Exercises in helping skills

EXERCISES IN HELPING SKILLS

PART ONE INTRODUCTION 1
PART TWO BASIC COMMUNICAION SKILLS 9
Exercise 1 : Experiencing nonattending in the group conversation 10
Exercise 2 : Attending as a demand for participation and Intensity 10
Exercise 3 : Observing and giving feedback on attending behavior 10
Exercise 4 : Listening to your own feelings and emotions 12
Exercise 5 : Listening to the feelings of clients 14
Exercise 6 : Listening to experiences and behaviors 18
Exercise 7 : Listening to the client`s point of view 21
Exercise 8 : Understanding one another`s points of view 23
Exercise 9 : Communicating understanding of a client's feelings 24
Exercise 10 : Communicating empathy- experiences, behaviors, feelings 28
Exercise 11 : Empathy with clients facing dilemmas 31
Exercise 12 : The practice of basic empathy in everyday life 34
Exercise 13 : Probing for clarity of experiences, behaviors, and feelings 35
Exercise 14 : Combining empathy and probes 37

PART THREE STAGE I : INDENTFYING AND CLARIFYING
PROBLEM SITUTIONS 43
STEP I-A : Helping Clients Tell Their Stories 43
Exercise 15 : What is going wrong and what is going right in my life 43
Exercise 16 : Reviewing the developmental tasks of life and the social
Settings in which they take place 45
Exercise 17 : Conflicts in the network of the social settings of life 49
Exercise 18 : Assessing the impact of the larger organizations and
Institutions of society on your life 51
Exercise 19 : Assessing life skills 52
Exercise 20 : A sentence-completion assessment of problems 56
Exercise 21 : A sentence-completion assessment of strengths 57

STEP I-B : Focusing and Problem Clarification 58
Exercise 22 : Choosing issues and concerns to explore 58
Exercise 23 : Speaking concretely about experiences 61
Exercise 24 : Speaking concretely about your behavior 62
Exercise 25 : Speaking concretely about feelings and emotions 64
Exercise 26 : Speaking concretely about experiences, behaviors,
and feelings together 65
Exercise 27 : Counseling yourself : An exercise in Steps A and B 67
Exercise 28 : Managing resistance and other process problems 69

Exercise 29 : Summarizing as an instrument of problem clarification 71

STEP I-C : Helping Clients Manage Blind Spots and Develop New Perspective 73
Exercise 30 : Information and new perspectives 73
Exercise 31 : Information you may need for developing new perspectives
on your own problems 77
Exercise 32 : Tentativeness in the use of challenging skills 80
Exercise 33 : Advanced accurate empathy—hunches about 80
Exercise 34 : The distinction between basic and advanced empathy 82
Exercise 35 : Experiences of mine that might be helpful to others 89
Exercise 36 : Appropriateness of helper self-disclosure 91
Exercise 37 : Practicing self-sharing in counseling interviews 91
Exercise 38 : Confronting one's own strengths 92
Exercise 39 : Further self-confrontation 94
Exercise 40 : The confrontation round robin : Confronting and
responding to confrontation 96
Exercise 41 : Immediacy in your interpersonal life 98
Exercise 42 : Responding to situations calling for immediacy 100
Exercise 43 : Immediacy with the other members of your training group 102

PART FOUR STAGE II : DEVELOPING NEW SCENARIOS
AND SETTING GOALS 104
STEP II – A : Developing New Scenarios 104
Exercise 44 : Developing new scenarios – pictures of a better future 104
Exercise 45 : New scenarios related to your own problem situations 106
Exercise 46 : Helping others develop new scenarios 106

STEP II – B : Helping Clients Evaluate New Scenarios 107
Exercise 47 : Making goals more and more specific 107
Exercise 48 : Checking goals against criteria 111
Exercise 49 : Establishing goals for yourself 112
Exercise 50 : Helping others set concrete and specific goals 113

STEP II-C : Choice of and Commitment to Goals 113
Exercise 51:Estimating your level of commitment to goals 113
Exercise 52 : Reviewing the cost/benefit ratio in the choice of goals 114

PART FIVE STAGE III : ACTION-TURNING PREFERRED
SCENARIOS INTO REALITY 115

STEP III-A : Developing Action Strategies 115
Exercise 53 : Brainstorming strategies for action 115
Exercise 54 : Helping others brainstorm program possibilities 117

Exercise 55 : Rating program elements 118
Exercise 56 : The balance sheet 121

STEP III-B : Formulating Plans 123
Exercise 57 : Establishing the major steps in an action plan 124
Exercise 58 : Formulating subplans for the major steps of your plan 126
Exercise 59 : Formulating plans for your own subgoals 127
Exercise 60 : Developing the resources needed to implement programs 129
Exercise 61 : Developing your own resources 131

STEP III-C : ACTION—IMPLEMENTING PROGRAMS 134
Exercise 62 : Force – field analysis – identifying , facilitating , and
restraining forces in implementing plans 134
Exercise 63 : Bolstering facilitating forces 138
Exercise 64 : Neutralising or reducing the strength of restraining forces 139
Exercise 65 : Identifying obstacles to program implementation-telling
your program implementation ``story `` 141
Exercise 66 : The principles of behavior : Learning from program failures 144
Exercise 67 : Using the principles of behavior to bolster your
participation in programs 146
Exercise 68 : Monitoring and evaluating the implementation of plans 148