Parroting is a conversational technique that can be quite effective in therapy. The therapist loosely repeats what the client has just said. The twin goals of this technique are ensuring that the therapist heard what was said correctly, and encouraging the client to further clarify his or her thoughts.
According to Zur (2010), one of the most cited examples of inappropriate self-disclosures are when practitioners discuss their own personal problems and hardships with their clients with no clinical rationale or purpose.
As a psychologist, you must avoid any relationships with clients that could impair your professional judgment or harm your clients in any way. It is unethical to provide counseling services to a friend, business client or romantic partner.
Paraphrasing or active listening (coined by Carl R. Rogers in Client-Centered-Therapy) is a form of responding empathically to the emotions of another person by repeating in other words what this person said while focusing on the essence of what they feel and what is important to them.
The amount of information you share with a therapist is entirely up to you. After all, you're the client. Still, the more honest you are with your therapist, the better. Giving your therapist a window into your thoughts, feelings, and experiences provides them with context and details, so they can best help you.
All therapists are legally required to maintain confidentiality for their clients. Confidentiality means that a therapist cannot confirm or deny even treating the client if someone asks. Furthermore, they cannot discuss any revealing contact information, such as a client's name or demographics, outside of the session.
Review the graphic below that explains the 4 R's: Read, Restate, Recheck, and Repair and use the attached graphic organizer to help you practice paraphrasing by using this strategy.
Restating involves repeating back to the client single words or short phrases they have used. It is often a quick and easy way of prompting further discussion. In the examples above, all the instructor has done is restate a word that was both emphasised and emotionally loaded.
The following are some examples of accurate paraphrasing:
Counselor: "You haven't experienced her as being very consistent." Client: "Every moment there is something new to do. There must be ten different things going on at the same time!" Counselor: "There are a lot of activities for you to chose from."
Intentionally or recklessly causing physical or emotional harm to any client. Performing, or holding yourself out as being able to perform, professional services beyond the scope of your competence, as established by your education, training, and experience.
According to statistics, the most frequent complaints about ethical issues in counseling involve dual relationships, incompetence, practicing without a license or misrepresenting one's qualifications, sexual relationships with clients, and breach of confidentiality.
Common Complaints Filed Against Professional Counselors
Some of the common reasons professional counselors face enforcement action from the Board include allegations of: Breach of confidentiality. Inappropriate relationships and boundaries with clients. False, misleading, or deceptive advertising of services.
Therapists are required by law to disclose information to protect a client or a specific individual identified by the client from “serious and foreseeable harm.” That can include specific threats, disclosure of child abuse where a child is still in danger, or concerns about elder abuse.
Self-disclosure can be a means of building rapport with clients, which is essential to the counseling relationship. Counselors often choose to disclose about themselves and their lives to aid in the development of trust that is necessary for counseling to be effective.
Negative emotional disclosure is an indication of help seeking behavior due to stress from negative events.
This is how empathy in counselling works – 'putting yourself in their shoes', repeating their words and phrases so that you can better understand where they are coming from and not assuming and taking it from your own perspective – but theirs, and staying there with them.
the act of saying something again or in a different way: Her recent speech was merely a restatement of her widely publicized views. The essay conclusion is not supposed to be simple restatement of what has gone before. His answer was essentially a restatement of the British position.
to say something again or in a different way: He restated his belief that the sanctions need more time to work.
A paraphrase puts a specific passage into your own words. It's typically a similar length to the original text, or slightly shorter. When you boil a longer piece of writing down to the key points, so that the result is a lot shorter than the original, this is called summarizing.