Observing A Counselling Session

I did not observe a counselling session as it occurs in one on one setting, the Field supervisor felt that when someone else was present in the setting, it would interrupt the therapeutic relationship (rapport) and would reduce the level of confidentiality thus leading the client to not being able to reveal personal information and to make decisions or draw solutions. However, I discussed with my field supervisor about counselling, its practices, rituals, communications and procedures and wrote a complete case report for one client. This case report was written with the summarized information that was presented by the supervisor on the counselling sessions.
The main purpose of counselling is to help people identify their own strengths and weaknesses
Clients are responsible to make decisions while the counsellor is involved in helping or facilitating this thought process. In general the counselling process involves three phases; the beginning, the middle and the end. In the initial phase which consists of the first three sessions, the counsellor mainly focuses on building a rapport or trust with client and finding out more or important information of the problem presented by the client and history taking. The counsellor usually starts by asking the client about how he or she is feeling on that specific day and explains more about the counsellor herself. Before the counsellor goes into the second phase, they make sure that the client is aware of certain information such as confidentiality, when and why it would be breached in any instance and also describes about housekeeping which involves about the duration of the sessions, how many sessions would ideally happen, payments, appointment cancellation, rescheduling the session and mainly about how they except the client to maintain a therapeutic relationship in all times. In the second phase, the counsellor identifies the domains of problems and helps the clients to make decisions or give recommendations as