Acceptance on the part of the counsellor means that he has an orientation about when he reacts with affirmation and when with negation. Everything which is change effective and which does not serve avoidance should be affirmed and serves the client’s goals. This means that the counsellor must show a permissive and non-judgmental attitude towards …
The tradition of training and practice paths for perception is as old as recorded human history. Centuries old techniques from Vipassana, Zen Buddhism, Christian Mystics, Yoga and more modern ones such as Sensory Awareness, Hakomi, Focusing, MBSR and others are cultivated, because self-perception, such as hearing, or taste, is refined when (regularly) practiced. In counselling …
Physical symptoms can also be a(n) (indirect and unconscious) form of expressing oneself. This correlation, however, is to be treated with caution. These ways of circumvention and monocausal connections (e.g. “This illness means this or that psychological issue!”) are more likely to be presumptuous and dysfunctional diagnostics on the side of the counsellor than a …
How one is breathing is one aspect of behaviour-expression not to be undervalued. Breathing is, in a way, the fuel of self-expression. (“Then I had better hold my breath and …!” or “Take a deep breath and then …!”). Breath which is shallow (above the diaphragm), inhibited (reducing the volume of breath), constricted (interfering with …
A possibility for challenging self-expression consists of working on the physical level. Different bundles of possibilities are offered here, depending on the counselling context and the client’s environment: gestures and physical actions such as standing up, dancing, singing, making sounds, screaming, exercising strength, hitting gongs etc. For the reader who has never experienced such a …
A more specific form of playfully revealing oneself is the work with projective techniques. The client does not express himself with verbal messages and information, but with ‘materials’ such as: drawing, re-enacting social or inner contexts with the aid of figures, choosing dolly identification figures, toy animals, symbolic figures or photos etc. All this provides …
Those who play, lose themselves in it. This is exactly the reason why snapshots of playing children are so often full of expressiveness: in such moments they very clearly reveal a certain aspect of their personality (e.g. particularly attentive, happy, wild, ambitious, joyful, uninhibited, shy or curious). This can be utilised in counselling techniques by …
You can only consciously influence that which you (can) react to, and not that which you ignore. Otherwise it is actually the other way around: That, which one ignores in oneself or the social environment unconsciously grows stronger. Children and employees, who are ignored, sometimes become conspicuous! A technique for looking at this connection in …
If resonance is the distinction between reacting and ignoring, then, from a counselling technique viewpoint it is meaningful how both, counsellor and client, react to each other in their relatedness. “Oh well, you may be right, but …” is different to “You are spot on in what you’re saying!”. Technically, in counselling, it is usually …