6 Factors Affecting Maintenance of the Relationship During Counselling Cession

This article will take you through the difference Factors Affecting Maintenance of the Relationship During Counselling Cession. The group members determine the topics and the pace at which discussions progress. Group members usually venture into personal problems and return to a central theme. Sharing of personal concerns often builds up. Gradually, members learn to be themselves, to discuss their concerns, and to identify their real feelings.

By trusting, accepting and trying to understand each other they provide the mutual encouragement needed to struggle with problems and to try to change. As this becomes evident, members become more ego-involved and participate more meaningfully increasingly group members learn to play the counsellor’s role and if encouraged developed interpersonal skills and create feelings of mutual respect.

The Counsellor’s Responsibility

The counsellor’s skill and confidence are the keys to successful group counselling. Experience from individual counselling often provides a foundation for working with group. Here also, counsellors convey feelings of acceptance, warmth, and understanding. They can be aware of their own needs and limitations and try not to allow them interfere with the counselling situations. As the group proceeds, they give full attention to the members and their interaction, allowing them to express themselves. Counsellors seek to communicate confidence in each member’s ability to solve his or her problems.

As counsellors, they define the working relationship, display consistency, and an example in accepting and helping others. Unique to group counselling are the cross-currents that develop among members. The counsellor must handle them objectively, being sensitive to their purpose and usefulness. The way counsellors demonstrate their skills has considerable effect on how the group functions.

As in individual counselling, the counsellor can capture and reflect the feelings of clients, help them tell their story, and set the stage for desirable learning experiences. Their task is more complicated because they must be aware of group interaction and convey feelings of acceptance and understanding to members. It has been suggested that counsellors can build relationships in group counselling when their clients come to feel that counsellors care about them, seem to understand them, believe they can be helped, and are experts in helping people help themselves.

Responsibility of Group Members

By choosing to be in a group, members agree to share the challenge of helping to build a relationship. Through interaction each member helps to create and maintain a psychological climate that is conductive to sharing experiences and solving problems. This is difficult to develop but it can be done if the counsellor’s actions and attitudes set a good example.

Each member has the responsibility to listen and help others express themselves. They also encourage others to define their thoughts and goals and to think coherently. It is important to develop member to interact and depend less on counsellors. Commitment to change is enhanced by helping members discover affiliation with others who work to make similar changes. Members of any group enact different roles at different times during group sessions.

Factors that Determine Success in Group Counselling

In presenting children’s group counselling as an efficacious therapeutic strategy, it is essential to review the factors that influence success in counselling groups. Two significant influences determine the life of a group. These are identified as “disruptive forces form without and disorganising forces from within”. Of these two, disorganising forces from within constitutes the most significant threat in a school guidance programme in general and group counselling in particular since it is contingent upon the counsellor’s organisational leadership abilities.

In recognition of such potential dangers. Counselling psychologists have identified vital constitutional factors that must be considered before group counselling is introduced to the school setting. These factors include: Mutuality of problems, compatibility of group members, group size, age range, sex composition, length and qualification of the group leader.

Similarity of Problems can help Maintenance of the Relationship

There is presently no argument among scholars on the nature of a group as regards the homogeneity or heterogeneity of problems. Some scholars recommend that counselling groups be composed of individuals who are confronting mutual problems. The argument lies in the fact that one wrongly placed member in a group can lead to the failure of the counselling objectives of that group.

It is unnecessary for members to share the same diagnosis even though they may share common problems. The trend among scholars in recent times is for a group to share mixture of wisely balanced members. For instance groups should be mixed in a way that some of the group members may have a motivating behaviour of some group members being copied by others. Specifies that “an optimal group arrangement calls for several quiet children and not more than two who are aggressive”.

Compatibility of Members

This issue centres on whether counselling groups should include well adjusted” participants among the participants that are experiencing adjustment problems in the school. Scholars have often in inclusion of one or two participants that are “normal”. The argument is that well-adjusted children are similar to those of the unadjusted children. Students that are considered “near happy” benefit from group counselling by helping themselves as well as helping others. Yunker (1970) suggests that more adjusted members in a counselling group tend to supply order to the group environment and usually provide the mode reinforcement desperately needed by participants lacking social competence.

A thorough review of literature by this write reveals that counselling psychologists involved in selecting members for group counselling should exercise restraint and hold an intake interview for desiring members of a group and supplement the information got with interview with teachers, parents and the clients cumulative records prior to making his or her final selection of group participants.

Group Size

Inappropriate size of a counselling group may ruin the outcome of group counselling. Too few or too many mar the venture before it actually takes off. Number of participants in group counselling varies according to members age, maturity levels and designated group tasks. Groups of about 5 to 10 may be adequately managed among secondary school groups, while 4 to 6 may be considered ideal for the primary school children.

Berelson and Steiner reported that “the larger the group becomes… the more impersonal it tends to become, the more formalised, the less intimate, the less satisfying to the members”. On the other hand, small “groups of two tends to be characterised by tension, groups oft here by power struggle”. The counsellors should appreciate the significance of group size in the outcome of group counselling.

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