Intentional Interviewing and Counseling: Facilitating Client Development in a Multicultural Society 9th Edition Allen E Ivey Mary Bradford Ivey Carlos P Zalaquett Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Chapter Attending and Empathy Skills Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Chapter Goals and Competency Objectives (slide of 2) Awareness and Knowledge ▲Develop a solid understanding of how attending behavior, attention, and selective attention form the basis for all counseling and therapy ▲Understand how basics of neuroscience explain and expand the importance of attention ▲Learn how teaching microskills of listening is a useful therapeutic strategy Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Chapter Goals and Competency Objectives (slide of 2) Skills and Action ▲ Increase your skill in listening to clients, and communicate that interest ▲ Establish an empathic relationship with your clients ▲ Adapt your attending patterns to the needs of varying individual and cultural styles of listening and talking ▲ Develop recovery skills that you can use when you are lost or confused in the session Even the most advanced professional doesn’t always know what is happening When you don’t know what to do, attend! Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Introduction: Attending Behavior: The Foundation Skill of Listening (slide of 4) ▲ Attending behavior is supporting your client with individually and culturally appropriate verbal following, visuals, vocal quality, and body language/facial expression ▲ Listening is the core skill of attending behavior and is central to developing relationships and making real contact with clients ▲ Listening is more than hearing Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Introduction: Attending Behavior: The Foundation Skill of Listening (slide of 4) ▲One way to understand good quality listening is to experience the opposite—poor listening Find a partner to role-play a session Spend minutes role-playing a poor and ineffective listener After the role-play session, ask the “client” how he or she felt “inside” or emotionally when the “counselor” did not listen If no partner is available, think of a specific time when you felt that you were not heard Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Introduction: Attending Behavior: The Foundation Skill of Listening (slide of 4) ▲ When you use the microskills, you can anticipate how a client is likely to respond ▲ Attending behavior has predictable results in conversations with clients ▲ These predictions are never perfect, but research has shown we can generally expect specific results from various types of helping interventions (Daniels, 2010) ▲ If your first attempt at listening is not received well, you can intentionally flex and use a different skill Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Introduction: Attending Behavior: The Foundation Skill of Listening (slide of 4) Attending Behavior: Support your client with Anticipated Result: Clients will talk more freely and individually and culturally appropriate visuals, respond openly, particularly about topics to which vocal quality, verbal tracking, and body attention is given Depending on the individual language, including facial expression client and culture, eye contact, vocal tone, completeness of story, and body language will vary Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills of Attending Behavior and Empathy Skills ▲ Attention is the connective force of conversations and empathic understanding ▲ We are touched when it is present ▲ We know when someone is not attending to us ▲ Attending behavior is the first and most critical skill of listening It is a necessary part of all interviewing, counseling, and psychotherapy ▲ Sometimes listening carefully is enough to produce change Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved V’s + B (slide of 4) ▲ To communicate that you are listening or attending to the client, Visual / Eye Contact you need the following: Vocal Qualities V’s+B Verbal Tracking Body Language Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Verbals: Following the Client or Changing the Topic ▲ Verbal tracking is staying with your client’s topic to encourage full elaboration of the narrative ▲ Selective Attention Selective attention is central to interviewing, counseling, and psychotherapy Clients will talk about what counselors are willing to hear How you attend determines the length of the session and whether the client will return Observe the selective attention patterns of both you and your clients What your clients focus on? What topics they seem to avoid? Ask yourself the same questions Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved The Value of Redirecting Attention ▲ There are times when it is inappropriate to attend to client statements For example, a client may talk insistently about the same topic over and over again ▲ Through failure to maintain eye contact, subtle shifts in posture and vocal tone, and deliberate jumps to more positive topics, you can facilitate the interview process ▲ Redirect the conversation to focus on positive assets Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved The Usefulness of Silence ▲Sometimes the most useful thing you can is to support your client silently ▲Search for a natural break in the client’s speech and attend appropriately ▲The auditory cortex in the brain remains active when you are attending to silence Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Talk Time ▲Clients can’t talk while you ▲Review your sessions for talk time Who talks more, you or your client? With adults: Client > Counselor – With less verbal clients or children, you may expect: Client < Counselor Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Training as Treatment: Social Skills, Psychoeducation, and Attending Behavior ▲ Social skills training is training in a specific set of psychoeducational strategies oriented toward teaching clients an array of interpersonal skills and behaviors These skills include a wide range of behaviors, such as listening, dating behaviors, drug refusal skills, assertiveness, mediation, and job interviewing procedures ▲ Virtually all interpersonal actions can be taught through social skills training ▲ Training as treatment is a term that summarizes the method and goal of social skills training ▲ Implications for your practice: Many clients can benefit from training and education in listening skills Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Empathy: Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills (slide of 3) Empathy: Experiencing the client’s world and story Anticipated Result: Clients will feel understood and be as if you were that client; understanding his or more engaged in exploring their issues Empathy her key issues and expressing them is best assessed by a client’s reaction to a accurately, without adding your own thoughts, statement and his or her ability to continue the feelings, or meanings This requires attending discussion in more depth and, eventually, with and observation skills plus using the important better self-understanding key words of the client while distilling and shortening the main ideas Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Empathy: Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills (slide of 3) ▲ Subtractive empathy: Counselor’s responses give back less or distort what the client has said ▲ Basic empathy: Counselor’s responses are roughly interchangeable with those of the client ▲ Additive empathy: Counselor’s responses add to or link to something the client has said earlier, or a response may be a congruent idea or frame of reference that helps the client see a new perspective Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Empathy: Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills (slide of 3) ▲ This 3-point scale is often expanded for classifying and rating the quality of empathy shown in a session: Level Subtractive Interchangeable (Basic) Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Additive Neuroscience and Empathy ▲ Empathy is identifiable through functional magnetic resonance imaging and other key technologies ▲ Key to this process are the mirror neurons, which fire when humans or animals act and when they observe actions by another ▲ When listening skills are not successfully implemented, empathy falls apart ▲ Listening and empathy are not just abstract concepts: they are measureable and make a difference in people’s lives Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Observe: Attending Behavior and Empathy in Action What you think about Allen’s positive and negative interviewing examples? ▲ Were they effective in developing a good working relationship with Azara? ▲ What differences did you notice in Azara’s reaction to the first and second session segments? ▲ What are the major differences between the negative and the positive examples? Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved ... solid understanding of how attending behavior, attention, and selective attention form the basis for all counseling and therapy ▲Understand how basics of neuroscience explain and expand the importance.. .Chapter Attending and Empathy Skills Copyright © 2018 Cengage Learning All rights reserved Chapter Goals and Competency Objectives (slide of 2) Awareness and Knowledge ▲Develop... Cengage Learning All rights reserved Chapter Goals and Competency Objectives (slide of 2) Skills and Action ▲ Increase your skill in listening to clients, and communicate that interest ▲ Establish