Introduction
Gibbs’ reflective cycle is a model for analyzing a personal experience, and it is extensively used in fields such as nursing or counseling, where a specialist should work with people. It contains six stages: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. It can be used after each counseling session or seminar for self-reflection, as shown in Figure 1 (The University of Edinburgh, 2020).
I will use Gibbs’ cycle to analyze my counseling experience and understand better what I need to change in my behavior and skills (Taylor, 2020). Self-awareness is among the most essential qualities for a counselor, as we should help clients raise their own self-awareness to solve their problems. I proceeded with the learning experience and my feelings about it, which can help me to grow my own awareness.
Description
I learned various vital aspects of a counseling practice in the seminar: the most important was self-awareness and the ability to listen and understand. The ability to listen and perceive other people’s emotions, feelings, and body language is connected with emotional intelligence and is very important (McLeod & McLeod, 2022). While all mental health problems can be classified, each client has their own unique experience, and the ability to listen enables us to understand our customers’ individual experiences.
I learned that, while I thought that it is good to show open empathy to the client, it is better to keep a distance from them, ensuring that there will not be ties other than professional (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2018). I understood how to use my theoretical experience to help clients, not just overload them with psychotherapeutic concepts. All these concepts became crucial for my understanding of my self-awareness and how I can raise it; therefore, Gibbs’ reflections are based on them.
Feelings
During the seminar, I felt excited that I could understand many approaches to using various theoretical knowledge to help clients. It was counter-intuitive for me at first that a good counselor should not show open involvement in customers’ stories, but soon I realized that it is essential to make objective and correct decisions.
I should be polite and empathetic, pay attention to all customer’s actions, but avoid close friendliness, such as giving hugs, and explain to clients why they should not do that too. It can lead to problems, especially for violence victims, as they will project their feelings onto me, becoming unable to proceed with their experience and solve these issues.
I also felt that I should be responsible for my client, and in addition to the mentioned personal border respect, I need to provide all relevant information about our practice. This includes cost, legal status, terms of the therapy and its termination, and the therapy format, which will be convenient for the client. In my opinion, all mentioned feelings are the most important, as they are connected with my personal responsibility for my clients, raising my self-awareness and helping me improve my counseling skills.
Evaluation
After understanding my feelings and experience, I think that it is essential to evaluate my mistakes and misunderstandings and see how I can avoid them in the future. My most significant fault was that I forgot about the importance of a proper introduction. It is one of the most important aspects of counseling, as it enables us to establish a connection with a client (McLeod & McLeod, 2022). Without that, it is impossible to establish a good rapport and, therefore, communicate with the client about their problems and help resolve them.
Another flaw that is interconnected with the former is that I paid more attention to various theories rather than how to communicate them properly with my clients. Therefore, I need to pay more attention to active skill practice and working with mistakes (Rønnestad et al., 2018). Self-awareness for a counselor is a practical skill rather than something theoretical, and I need more practice to master it.
Analysis
I have learned that as a counselor, I take personal responsibility for my clients and can guide them to show what they should and should not do. Therefore, I should not fear instructing them directly and should not even stop counseling when I feel it is necessary. To make the right decisions, I need to understand the consequences of my actions and emotions and learn actively via improvisation and supervision, ensuring that other therapists can evaluate my work (Rønnestad et al., 2018). Lastly, I need to focus more on implementing theories now rather than learning them, making my counseling practice self-aware.
Conclusion
To summarize, I now understand better which skills I need and how to use them in practice, which is crucial for my training. For successful counseling, I should be proficient in emotional intelligence, the ability to feel the context, communication skills, and self-reflect regularly (McLeod & McLeod, 2022). These skills can be trained and acquired via active learning when a trainee watches videos or live demonstrations and then practices them themselves (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2018).
Personal responsibility can be trained via supervision when other counselors evaluate my skills and then show me what I need to change and how (Rønnestad et al., 2018). The active practice of skills, a better understanding of how to implement theories, and raising the feeling of responsibility are crucial conclusions I made, necessary to improve my self-awareness.
Action Plan
Several vital actions can help me improve my performance as a counselor in the future.
- I need to understand counseling and psychotherapy theories better and learn to communicate and describe them adequately. At any moment, my client can ask me about the theory and how it can be implemented in their case, and I should be able to explain it without complications and overloading.
- I need to learn skills in practice rather than relying on theory. For that, it is essential to learn skills by watching demonstrations and then training to improvise with colleagues (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2018). Such a practice would help me to actually use self-awareness as a skill, not simply rely on my theoretical background and overload my clients with it.
- I need to raise my feeling of responsibility for my clients, ensuring that there will not be any improper relationships between us and that clear, efficient boundaries will be established.
References
McLeod, J., & McLeod, J. (2022). Counselling skills: Theory, research and practice (3rd ed.). Open Univ Press.
Rønnestad, M. H., Orlinsky, D. E., Schröder, T. A., Skovholt, T. M., & Willutzki, U. (2018). The professional development of counsellors and psychotherapists: Implications of empirical studies for supervision, training and practice. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 19(3), 214–230. Web.
Sommers-Flanagan, J., & Sommers-Flanagan, R. (2018). Counseling and psychotherapy theories in context and practice: Skills, strategies, and techniques (3rd ed.). Wiley.
Taylor, D. (2020). Reflective practice in the art and science of counselling: A scoping review» PACJA. Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia. Web.
The University of Edinburgh. (2020). Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. The University of Edinburgh. Web.