Choosing to be present with clients: an evidence – based model for building trainees’ counselling competence

ABSTRACT

Being present with clients has been suggested to be a necessary condition for the therapeutic relationship [Geller & Greenberg, 2012. Therapeutic presence: A mindfull approach to effective therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/13485-000] and therefore for therapeutic effectiveness. In this article we describe the results of a qualitative investigation of how counsellors in training (CITs) describe their experience of being present and the meaning they make of that experience. The findings suggest that starting students down the pathway to becoming a master counsellor involves more than training in basic counselling skills and theories. Our findings add a new dimension to existing counsellor development models and have implications for counsellor training and supervision.

KEYWORDS:

• Counsellor education
• counsellor development
• therapeutic relationship
• mindfulness
• presence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tina Tannen, Ph.D., is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Florida Counselling and Wellness Center where she integrates mindfulness, Gestalt and developmental approaches in therapy with university students and in counsellor training. She holds a Ph.D. in Counsellor Education from the University of Florida, USA.

M. Harry Daniels, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education at the University of Florida, USA. Dr. Daniels was actively involved in the training and supervision of counsellor educators, school counsellors and marriage and family therapists for over 35 years.

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg (Ph.D., University of Helsinki) is a Professor of qualitative research at the Arizona State University, USA. Her scholarship operates in the intersection of methodology, philosophy, and socio-cultural critique and her work aims to contribute to methodological knowledge, experimentation, and theoretical development across various traditions associated with qualitative research. She has published in various qualitative and educational journals and is the author of Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology (2016) published by SAGE.