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Week 2 - The Therapeutic Relationship 1 (The Challenge (requires skilful…
Week 2 - The Therapeutic Relationship 1
Origins of the term Empathy
German - 'feeling oneself into' the experience of another person or 'to feel within' in response to an artistic work
Latin - 'feeling oneself' into an individual's experience; to enter into their experience as a means of knowing
Is hard to define and therefore has been variously defined
One solution is to give definitions to different forms of empathy e.g. intellectual empathy for the cognitive process and affective empathy for the affective aspect
Origins of Empathy - (Psychological)
Studies indicate that empathy is present in infants and young children
Empathy is most obvious when it is absent
People appear to differ in their capacity for and levels of empathy
Neuroscience and "mirror neurons"
Empathy in the Therapeutic Context
Rogers - accurately experienced empathy means..."the therapist senses accurately that the client is experiencing and communicates this acceptant understanding tot he client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meaning of which the client is aware, but even those just below the level of awareness"
Kohut - empathy is a tool of psychotherapy and core to the healing process. It provides clients with a corrective emotional healing experience . This affirming experience leads to the establishment/healing of other meaningful relationships
The empathetic counsellor
Qualities of an empathetic counsellor
Behaves in ways that indicate they take the relationship seriously
Is aware fo what the client is feeling 'here and now'
Communicates understanding of these feelings appropriately
Communicates to clarify and expand client's awareness
Stays in tune with client's shifting emotional state
Is sensitive to mistakes they make and can respond and change their responding non-defensively
Importantly
Being an empathic counsellor and being able to employ empathy to bring about change, healing and growth is not just about feeling empathy, it is about how this empathy is communicated to the client: the language of empathy (hackney & cormier, p51)
The Challenge
requires skilful listening
attention to both verbal and non-verbal messages
requires accurate sensing the client's feelings not the feelings the counsellor might have in a similar situation
a suspension fo all self-directed thinking - therapists agenda
to be openly engaged and responsive to one's own internal reactions and sensibilities - self awareness
requires responding differently to expressed and discussed feelings
requires responding selectively to the core and client message
requires assertive communication
must create movement in the counselling process
requires good use of a range of micro skills but goes beyond that
Risks in Empathising
Empathy v's Sympathy
Sympathy
Expressions of condolence or pity may imply unintended endorsement
Issues becoming daunting and burdensome leading to foreclosure
Focus is on the emotional wellbeing fo the client
Drawn into the experience of the client
Becoming enmeshed. Lack of emotional distance. Merging of identities
Empathy
Enables client self evaluation of his/her experience
Facilitates in-depth exploration and advance in the therapeutic process
Focus is on understanding the experience of the client
Objective appraisal of client's experience
Detachment & separateness. Maintaining therapist's identity
both involve feelings that are expressed in response to the experience of the client but there are significant differences
Projection v's Empathy
Attributing qualities/experiences to the client that emanate primarily from the therapist's experience
Believing that the client has similar experiences to the therapist
May arise when the therapist's personal issues and conflicts remain unresolved
demonstrating inadequate acceptance of the uniqueness of the client's expereince
Counter-transference v's Empathy
The therapist's strong positive or negative affect towards a crleitnwhich results in perceptual distortion of the clients experience
internal or external reactions to a client which arise from unresolved conflicts in the life of the therapist
demonstrates a lack of genuineness
Markers of Empathy
Empathy is
Entering into client's frame of reference through accurate reflection of content and feelings
Mirroring the client's emotional experience through use of appropriate non-verbals
Establishing empathetic rapport through validation of clients experience
Tracking client's experience on a moment to moment basis - immediacy
Bring client's experience to the surface; making overt what is covert
Working with client's story
Empathy is not
Sympathising, agreeing, reassuring, cajoling, condoling
Non-verbals that do not reflect the client's experience
Minimising, doubting or judging unfavourable the client's experience
Jumping, introducing new material, losing focus, repeating or rehashing past aspects of clients presentation
Mind reading, interpretations based on therapist's personal experience, theorising, diagnosing
Assuming or feigning understanding/meaning
Curious, invasive questioning, self-disclosure