Brief Counselling Plan - Unit 09 Summary
1. What is brief counselling?
- Brief therapy/short-term therapy = they are synonymous
- 4/6/8/12/16/24 sessions are common within brief context
- Part of the role of brief therapy is to help the client develop tools of reflection so that s/he can
do the work for him/herself when the therapy comes to an end.
2. Why brief counselling?
Brief vs Long:
“Different therapeutic genre and it underlines the complex issue of personality differences: an
episode instead of a chronicle, a sharply focused limited time instead of a multitude of freely
associated happenings” - different options for different goals.
Pros:
- Avoids therapeutic drift
- Doesn't pathologise
- Studies suggest number of sessions required for recovery is between 10 and 20
sessions (Hansen et al 2002 cited Cooper 2008)
- 62% of clients in psychodynamic brief therapy maintain they have been helped within 13
sessions (Garfield, 1994 in Mander, 2003)
Cons:
-
, 3. Tight Sequencing
Therapeutic ‘pointedness’ is a good response to “Psychological slippage”.
Psychological slippage = the loss of power/motion due to poor connection between a client’s
experiences.
Slippage (loose connections) leads to a lack of movement, unpowered, sluggish and
uncoordinated.
Tightening the connections between experiences is a primary task of therapy as it allows for
movement, change and integration of and for the client.
Confident directionalism
- Focus – Mann(1973:334) Remain insistent to give attention to the central issues and use
only those data that relate to it.
- Tight sequencing – avoid psychological slippage – by confident directionalism
- Ask for a clear example if the client is generalizing e.g – no-one listens to me – who
specifically doesn’t listen to you ? What is that like etc ..
- Bring into relationship in present if talking about the past eg: Could you think of a person
in your current life who you feel doesn’t listen to you ?
- Bring into the relationship with you if the focus is out there – How would I know if you felt
I wasn’t listening to you ? – This will give you an idea of how available the client is to
work with the process in the room
- Allow for crisis to change focus or something to develop. Every ‘rule’ has the potential to
be broken
It’s almost like the therapist explains the links in the client’s experiences and asks the
client: “AND SO…? (what are we going to do about it?)”
Vs
Offering explanations to their experiences without asking “and so?”
What is?
How to use it?
Why?
4. Minimising transference
What is?:
Client relating with the therapist “in here” as if the therapist is someone “back then”.
How to minimise it?
- Work with transference, not in transference.
- Bring it into client’s awareness as soon as it’s noticed. (aka, name/confront it): “I wonder if this
is a familiar pattern from childhood?”
- Appropriately self disclose my countertransference with the client
1. What is brief counselling?
- Brief therapy/short-term therapy = they are synonymous
- 4/6/8/12/16/24 sessions are common within brief context
- Part of the role of brief therapy is to help the client develop tools of reflection so that s/he can
do the work for him/herself when the therapy comes to an end.
2. Why brief counselling?
Brief vs Long:
“Different therapeutic genre and it underlines the complex issue of personality differences: an
episode instead of a chronicle, a sharply focused limited time instead of a multitude of freely
associated happenings” - different options for different goals.
Pros:
- Avoids therapeutic drift
- Doesn't pathologise
- Studies suggest number of sessions required for recovery is between 10 and 20
sessions (Hansen et al 2002 cited Cooper 2008)
- 62% of clients in psychodynamic brief therapy maintain they have been helped within 13
sessions (Garfield, 1994 in Mander, 2003)
Cons:
-
, 3. Tight Sequencing
Therapeutic ‘pointedness’ is a good response to “Psychological slippage”.
Psychological slippage = the loss of power/motion due to poor connection between a client’s
experiences.
Slippage (loose connections) leads to a lack of movement, unpowered, sluggish and
uncoordinated.
Tightening the connections between experiences is a primary task of therapy as it allows for
movement, change and integration of and for the client.
Confident directionalism
- Focus – Mann(1973:334) Remain insistent to give attention to the central issues and use
only those data that relate to it.
- Tight sequencing – avoid psychological slippage – by confident directionalism
- Ask for a clear example if the client is generalizing e.g – no-one listens to me – who
specifically doesn’t listen to you ? What is that like etc ..
- Bring into relationship in present if talking about the past eg: Could you think of a person
in your current life who you feel doesn’t listen to you ?
- Bring into the relationship with you if the focus is out there – How would I know if you felt
I wasn’t listening to you ? – This will give you an idea of how available the client is to
work with the process in the room
- Allow for crisis to change focus or something to develop. Every ‘rule’ has the potential to
be broken
It’s almost like the therapist explains the links in the client’s experiences and asks the
client: “AND SO…? (what are we going to do about it?)”
Vs
Offering explanations to their experiences without asking “and so?”
What is?
How to use it?
Why?
4. Minimising transference
What is?:
Client relating with the therapist “in here” as if the therapist is someone “back then”.
How to minimise it?
- Work with transference, not in transference.
- Bring it into client’s awareness as soon as it’s noticed. (aka, name/confront it): “I wonder if this
is a familiar pattern from childhood?”
- Appropriately self disclose my countertransference with the client
