Empathy Essay

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1. Empathy is viewed as an essential aspect of the counseling relationship. Discuss the difference between primary and advanced accurate empathy. What barriers exist to the development of empathy? How might these barriers be overcome? Empathy is expressed when a counselor can put his or herself into the client’s perspective and gain a true understanding of what it would be like to walk in a client’s shoes. This often involves the counselor using active listening techniques and expression to show true understanding of a client’s feelings, experiences, and struggles without judgement. The counselor must keep the client in a positive regard. There are two stages of empathy. There is the primary stage, which is defined as accurately articulating …show more content…

One barrier is cultural differences. Often times cultural differences stand in the way of the client / counselor relationship. The counselor must be able to work with clients from all ethnic groups and be open to learning different ways of seeing things. Another barrier is the perceived geniuses of the counselor. The counselor must be able to distinguish their personal cultural assumptions from those of a client and need to be perceived as “real” to the client. The counselor can do this by self-disclosure or keeping an open mind.
2. In the dynamic interaction that occurs in a crisis, the three principle components are (a) worker, (b) client, (c) ecological-cultural determinants. Explain what is meant by this statement.
Empathy plays in intricate part of crisis counseling. There are three principle components at work in crisis intervention counseling. The worker or counselor is there to provide a path back to some sense of normalcy or order after the crisis. This cannot be done without empathy. The counselor must ensure three things are done: safety, stability and connection to future resources and support. The client and other ecological-cultural provide the others. They go hand in hand to providing a setting and event, which caused the crisis.
3. Describe what types of collaborative efforts and/or consultations that a counselor might engage in over the course of his or her

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