Active Listening: A Case Study

The Egan model consists of three stages and its’ objective is to help the client achieve lasting change and empower them to manage their own problems more efficiently, while also developing unused opportunities (Egan, 2014). The session commenced with proficient use of active listening skills, which helped in exploring the issues and concerns of my client. Active listening is a process where the counsellor can communicate verbally and non-verbally in a way that allows their client to feel understood and heard, while also having their stories and emotional feel validated (Egan, 2014). For example, when my client said, “Sometimes I feel I like I end up prioritizing my love life or my job or something else entirely over my university work….” I replied by nodding my head and saying, “Mmm-hmm”, and she continued sharing her concerns. This example indicates effective use of active listening skills as it encouraged my client to continue her story without interruptions and also

In the above example, I captured the important details and my client’s concerns in my own words, and this was effective as it led to my client elaborating more on the issue by saying, “Yes, I do often feel anger and disappointment … he refuses to compromise … I also have to manage a part-time job and a full-time education…”. Although I used paraphrasing successfully here, looking back at the video, I feel like I could have improved the session more if I have used it more often, and this is one of my goals for the future sessions. Open-ended and probing questions invite more than one or two-word responses and these can be used to gather information, increase clarity, stimulate thinking, or create discussion (Egan, 2014). To further explore my client’s issues, I used open-ended questions to try and understand my client better, as can be seen