Lesson 7: Reflection of Feeling

Attention

Helping our clients get in touch with, and understand their emotions is a primary function of the counseling process!

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

• Contrast Paraphrasing and Reflecting Feeling
• Demonstrate the ability to identify the emotions a person may be experiencing
• Describe why an exploration of feelings is important in the counseling process

Teaching

Feelings...

It seems to be the catch term in counseling..."How do you feel about that?"

Why such the emphasis on "feelings"? I'll give you a hint...consider the word "Emotion"...look at the roots of the word..."Motion", "Motive", "Motivation"...so what makes us MOVE???

Getting to Feelings

We want to assist our clients in getting to know their emotional world. By understanding their emotional world they can understand the forces that motivate them and unmotivate them to take action to bring about change.

Often emotions are conflicted as well...they might be feeling more than one feeling at the same time about the same thing!! This can feel "crazy" and scary.

Approaching Feelings

We approach feelings with the same tentative care that we approached Paraphrasing...we want to be sure that we are on the same page as our clients so when we attempt to identify the feelings we want to check to see if we are right.

If we see, for instance, a discrepancy between what someone is SAYING that they feel, and their ACTIONS or EXPRESSIONS we want to explore this carefully.

Why we DON'T want to explore Feelings

It is scary to open these "cans of worms". Sometimes we want to steer away from the expressions not to suppress them but to ensure that the person has enough supports should all these feelings come tumbling out! It is irresponsible to open up all these wounds and them simply walk away...session done!

So we are careful...like a rhino in a china store with boxing gloves on...go slow, carefully, and try not to break anything!

Reflection of Feelings

Since our clients' are often emotionally conflicted (meaning, they may feel multiple, seemingly incompatible ways about something...such as both "relief" and "sad" when someone has died.) it helps for us to simply identify the emotions that we are picking up on in our clients. The same way we use "reflection" to simply identify and repeat what someone has said, we use "reflection of emotion" to simply identify the emotions they seem to be having.

Just as in other types of reflection, we want to do a check to be sure we are correct. Sometimes we are not. We may identify that the person is feeling "sad" when they are not...they will tell you if you are wrong! That is one of the great dynamics of working in this field.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is a measure of our ability to manage our own and others' emotions. Research in this field has indicated that Emotional Intelligence can be as important as IQ in predicting success.

Click HERE to read an article on the importance of Emotional Intelligence
Click HERE to visit a website on Emotional Intelligence...there are MANY of them!

Click HERE to visit a website and take an Emotional Intelligence test!

Assessment

Lesson 7 Discussion A

Talking about feelings is often confused with talking about what someone "thinks" about something. Feelings are raw and volatile (meaning subject to change). We tend to stay in the "head" and not make it down to the "heart". Describe 2 different situations in which you might be reluctant to actually talk about the feelings that someone is having. Is it hard for you to talk about fear, or dread, or depression...what about anger?

Report on the results of your Emotional Intelligence test. How do you think this reflects in your actions and comfort level in dealing with emotionally charged situations?

Lesson 7 Discussion B

For this discussion you are going to record yourself providing reflection of feeling. You may work with another student or a family member on this. Remember that the point of this is to demonstrate reflection of feelings, so you will be identifying a person's emotional state. Post a link to your video in the discussion board and identify in your post what cues you used to identify the feelings that the person was experiencing.

Remember, this is not the same as when someone says "I feel I need to do this now."...this is not a "feeling" in the manner that we are talking about. Reflecting feelings means that you are using your observation skills to notice body posture, facial expressions, and contextual cues to help the client understand the underlying feelings about something they are talking about.

For instance...if you are talking to your daughter about her boyfriend dumping her for another girl, you may reflect feelings such as anger, sadness, and fear.