Lead: In developed countries with mature mental health awareness, when people subjectively feel that they are not active, or feel uncomfortable (such as psychological discomfort or trouble), they will turn to psychological counselors for help to solve it, which is equivalent to what Chinese medicine says? Nip in the bud? Do psychological problems translate into? What's wrong with you? Solve it before you come.
In psychotherapy conversation, the so-called "listening" to the other person's conversation is not just listening, but the therapist should also really "listen" to the facts, feelings and thoughts told by the other person with the help of words. The therapist's special guidance or use of such words is the skill of paying attention to listening we are going to talk about here.
Ivy and others listed the basic listening skills related to speech guidance and found out the problems of visitors. These skills are: open questions, closed questions, encouragement, explanation, reflection and summary of visitors' feelings.
First, the open question (open question)
This kind of question is considered by some therapists as one of the most useful listening skills. Open-ended questions often use sentences including "what", "how" and "why". Ask visitors to give more detailed responses to related questions and events, instead of just answering with simple words like "yes" or "no". This kind of questioning is a way to arouse the topic of the other party, so that the other party can tell more about their own situation, thoughts, emotions and so on.
In this kind of problem, each kind of problem may cause the other person's special reaction, so that the therapist can get the relevant information he wants to know. For example:
"Can you tell me why this makes you so angry?" "Can you tell me what you think?" Use "can you?" "Really?" This kind of opening question can be said to be the most open question, which helps visitors to give their own unique answers. This kind of question will usually get a satisfactory answer, but some visitors may say "no" or "I don't want to say it now" and so on. If this happens, the therapist can further use other open-ended questions, such as "Why?" Wait a minute. Of course, this situation may rarely happen.
"What happened after that?" "What was your reaction then?" "Who else is there?" This kind of interrogative sentence including "what" can help the therapist find out some specific facts related to the problem.
"What do you think of this matter?" "How do you know these opinions of others?" This kind of "how" question often leads to the other party's description of what happened. When the problem involves the other person's own thoughts and opinions, the therapist needs to know the personal consideration of the visitor.
"Why do you think it's unfair?" "Why do people look down on you?" "Then why did you do that?" The task of questions related to "why" is usually to find out the reasons of visitors' opinions, practices and emotions about something, which may be explained and answered in many specific ways.
From the above analysis of open-ended questions, we can clearly understand that although open-ended questions give visitors more freedom to answer, and although open-ended questions may get thousands of different answers from different visitors, the goal of open-ended questions always tends to be the particularity of visitors' questions. By asking such questions, the therapist is very likely to have a general understanding of the visitor's problem, grasp the specific facts related to the problem, and understand the emotional reaction of the visitor and his views and reasoning process on this matter.
Therapists should pay attention to the use of open-ended questions. Before that, they should pay attention to developing a good therapeutic relationship, and at the same time, they should pay attention to this. Some questions should pay attention to the use of tone to avoid being too aggressive. If the visitor doesn't trust the therapist so much at this time, one question after another may make the other person suspicious or even antagonistic. In addition, although some visitors seem to have answered all the questions, they may still have great reservations about their inner thoughts and activities. For example, the same question: "Why didn't you tell your husband about it?" Argumentative, aggressive and tough questions and * * * emotional, questioning and gentle questions may produce two completely different impressions in the mind of visitors. The former will be considered that the therapist has an intention against himself, while the latter is considered that the therapist really wants to know the truth and help himself.
Second, closed question (closed question)
The characteristic of this kind of questions is that they can be answered with one or two words, such as yes or no, yes or no, yes or no. For example, "this is what you care about most now, isn't it?" "He didn't agree?" "Do you really think so?" Questions like this are so-called closed questions. Such questions have the functions of collecting information, clarifying facts, narrowing the scope of discussion and focusing the talks on some specific issues. If the visitor deviates from a main question, closed questions can also help the therapist bring the visitor back to the subject. For example, "shall we continue to discuss the question just now?"
