Week 3 - Intro to Counselling (Building & Maintaining Alliance)
Counselling vs Psychotherapy
The therapeutic alliance is commonly associated with counselling and psychotherapy, but also applies to many other contacts in medical and health settings, etc.
Counselling involves support and guidance through personal emotional, and psychological issues with a focus on goalsetting and actions rather than processing of emotions.
Psychotherapy is a type of counselling that focuses more on deep and long-term mental health issues and emotional processing.
The Therapeutic Alliance
How to Build an Alliance
Validate the clients experience
Use collaborative language, e.g. way, our, etc.
Use socratic dialogue to help people come to their own conclusions
Always include a clear rationale for any intervention and check that the client understands the reasoning for the intervention.
The therapeutic alliance commonly fails due to poorly communicated, empathy
Defined as “a collaborative relationship between therapist and client. Includes shared goals, agreed upon tasks, and an emotional bond (trust, respect, empathy) that is built upon mutual respect.”
The alliance is often incongruent with traditional medical models where the professional is there to solve the problem or give advice.
A strong therapeutic alliance improves client engagement and outcomes.
The task force review mandates that the cultivation of an alliance should be the primary aim in the treatment of others and be a critical element in the training of professionals.
The therapeutic alliance is necessary to psychotherapy, but may not be sufficient in itself.
Therapeutic alliance is highly dependent on the interpersonal skills of the helping professional