Problems with Techniques

One of the points that really stuck out to me in the article about multicultural counseling was that over time theories of counseling have been redefined to fit into techniques and approaches to clients.

This is something that has always brought up questions for me and I do not thing this only applies to counseling. It applies to many things in education and the world. When we go through school, we are taught textbook ways of doing things and we do not live in a textbook world. Things are not always as black and white as textbooks seem to put them sometimes.

I think techniques are good but I also think that they can sometimes cause problems for students once they get into the “real world”.  I think Ginter is right when he says that counselors want to focus more on “doing” counseling than “being” a counselor. When you are taught techniques, it is easy to want to place people in to categories and then apply certain approaches or techniques to them based on what category they are in. In doing this we lose sigh of being a counselor and actually counseling. We place too much emphasis on applying textbook techniques to real world people.

With all that being said it is very, very important for students going in to counseling to practice. Along with practice, it would be beneficial to watch counseling sessions take place. Being able to see how other counselors handle certain problem would be good because you are able to see different ways of handling situations that may not go along with textbook approaches.

Wellness in Counseling

Before reading the article on wellness by Myers and Sweeney, I asked myself what my definition of wellness was. For me wellness is well-being in a holistic way. How a person is based on there well-being. And this may be in multiple areas such as their physical and mental health.

I really like Hettler's definition of wellness in that "wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward a more successful existence." I think this is very true and to be a well, physically and mentally, it takes effort along with understanding. It is important for people to understand first what wellness means. Wellness can mean many different things for different people. In counseling, I think understanding and accepting that people have different views from me is going to be the most important thing for me.

So, in understanding wellness and what it means for different people, I like The Wheel of Wellness model the best. I liked that it was visual, and the clients were able to see something solid and concrete in front of them. - I always think having some type of visual aid or model is very helpful.

Having "Spirituality" in the center of this wheel made perfect sense to me. It is important for someone to kind of focus fist on there values, their beliefs, and a sense of meaning in their life. This provides a type of foundation or base line when starting to counsel someone. Also having the 12 different life task around the wheel allows the client to take things one thing at a time. - We talked about this during our second class and I think we were all in agreement that slowing things down and taking it one problem or issue at a time is very important. I think it helps with minimizing stress and keeping anyone from becoming overwhelmed.

The Five Factor Model  would also be very helpful in counseling and I also think it would be very interesting to research. Having multiple versions available - adults, children, and even different cultural models- is very helpful. Like I said earlier, not everyone has the same views. Theses views vary based on age and culture, so to have different versions of a model can be very beneficial.

All in all, this was a very interesting read and it provided several sources to aid me in my journey of counseling.