Personalities of Clients

Personalities of Clients

1. Borderline personality.

     Someone who exhibits self-destructive behavior and shows a   pattern of unstable relationships

2. Narcissistic personality.

     Someone who is extremely  self-centered with an exaggerated  sense of self-importance

3. Sociopathic personality.

    Someone who is exploitive in relationships with no remorse.

4. Schizoid personality.

    Someone who is odd, eccentric, and detached from relationships.

5. Paranoid personality.

    Someone who is extremely suspicious and fearful that others are  planning harm.

Exercise A

1. What would a typical day in your life be like? Describe what you do  from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep.

2. What have you done in your life that you are most proud of? What about most ashamed of?

3. When was the last time that you felt really in control in your life? How was that different from now?

4. Who are you closest to in the world?

5. What are a few things that nobody in the world knows about you that would be especially helpful for me to know?

6. How is this present problem you are having familiar to you? How have you experienced something similar in the past?

7. What is an area that you feel especially resistant to getting into?

8. When you leave here today, what is the one thing that will haunt you the most?

Attending Behaviors In Exploration

1. Attending Behaviors

- Face the person fully.

- Communicate intense interest.

- Give undivided attention.

- Maintain natural eye contact.

- Be sensitive to cultural preferences.

- Make your face expressive.

- Nod your head. A lot.

- Present yourself authentically.

2.  Active Listening, which includes nonverbal behavior as communication and punctuation, and Verbal Behavior as indication of productive understanding and communication of what the client is saying.

3.  Empathy, which is the counselor’s  ability to draw from personal experiences, emotions, and behaviors and to make responses indicating a shared under-standing of the client's experiences, emotions, and behaviors.

4.  Encouraging, Paraphrasing and Summarizing, which are used to help the client organize thinking and communicate clearly.

5.  Reflection of Feelings, which lets the client know that feelings and emotions have been understood.

6.  Five-Stage Interviewing, which includes (a) rapport building/structuring, (b) defining the problem, (c) defining a goal, (d) exploration of alternatives and confronting incongruity, and (e) generalization to daily life.

7.  Confrontation, which is the identification of the client’s incongruities and mixed messages.

8.  Focusing, which means attending substantively to all pertinent facets of the client’s situation.

9.  Reflection of Meaning, which lets the client know that communications have been understood

10.  Influencing Skills, which include (a) developmental questioning, (b) directives, (c) logical consequences, (d) interpreting/reframing, (e) self-disclosure, (f) advice/information / explanation/instruction, and (g) feedback.

Egan’s SOLER vs. Ivey’s Microskills

Egan proposed three basic communication skills for the helping process.

1.  Attending, which follows the acronym SOLER:

                face the client Squarely.

                        adopt an Open posture.

                                                    Lean toward each other.

                        maintain Eye contact.

                                 appear Relaxed.

Ivey’s Microskills model includes

1.       Attending Behavior, which means that the counselor uses culturally and individually appropriate behaviors.

2.       Open and Closed Questioning, which elicits the specifics of the client's world

3.       Client Observation, which means attending to the client’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors and discrepancies skills.