However, therapists should use closed questions appropriately. The so-called appropriateness means not to use such questions too much, but to apply them only when necessary. Because visitors always have a desire to share their problems and understand their emotions when they come to therapy, and psychotherapy talk is just an opportunity for him to express himself. Because no one wants to be in a passive position in the conversation, if the use of closed questions exceeds a certain limit, it may have a destructive impact on the therapeutic relationship.
Third, encourage and repeat sentences (encouragement and repetition)
Encouragement refers to simply repeating what the visitor said, or just some specific words, such as "hmm?" Hmm ","Oh ","So "or" What happened? " Encourage the other person to go on or emphasize a certain part of what the other person said. This is one of the simplest technologies, which may be ignored because of its simplicity. However, it is this simple skill that enables therapists to enter the spiritual world of visitors and is considered by researchers to be the characteristic of successful therapists. This is because encouragement is a positive way to let visitors know that the therapist is listening to him carefully and hope that he will continue to talk.
Repetition, as an encouraging response, is a very effective response, which can show that the therapist pays attention to the key words in what the visitor says. Through such encouragement, visitors can be guided to speak in a certain direction. Please look at the following example.
Visitor: "I am always nervous when there are many people." This time, they all saw that I was nervous. They all look down on me. There are so many people in our class looking at me that I am so nervous that I can't even speak well. " In the visitor's speech, the therapist can choose to repeat. There are several: "Is it easy to get nervous when there are many people?" "They all see that you are nervous", "They all look down on you" and so on. Different encouragement may turn the conversation into different topics, and different topics may affect the depth of treatment, which can reflect the degree of encouragement. In the above-mentioned visitor's passage, it may be best to choose "you feel embarrassed" as the therapist's repeated sentence. This kind of reaction, on the one hand, can grasp the key points of visitors' questions, on the other hand, it can also show the understanding of the other party. Through this kind of encouragement, the other party can be prompted to explain the problem in more detail (for example, why the visitor feels embarrassed-she may want to be generous and natural everywhere, hope that she can be loved by her classmates, and be afraid that others will look down on her, etc.). ).
It can be said that every word of encouragement, even the shortest one, can be regarded as a kind of reinforcement to the visitors, which will affect the content of their further conversation. Encouragement or repetition seems simple, but the impact on visitors can not be ignored.
Therapists should also pay attention to the use of their body words while using encouraging sentences, such as paying attention to the other person's expression, listening posture, nodding and so on. The attentive expression and listening posture are also a kind of silent encouragement to the other party's conversation, and the meaning of nodding is more clear.
IV. Statement (Interpretation)
This is the main content and essence of repeating the visitor's thoughts in the conversation, in short, it is a substantive explanation of his conversation. Therapists can repeat the words of visitors in their own words, but it is better to use the words used by visitors for some sensitive words and some important words. Explanatory sentences can help therapists check their understanding of visitors' problems and connect some scattered things. The therapist's explanatory statement also gives visitors an opportunity to reinterpret their thoughts, and at the same time gives them an opportunity to re-explore their own problems, rethink the relationship between things, and deepen the content of the topic. The therapist's explanation of the nature of the problem and the repetition of the key points may be more beneficial to some visitors who need to choose some difficult problems.
For the application of explanation skills, we can give an example:
Therapist: I think what you said just now is that you want to do well whatever you do, to make others think you are smart and capable, and hope others like you, right?
Visitor: Well, something like that. I want to do everything perfectly.
Therapist: Do you want to be a perfect person?
Visitor: Hmm (nodding).
Here, the therapist spoke twice in explanatory sentences. The first time is a summary of a large number of conversations between visitors before. The words "make others feel smart", "capable" and "I hope others like me" are the original words of the visitors. As can be seen from the above example, the therapist's first explanation makes the visitors think about their own problems further. The visitor further explained her thoughts and said that "I want to do everything perfectly" is also the result of her further thinking about the essence of her own problems. The therapist's second explanation further deepened the understanding of the nature of the visitor's problem between the two sides. In addition, explanatory statements are extremely useful for understanding all aspects of the problems discussed by visitors in the initial meeting. Therapists can take this opportunity to check their understanding of many facts told by visitors, clarify and confirm some key information and clues, and lay a solid foundation for further therapeutic talks.
