words as the repetitions continue. The helper asks them to try to hear what they are saying emotionally with the repetitions. Then either they discuss the feelings precipitated or the feeling spills out in a form such as tears.
The value for helpees of this kind of confronting is that they can tap feelings that are obscured behind long sentences and constant topic changes. It breaks up their usual method of discourse suddenly, which generally serves to provoke intense feelings. The .simplicity of the repetition method evokes little resistance from helpees. It puts them into a simple childlike frame of thinking that cuts through their sophisticated adult verbiage. Finally, it offers to the helpee a means of focusing on significant feelings and of avoiding the temptation to move quickly on to safe topics.
The judgment involved is knowing when to ask helpees to repeat and how often to prompt them with requests such as "Say it again," or "Again . . . again." This process is continued until the feeling comes out in verbal or non¬verbal forms such as crying or striking. The same process can be used with gestures. If you see a helpee shaking his fist, for example, you might ask him to "do that again." It focuses his attention on the emotional impact of the gesture. An example of the repeating method of self-confrontation is:
He : I don't have any friends; people don't love me, I guess.
Hr : Say that again, "People don't love me."
He : People don't love me. People don't love me. (Pause) Maybe I'm not very lovable.
Hr : Say again, "I'm not lovable."
He : I'm not lovable. Hr: Again.
He : I'm not lovable.
This kind of repeating opens the possibilities for significant confrontation of self-regarding attitudes that are hindering effective personal and interpersonal functioning. It brings painful feelings to the point where they can be discussed directly.
Guidelines for the repeating method are:
1. Note statements or gestures with feeling implications.
2. Ask the helpee to repeat the key word, phrase, or short sentence one or more times until feelings are evoked.
3. Encourage the helpee to keep the repetition in the present active verb tense.
4. Allow sufficient time for the emotional impact to be felt and sorted out meaningfully by the helpee before going on to another topic.
Associating
Associating is another skill to facilitate the loosening of feelings. It is a more precise form of the old "free association" method where helpees were encouraged to say whatever crossed their awareness. The goal was to get helpees loosened from their precise, logical, planned statements and into the more fragmentary and illogical realm of feelings. You suggest, for example, "Tell me what is on your mind, and say it even if it seems vague and unimportant." "Let yourself go." "Just give me pieces of ideas; don't try to be logical."
Another variation of associating method is to pick out a word from helpees' statements that seems to have emotional significance for them. You then ask them to give all the other words that come to awareness in rapid order, and you note them for discussion later. An example is:
Hr : You seem to be fixed on your mother's influence on you. I suggest that you say the word mother and follow it with as many words as you can think of in rapid order. Do you understand?
He : Yes, I think so. Mother—love, soft, fun, spank...
The main outcome expected for, helpees is, a freeing of feelings so they are more available for direct discussion. It also gets to feelings faster than usual discussion methods.
In summary, guidelines for association skills are:
1. Ask helpees to say what comes to their awareness.
2. Explain that the flowing ideas do not need to be logical or consistent.
3. Use the results to aid helpees into further exploration of feelings or discussion of the results of their associating.
4. As a variation, pick out a word with possible emotional significance from helpee statements and ask them to say freely all the thoughts and feelings evoked by that word as fast as they come.
SKILL CLUSTER 6: INTERPRETING
Interpreting is an active helper process of explaining the meaning of events to helpees so that they are able to see their problems in new ways. The main goal is to teach helpees to interpret events in their lives by themselves. In Paraphrasing, the helpee's internal frame of reference is maintained, whereas through interpretation the helper offers a new frame of reference. Interpretation is used more in formal psychotherapy than in similar styles of helping because of therapists' needs to think diagnostically. They must be formulating hunches all the time about what is going on and what might be a logical explanation for their helpees' behaviors. They do not always share these thoughts, since they serve primarily to help them understand what is going on in their helpees. Many helpers feel this kind of thinking hinders the helping process because the helper becomes preoccupied with thinking about or ahead of helpees rather than with them. This shift to an external frame of reference in the helper is one of the main limitations of using interpretive skills.
Interpretations often are given in terms of some special theory of personality change held by the helper. Usually these explanations are expressed as hypotheses, or hunches, about what is happening. The best method of becoming familiar with the many styles of interpreting is to watch films or listen to tapes of different helpers.
