Helpful Things to Think About When Counseling Teens
Phase 1: Building a Relationship – “This is the key to a successful session”
Level 1: Authoritarian – warning, directing, commanding
Level 2: Advice Giver – tend to communicate in generalizations/stereotypes
Level 3: Facilitator – at the same level with the teen, teens want respect and understanding
- Build the relationship in his/her comfort zone
- Be interested in what they’re interested in
- Find out what they like about life
- Be an active listener
3 Crucial Factors That Help Build a Relationship Effectively
- Accurate Empathy – feeling with someone
- Non-Possessive Warmth – your interested in them and not what you can get out of it
- Genuine – being a real person
Phase 2: Helping Skills
- Concreteness
- Confrontation
- Immediacy
- Reassurance
Concreteness – Ability to put into exact words what a teenager is saying to you, develop a set of adjectives
Confrontation – Don’t confront before building a relationship. 4 Areas to Confront:
- What they say vs what they do
- Perceptions of reality
- Goals and ambitions that are inconsistent
- Contradicting statements
Avoid putting them down and rather concentrate on the behavior.
Immediacy – The ability to tune into the problem of the moment
Reassurance – When you reassure someone it really empowers them
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