Counseling Process through the eyes of Robert Carkhuff's Stages of Counseling

Robert Carkhuff’s Stages of Counseling or Helping Model

Robert Carkhuff’s helping model is the most researched method for training a wide range of helpers in interpersonal skills: counselors, psychotherapists, teachers, nurses, hospital attendants, supervisors, and other professionals. Carkhuff gave five stages of counseling process; Attending, Responding, Personalizing, Initiation and Evaluation, with attitude and skills required for every stage.

Stage	Attitude	Skills
Attending	Respect Genuineness Empathy	Preparing for attending Observation Active Listening
Responding	All Above Concreteness Self- Disclosure	Paraphrasing Responding to comment Responding to meaning Responding to feeling Questioning
Personalizing	All Above Confrontation Immediacy	Building an interchangeable base Personalizing meaning Personalizing problems Personalizing goals Personalizing feelings Decision making
Initiating	All Above	Defining goals Delineating action programs Creating time schedules Establishing reinforcements Preparing to implement action steps
Evaluating	All Above	Motivating Analyzing

Attending: Involving the Client

The counselor should facilitate the environment of the interviewing space in such a way that when the client enters, he/she should feel safe and comfortable. 

While meeting the client the counselor should formally greet the client, the first impression matters a lot, specifically the way the counselor interact with the client, the counselors body language, the grip of the handshake, the handshake, addressing the client with their name, shows the respect to the client, that the counselor is genuine and reliable.

The counselor should establish the administrative and psychological contract with the client, in which the purpose of the contact: the terms and conditions of the interaction are clearly mentioned, so that both client and counselor are clear what to expect and boundaries of the interaction. The decision should be made after asking the client about their expectations and explain the client about what the both counselor and client could achieve from the process. The main responsibility of the counselor is to mentally prepare and encourage the client to be fully involved in the counseling process.

The counselor should use non-verbal skills while attending the client; the counselor should sit facing the client squarely, should lean towards the client to show the interest, make eye contact with the client instead of looking here and there and writing all the time; so that the client knows that they are listening whatever the client is saying.

The counselor can accurately infer or guess the client’s feelings and reading to receive help; by observing client’s appearance, body posture, facial expression, and the body movements. Every single minute movement of the client can be observed by the counselor with good efforts. The counselor is able to identify the discrepancies and incongruence between the client’s behavior and the appearance of the client to respond back effectively.

The counselor needs to have patience to listen actively to the information provided by the client. By listening to the client, the counselor is able to understand the tone of client’s voice to understand the client’s feelings and mood. 

The counselor should try to observe and listen to the client without feeling offended or judging the client for their actions and jumping to the conclusions without understanding the context in which the client is speaking.

All these skills are necessary for the counselor for attending the client, understanding and responding to the client effectively.

Responding: Facilitating Exploring

After the attending the client it is very important for the counselor to respond to the client. Paraphrasing the client’s content leads the counselor to understand the feeling and intensity behind the information shared by the client. By paraphrasing the counselor is able to understand the meaning and feelings behind the particular experience of the client.

Responding to meaning involves putting clients’ content and feeling together by creating an empathic response to both clients’ feelings and the reason for those feelings. Creating empathic responses helps to facilitate clients’ exploration of how they feel about their issue and why they feel that way. It helps the client to infer their situation logically and to examine their emotions regarding that particular situation.

The counselor should respond to the client in a concrete manner instead of giving advices, judging them or feeling sorry for the client. Sometimes, if the counselor has faced the same situation as the client, self- disclosure can be done so as to make the client feel that they are not alone or different in any way. But while doing this the counselor should not sympathize with the client or go into their own issues, if it happens, the sinc between the client and counselor gets ruptured.

Personalizing: Facilitating Understanding

Gradually the client is able to accurately able to understand the client’s feeling regarding the issue and reasons for having those feelings and is able to respond to the client in a leading manner from their own frame of reference.

The counselor adds to the client’s understanding of where they standing regarding their issue and where they want to be, the things they need to achieve. The counselor does this by responding to the client’s feelings and personal implications of the issue to the client. The counselor is able to make the client understand what they feel and what make them feel like that.

The counselor invites the client to relate the present situation of counseling process to the real life situation of the client; so as to make the client aware about their present situation. The client confronts the two different situations to one another to gain proper understanding about their issue.

This confrontation make the client understand about their contribution to the situation, their share of responsibility in the issue. The client is able to understand the emotions about the situation and starts thinking about the situation logically. The client comes to a rough understand of what they need to do. The client become aware of their important living, learning, and working values can help them choose the best course of action regarding the situation.

The client is able to define their problems and to transform their problems into goals.

Initiating: Facilitating Acting

The counselor and client decide the plan of action to solve the problem. They brainstorm for various ideas to solve the issue effectively. They define the goal by delineating who and what is involved, when, where, and why it will be done. The counselor decides the parameter for the observing and measurement of the goal achievement.

The counselor and the client develops an action plan, making step by step procedure to achieve the goal. The reinforcement for the task completion is decided by the counselor depending upon the client’s needs and expectations. The plan is made in such a way that there are no gaps that may prevent the client from accomplishing the goal. The resources are made available to the client to accomplish the task skillfully without any hindrance.

The counselor establishes a starting time and a completion time for each step and the reinforcement is provided after the completion of each step and not until the step is accomplished.

The plan is implemented carefully and after every step, the client assess the progress that they have made and how closer they are to the goal.

Evaluating

The counselor motivates the client to give their level best to achieve the set goals. After completing the goals defined, the results are analyzed by the client, the degree to which they have achieved the designated goal, if they are able to make a significant progress or if they need to look for alternative ways to accomplish the goal more effectively.

If the progress the made is not upto the expectations of the client, they go back to the initiating stage to assess where they need to work on achieve the satisfactory results. The counselor motivates the client about the future opportunities, by encouraging and inviting the client think of alternative ways to achieve the goal more effectively.

References

a)      Burks, H. M., & Stefflre, B. (1979). Theories of counseling. New York: McGraw-Hill.

b)      Carkhuff, R. R. (2010). The art of helping. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.