Interpreting is similar to reflecting, but interpreting adds the helper's meanings to the helpee's basic message. When you decide that an interpretation might be helpful, look for the basic message of the helpee (as in reflecting and paraphrasing), restate it in capsule form, then add your understanding of what the helpee has said (the interpreting). If the interpretation makes sense to the helpee, it will accelerate the interview. If the interpretation is not meaningful, try again. You must also be confident that your interpretation was essentially accurate, since it may take some time before its significance to the helpee sinks in. Interpreting means that you are leading helpees to seek wider understandings of their feelings and broader perceptions. You must recognize that occasionally you will be too far removed from the helpee, and then you will need to aim a little closer to the the helpee's level of awareness. It should be understood clearly that the goal of all interpretive effort is self-interpretation by the helpee and increasing the helpee's ability to-act effectively.
Some examples of interpretation at a simple level without an elaborate theoretical rationale are: "You have told me about your family as if you were a disinterested observer. I gather you have no specific feeling about them." "It is possible for people to both love and hate their fathers at the same time." "Perhaps you can see that your feelings of hostility toward men might be at the root of your marital difficulties."
Interpretive Questions
Some interpreting is done in the form of questions such as, "Do you think then that you distrust men because your father treated you so badly?" This questioning form implies a more tentative quality than the declarative statements and makes interpreting less risky for the helper. Interpretive questions have focusing effect also, such as in the following illustration where the helpee has been avoiding discussion of his self-concerns.
Hr : When are you going to be concerned about yourself, too? He: -That is a selfish attitude.
Hr : So, what's wrong with that?
He : I don't like selfish people.
Hr : Because....?
He : Selfish people aren't very popular.
Hr : So, popularity is important to you; and if you are too self-centered, people won't like you. Is that getting close to where you are?
Fantasy and Metaphor Interpretations
Another stylized way of introducing an interpretation is to put it in the form of a fantasy (daydream), even using the picture language of a metaphor. An example, is,"I have a fantasy about what you have just said. I picture you walking down a path in the woods, coming to a fork in the path, and being undecided which one to choose. You unconcernedly flip a coin and run joyfully down the path chosen by the coin. How does this fit?" If the fantasy is close to the helpees' awareness, it will trigger new ways of perceiving themselves . The limitation is that in using this skill helpers shift into their own frame of reference, thus forcing helpees to deal with them (or their fantasies). Sometimes it is useful just to give one's reaction in the form of a- metaphor, such as, "Most of the time I perceive you as a great big soft teddy bear who stays in any position he is placed."
A second skill in using metaphors is to observe the special action words used by helpees to describe the,ir experiences. They tend to use certain images consistently. Some of these images are visual ("I see the light"), while others are auditory' ("That sounds right"), or kinesthetic ("That idea-grabs me"). Some helpees use gustatory words ("a sour project"), or olfactory images ("a stinking mess"). Many people have a dominant sensory mode, while others tend to have a mixture, of sensory images in their language. The point in helping is to listen for the sensory metaphors used by the person and then match your helping language to the helpee's dominant sensory mode. For example, if the helpee uses primarily visual verbs and images, such as bright, shining, looking, and drawing, then the helper tries to use this modality in his or her own responses. The purpose is to get into helpees' experiences to promote their self-understanding and to put the helper in a position of greater influence with helpees.
Another goal is to broaden the helpee's sensory language base by asking, for example, how the person's life is going, how the person sees his or her past, and how the future rings. The research base for this work is in psycholinguistics, or the psychological study of language (Bandler and Grinder 1975 and 1982).
Levels of Interpretation
I have mentioned the idea of levels of interpreting several times. Interpreting could be placed on a continuum from reflecting, where you stay at the meaning and feeling level of the helpee, through elaborate theoretical explanation of behavior in depth interpretation. Even in so-called depth interpretation we do not dig deeply into the helpees' psyches and come up with brilliant insights that unfold the mysteries of their personalities. This is a popular view that came from distorted perceptions of psychoanalytic methods.
