Building your foundation as a helper ----Understanding yourself and interpersonal patterns

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Building your foundation as a helper----Underst
anding yourself and interpersonal patterns

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Typical needs and motivations of helpers

• The need to make an impact
• The need to return a favor
• The need to care for others
• The need for self-help
• The need to be needed

• The need for money
• The need for prestige and status
• The need to provide answers
• The need for control others
• The need for variety and flexibility

How these needs might enhance or interfere with
a persons ability to help others?
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The Effective Counselor

• The most important instrument you have is YOU
• Be authentic
• Be a therapeutic person and be clear about who
  you are

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Ideal helper

• Warm, accepting, caring
• Know who they are
• Open to change
• Sincere, honest, authentic
• Invested, willing to take risks
• Good boundaries
• Live in the present
• Sensitive to culture..more

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Interpersonal patterns (see handout)

• Intimacy needs
• Need for approval from others
• Importance of relationships in life
• Preoccupation with relationships
• Need for relationships
• Level of trust
• Level of trustworthiness in relationships
• Level of confidence in relationships
• Dependency Needs
• Self-versus-other orientation in relationships
• Comfort with asking for help
• Importance given to feedback from others

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Interpersonal patterns (see handout)

• Level of self-versus-other absorption
• Approach-avoidance behaviors
• Level of value granted to relationships
• Social skills
• Comfort in new relationships
• Center of attention
• Self-disclosure in relationship
• Emotional expressiveness in relationships
• Identification with others
• Conflict with authority figures
• Stance toward equality in relationships

Source Basic Skills in Psychotherapy and
Counseling, by C. Brems (3rd), 2001
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Counseling for the Counselor

• Being a client, you can
• Therapists can help their client no further than
  they have been willing to go in their own life.

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The Counselors Values

• Be aware of how your values influence your
  interventions
• Recognize that you are not value-neutral
• Your job is to assist clients in finding answers
  that are most congruent with their own values
• Find ways to manage value conflicts between you
  and your clients
• Begin therapy by exploring the clients goals

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Multicultural Counseling

• Become aware of your biases and values
• Attempt to understand the world from your
  clients standpoint
• Gain a knowledge of the dynamics of oppression,
  racism, discrimination, and stereotyping
• Study the historical background, traditions, and
  values of your client
• Be open to learning from your client

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Multicultural counseling Competence

• Awareness of self
• Understand others
• Appropriate Skills

Adapted from Sue, D. R., Sue, D.
(2004).Counseling the culturally diverse Theory
and practice (4th Edition). New York John Wiley
Sons.
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Defensive Racial Dynamics

• Freud (1926, 1989) believed that people use
  defenses to protect themselves when they feel
  threatened.
• Clark (1991) defines a defense mechanism as an
  unconscious distortion of reality that reduces
  painful affect and conflict through automatic and
  habitual responses.

Source Ridley, C. R. (1995). Overcoming
unintentional racism in counseling and therapy
A practitioners guide to intentional
intervention. Thousand Oaks, CA Sage Publications
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Defensive Racial Dynamics

• There are four important characteristics common
  to all defenses mechanisms.

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Eight Racial Related Defenses

• Color Blindness
• Color Consciousness
• Cultural Transference (client)
• Cultural Counter transference (counselor)
• Cultural Ambivalence
• Pseudo-transference
• Over-identification (minority therapist)
• Identification with the Oppressor (minority
  therapist)

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Issues Faced by Beginning Therapists

• Common concerns
• Unrealistic beliefs