Verb (abbreviation for verb) reflects feelings.
It is not enough for the therapist to clarify some specific information and facts. The skills of reflecting emotions provide therapists with an opportunity to explore the emotional involvement of visitors. Generally speaking, the response to visitors' feelings often includes "you" or the name of the other party and the name of emotion. "What do you think?" "Do you feel anything in your heart?" Such a sentence. Besides, there are often people and things related to emotions (for example, "Every time you talk, your husband's absentmindedness will make you feel particularly annoyed"). Simple feelings may only include the contents of the first three parts, but the contents of the fourth part are often involved in practical application, which can be regarded as a combination of feelings and expositions. For example, "Do you feel sad?" "Are you still angry when you think about it now?" "You smiled. You really think it's funny? " In fact, in specific psychotherapy practice, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between explanation and reflection of feelings. For the therapist, his reaction to the feelings of visitors can only be explained orally. If we must distinguish between the two, we can only understand them this way: explanatory sentences pay more attention to the understanding of the nature of facts, while emotional reflection focuses on the understanding of the other party's emotions. Both often appear in the therapist's words at the same time.
Therapists should first have a good understanding of the rich emotions of human beings and be able to correctly define some common emotions and emotions, such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness and loneliness, when using the skills to reflect the feelings of visitors. Sometimes the visitor you face may not be able to tell his complicated and rich inner experience at all. Sometimes the visitor just tells something without telling his subjective emotional experience, but the therapist feels his strong inner feelings. For such visitors, therapists need to be able to reflect these emotions more accurately, and even explain the emotional experience that the other party can't explain clearly. Can do this, visitors will deeply experience the feeling of being understood, and it is possible for the healer to move towards the realm of * * *.
In addition, psychological research on long-term memory and short-term memory shows that human memory is selective, and this selectivity is related to people's emotions. In fact, everything we know, know and feel is related to our emotions and feelings at that time. People will forget many things, and some events with special emotional color will remain in people's memory for a long time, and there will still be emotional experiences similar to those when the events happened. If the therapist can observe the emotion of the visitor well, the emotional experience of many visitors will become an important clue for us to understand why the other person's problems arise and why they have such a great impact on him. In this way, the therapist should accurately and timely reflect the emotional experience of visitors, whether past or present, making it a key to understand each other and open the door to each other's hearts.
Abstract of intransitive verbs
Summary has the same meaning as our daily understanding. In psychotherapy lectures, summing-up is to express the facts, information, emotions and behavioral reactions of visitors in a summarized form after analysis and synthesis by therapists. Summary can be said to be the crystallization of therapists' listening activities during the talks. Summarizing something is like wearing beads, sorting out the main contents of the information expressed by visitors into strings and classifying them. Summary is one of the skills that therapists must use in every meeting. For example, at the end of the information gathering, the therapist can sum up several problems of the other party to the visitors, such as: "As we can see from our previous conversation, you mainly have these problems: the problem that you feel at a loss in your study, and the problem of whether you continue to associate with your girlfriend. Besides, are there any other questions? " Of course, the summary is not only used at the end of the conversation, but can be used by the therapist at any time during the conversation, as long as the relevant content of something said to the other party has been basically mastered. This can be said to be a short talk.
From the discussion of the above skills, the listening activity in psychotherapy conversation is not only a passive process of recording facts and listening to each other's conversation, but also a process of active guidance and positive thinking. This is an important part of the treatment process. All kinds of specific listening skills will play a positive role in conversation as long as they are used properly.
Among the above skills, some skills are used in different theoretical schools of psychological counseling and therapy with different frequencies. Such as "Why you?" Psychoanalytic therapists and rational emotional therapists may use this kind of open-ended questions a lot, while visitor-centered therapists may just object to asking such questions. They are more inclined to use the skills of encouragement, explanation and reflection to understand their visitors and their problems.
;