The following illustration offers a few of these ways of responding at different levels of meaning. The helpee says, "I was at a party last night where I drank too much. I broke into tears and cried and cried. I acted like a child who wanted to go home to mother. I feel so ashamed." Your response, at different levels, might be one of the following:
1. You drank to the point where tears came freely. You're ashamed now as you talk about it (content paraphrase)
2. You feel very badly about what happened last night. (general feeling reflection)
3. You feel badly that you lost control of yourself last night. (mild interpreting—adding the idea of control)
4. You drank until you lost control of your feelings. As you look back on the evening now, you want to punish yourself for acting that childish way. (interpreting—adding the idea of punishing and reverting to childhood patterns)
5. Your drinking, crying, and mentioning mother, makes me wonder if you want to go back to mother—like being dependent on her for comfort and feeling you can't stand on your own two feet. (deeper level interpreting—desire for a comforting mother and dependency)
6. (Interpreting his statement according to some theoretical framework, like gestalt, which might explain in terms of giving up dependency on others and substituting self-dependency; or the rational-emotive approach for getting rid of self-defeating and self-punishing feelings about one's behavior; or psychoanalytic interpretations about wishes to go back to the womb. Behaviorally oriented helpers might inquire about the helpees' desires to change their drinking or crying behavior.)
The topic of the myriad verbal forms for couching interpreting skills is really too complex to cover in detail in this basic helping skills book, but it would be wrong to understate the significance and usefulness of interpreting skill for the average helper. We should know not only the possible uses but also the implications for misuse. Further readings in the references at the end of this chapter will add to your understanding of various styles of interpretation.
The main consequences for helpees of being confronted through interpretation are broadened perceptions of meanings of their behaviors and different ways of vieiving their problems and possible solutions. Generally speaking, helpees can expect a deeper understanding of their problems as a result of the added perspectives of the helper. If you get the "Suddenly I realized" reaction, you know your interpreting has been successful. Interpreting also has the effect of intensifying the emotional involvement of helpees so that they will take more responsibility for their own interpreting.
Guidelines for interpreting are:
1. Look for the basic message(s) of the helpees.
2. Paraphrase these to them.
3. Add your understanding of what their messages mean in terms of your theory or your general explanation of motives, defenses, needs, styles.
4. Keep the language simple and the level close to their messages. Avoid wild speculation and statements in esoteric words.
5. Introduce your ideas with statements that indicate you are offering tentative ideas on what their words or behaviors mean. Examples are: "Is this a fair statement?" "The way I see it is," "I wonder if," or "Try this one on for size."
6. Solicit helpee reactions to your interpretations.
7. Teach helpers to do their own interpreting. Remember, we can't give insight to others; they must make their own discoveries.
SKILL CLUSTER 7: INFORMING
This skill of information giving is so commonplace that it needs no elaboration. It is included here to indicate that sharing simple facts possessed by helpers is sometimes the most helpful thing they could do. Some kinds of information in the expertise category, such as information from test instruments, require special skills for planning and decision making that are beyond the scope of this general helping book. Further information on skills for informing about interests, aptitudes, and personality traits may be obtained from Brammer and Shostrom (1982) and the suggested readings section at the end of this chapter.
Another category of information about services concerning financial planning, career planning, and family planning needs to be handled by specially informed people through referral skills to be described in the next chapter.
Advice
Advice giving is a 'common type of informing activity by helpers. Helpees, expecting some kind of expert pronouncements in the form of sound advice on what to do, often thrust the helper into the role of expert. Beginning helpers, too, often perceive their function as giving "common sense" advice. Before reading further I suggest you formulate your own ideas about giving and receiving advice. How do you feel when people advise you? Under what conditions in your life has advice been helpful? What were the characteristics of the adviser? Do age or experience make any difference? Conversely, how do you feel about giving advice? Are there differences between giving advice and offering information?
There is a long tradition of giving advice in the helping folklore. It is a com¬mon occurrence between persons who know and trust one another. This time-honored function among friends is often beneficial. Issues arise, however, when helpees consult helpers in their larger environments at work, church, or school. These institutions have many natural self-styled advice givers who often have attractive .charismatic qualities. As a consequence, they are sought out by confused and troubled people, largely because they are attractive people with a reputation for being helpful. These persons could just as well be janitors or clerks as well as those with helping titles such as ministers or teachers. Helpees without serious emotional disabilities often do not want psychotherapy or counseling, but seek advice mainly on a particular problem. What they often search for is an empathic listener who will not attempt to "psych them out," "play the therapy game," or become a psychological version of "wet nurse."
