Helping Skills: Facilitating Exploration, Insight, and Action (Third Edition) by Clara E. Hill

Author:Clara E. Hill [Hill, Clara E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Psychology
ISBN: 9781433804946
Publisher: American Psychological Association
Published: 2010-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

The term challenge is used in this book instead of the more typical term confrontation because challenge conveys less of a confrontational or aggressive manner. However, I use the two terms somewhat interchangeably in the discussion.

RATIONALE FOR USING CHALLENGES

Challenges are used to help clients recognize feelings, motives, and desires of which they are not aware. If clients are angry at others but unable to admit it, they might make a lot of sarcastic comments and inadvertently wound others. In other words, their anger “leaks” out. Furthermore, clients might be invested in not being aware of their inappropriate behaviors. They may blame other people rather than take responsibility for their actions. For example, a middle-aged person might continue to blame his parents for all of his problems rather than take responsibility for them, because taking responsibility would mean he would have to give up his rage at his parents and change his unhealthy behaviors. Challenges are often needed to nudge clients out of denial, help them see their problems in a different light, and encourage them to take appropriate responsibility for their problems.

Challenges can also help clients become aware of ambivalent feelings. Most of us have ambivalent feelings but cannot allow ourselves to feel both sides of issues because of beliefs about how we “ought” to be (e.g., “Nice girls don't get angry”). Challenges can be used to unearth thoughts and feelings so that clients begin to experience and take responsibility for their thoughts and feelings.

Challenges also enable clients to admit to having different or deeper feelings than they were previously able to acknowledge. For example, Angela said over and over that everything was going well until the helper challenged her about her poor grades. This challenge encouraged Angela to think about what might be going on at a deeper level and made her realize that she was trying too hard to ignore problems. Another example involves Gianni, who indicated that his relationship with his wife was great. The helper pointed out that Gianni's wife was never home and they had not had sex for 3 years. This challenge invited Gianni to examine closely what was happening in his relationship with his wife.

Even though the goal of challenges is to raise awareness, sometimes challenges help clients gain insight. Although helpers are not interpreting or providing reasons when they challenge, sometimes simply hearing a challenge leads clients to insight. For example, a helper may challenge a client by telling him that he says he wants help, but he does not disclose anything about his situation. This challenge might lead the client to realize that he is reluctant to reveal anything because he is afraid of being rejected.

These interventions can also be used to help clients become aware of their defenses (see chaps. 4 and 9 for more discussion of defenses). Defenses exist for a reason—they help us cope. All of us need some defenses to survive in the world. However, most of us have defenses that are not very adaptive. Sometimes we

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.