Therapeutic Listening Skills

Therapeutic alliance is the foundation for therapy since it is what is needed to establish and sustain a profession relationship with a client. Studies have shown that poor therapeutic alliance with clients can affect treatments and contributes to client dropping out of psychotherapy (Sharf & Jennie, 2010). It is about building trust with your clients so they can elaborate on what is really wrong with them. There are several micro skills needed to establish a successful therapeutic alliance, however, these are some of the ones I considered as very important: listening skills, empathy, and open and close questions.

LISTENING SKILLS Listening skills is one of the most important skill you can have, especially as a therapist. How well a therapist listens can have a major impact on being effective with their clients. Listening skills says to the client that the therapist is completely in the moment with them (Ivey et al., 2011, pp.115). Listening skills helps the therapist to accomplish tasks geared towards helping the client. These tasks are: 1. Listening skills helps client to tell their story by encouraging the client to be narrative about themselves. While the client is narrating their life story, you learn, understand and obtain useful informations (Ivey et al., 2011, pp.115). 2. This bring us to the next point in listening skill which is to draw appropriate background and contextual information. This is the point where the therapist use their listening skills to obtain background information such as family of origin, cultural background, presenting complaints, medical history

These aforementioned barriers can hinder therapist-client relationship. Fortunately, one can learn listening skills by attending workshops, identify what triggers poor listening skills or excessive talking and work on it.