Counsellor blogs
Techniques: Magic wand
This technique is used if a client does not seem to have much of a direction, or if I have not managed to easily identify their issue/goal. It works well for both children & young people and older clients.
I use this Magic Wand technique after the initial assessment. I feel this is the best time, as they have already met me and are at the first of their contracted sessions, usually the first of eight.
Holding my pen in my hand, I ask them:
If this pen was a magic wand and you had one wish that would allow change or would improve something for you .. what would you ask for?...
(NB with young people I do tend to highlight that I don’t have an actual magic wand!)
Clients will usually laugh initially, but then they dig deep within themselves and share what they hope to achieve or what they would like to change.
This technique allows me to bring a direction in the session. Something which we can explore and work towards if at all possible.
Given many clients usually only have up to 8 free counselling sessions with me, this technique can encourage them to use their sessions more productively.
Recognising different emotions
I’d been working with 8-year-old Liam for 4 sessions and it became clear he was only fully aware of a few emotions. The main feelings he understood were anger and happiness. Beyond this, he had huge difficulty in recognising feelings in others, and communicating how he himself was feeling. This was causing misunderstandings in school with friends and at home.
We needed some common ground, and I identified a film we had both seen and were familiar with - ‘The Lion King’ - to use to help Liam recognise emotions....
Discussing different scenes from the film allowed Liam and I to look at the feelings the characters were experiencing.
All the different emotions discussed were then written down as a mind map by Liam.
Recognising emotions with the knowledge of the scene proved easier for Liam as he was comfortable enough within the counselling relationship to ask questions and gain clarity as we were both exploring the same movie and it wasn’t from his narrative.
Using a movie, book or story which is familiar to both the client and counsellor has worked very well for me to help clients recognise different emotions in the counselling room, and the aim if that this new understanding will find application outside of the counselling room too. It certainly helped Liam.
Techniques: My Circle
With clients who feel pressure to please others or to belong to an extended family I use the circle.
I ask the client to write their name in the middle of a sheet of paper and draw a circle around their name. I then draw further increasingly bigger circles around their first circle.
I then ask: Who are closest people to you? The most important and valued?
They write their names down in the second circle, the one closest to their name. We then look at other people in their lives and place them in the appropriate circles, those with less significance or power on the client in the outermost circles. As I continue to enquire through the session, I refer back to the sheet, and ask the client to record new people as they come up, recognising the impact of them and questioning the importance of their opinion on client...
This sheet is used to allow me to understand the client’s position from their narrative and also a visual for the client to see if their extended family and friends should actually be having an impact on their lives and their significance to them.
This has proved to be a valuable tool both for me as their counsellor and to clients as they recognise that they may have misplaced people and they should be moved further away from the circle they thought they were in, freeing them from judgment and giving freedom of choice.
It’s always helpful to reverse this exercise and ask the client where they would put themselves in the other person’s circle. This allows the client to bring a balance to their relationship where there has been an imbalance of power.
A powerful exercise, which I refer back to throughout further sessions.
Brainstorming for the busy mind
Working with 10 year-old Nathan, he appeared overwhelmed and was experiencing feelings of helplessness. He seemed unable to recognise what was causing him to be this way.
After some sessions where we had got comfortable working together, I gave him a large piece of paper and two different coloured pens.
Reminding Nathan that this was a non-judgmental exercise – I would not be critical of what he wrote – I asked him to use one colour to write down all the things bothering him, big or small, things he spent time worrying about or fearing, things depleting his energy and leaving him feeling low.
He was initially cautious but soon got into the flow. Once all his worries and negative thoughts were on the piece of paper, Nathan could see the issues clearly in front of him instead of being a confusing swirl in his head.
I then asked Nathan to use the other coloured pen to rate each issue on a scale of 0-10. 0 was for something causing little or no problems, 10 was to represent maximum stress, something that thoroughly preoccupied him...
When he was scoring each issue, we explored it briefly to recognise the severity of the burden on him.
This exercise was carried out over two sessions, enabling Nathan to recognise the goal of disentangling his overwhelming thoughts, and then to start working towards this.
Some issues which had seemed big in his head, once written down, were very quickly scored by Nathan as zero. All he needed to do was recognise them and rationalise them with fact or opinion. What was left was more crucial for him, but gave him a focus for our remaining time and it was easier for him to tackle given the space the brainstorming had freed up.
This exercise works well with clients who need to empty their minds and sift through things which seem heavier than they are. Some things seem huge when they are held in mind, but when shared and rationalised are made manageable, allowing the client to feel more in control.