In an informal study of what Korner called "indigenous counselors" he found that almost all bureaucratic organizations had such an informally appointed advice giver in the small-group structures. This person's function, according to Korner's data, is to become the organization's human behavior lay expert. His data from people who consulted these indigenous advisers indicate that such advisers enjoy talking to people, appreciate the respect and confidence people place in them, appear self-confident and dignified, and are very willing to give of their store of accumulated problem-solving experience in a no-nonsense neutral manner. They had an unusual quality to get to the core of the matter and inspire confidence and trust. The advice was offered in a manner that did not obligate the receiver to follow it or seek subsequent meetings for further help. Receivers were careful to indicate that this adviser did not offer solace and support to reduce psychic discomfort. The main contributions of the indigenous advice givers were to crystallize, and focus issues, to clarify decision processes, and to move beyond the impasse. It appears that persons perceived as helpful advice givers use helping skills far beyond sheer conventional advice. These, findings suggest also that such indigenous helpers in organizations are performing useful services to people infor¬mally and could probably enhance their effectiveness with additional work on helping skills. Unfortunately, Korner's data did not reveal the nature or the con¬sequences of "bad advice."
Giving advice in the traditional manner is a controversial topic in helping literature. Some writers claim advising reflects the arrogance of helpers who assume they are so all-knowing that they can advise other persons on a course of action. Critics also claim advice is ineffective and fosters dependency. Yet others assert that advice giving is helpful under some circumstances. Advice can be helpful if it is given by trusted persons with expert opinions based on solid knowledge 'of a supporting field such as law, medicine, or child rearing. Sometimes helpees need a recommended course of action supported by wide experience and, it is hoped, by facts. There is a place for suggestions that leave the evaluation and the final decision about courses of action completely open to the helpee. You can suggest hypotheses that need checking before acting and ways of approaching problems. Examples are situations in which parents are exploring ways of handling rebellious children or students are weighing choices about courses. The use of considered suggestions is appropriate when the contact is short and the decision relatively inconsequential in the person's life.
Advice is often appropriate in crisis situations where several people must cooperate to prepare helpees for major readjustments of their life circumstances, such as family reorganization after hospitalization, divorce, imprisonment, unemployment, or financial loss. Advice is wholly inappropriate for dealing with major individual choice questions, such as, "Should I get a divorce?" or "What career should I enter?"
Most people object to advice given in the form of "father knows best," or offhand suggestions tempered with strong persuasion. Usually, persons giving the advice have a strong stake in the helpee's following advice, and their persuasive attitude often generates hostility in helpees.
The principal limitation of advice giving is that helpees usually don't follow it. They often seemingly ask, or even beg, for advice but they are most often asking themselves the rhetorical question, "What shall I do?" They may be expressing dependent feelings, knowing full well what to do. If helpers fall into this trap, they justifiably incur the wrath or contempt of the helpee. A more productive stra¬tegy, especially if there is time, is to deal with the feelings involved first. The main task is to distinguish between the honest and direct request for information or suggestions and the expression of indecisive or dependent feelings. When in doubt, it is more productive to try a reflecting approach with the presumed feelings first, and then deal with the request itself.
Some other limitations of giving advice are that it reinforces dependence on experts, which shifts responsibility to the helper for solutions. Frequently, helpers who take the "If I were you" approach are projecting their own needs, problems, or values into the advice rather than keeping the helpee's needs foremost. Experience in group forms of helping indicates that often participants begin giving advice because they unconsciously perceive the other person's problems as their own; therefore, they are really speaking to themselves. Another limitation, furthermore, is that the helpee may take the helper's advice and later find that it was invalid. The helper then is blamed when things don't turn out right in the helpee's life.
A summary of guidelines for informing skills is as follows:
1. Be informed, or know the sources of information, in your area of advertised expertise.
2. Do not use educational or psychological test instruments without thorough training in their uses and limitations.
3. Don't use advice unless it is in the form of tentative suggestions based on solid expertise.
