When people think of counselors, they think of a kind, empathetic, and friendly person.

What people don’t typically think of is all of the skills that the counselor uses to come across this way.

When learning to become a counselor, some of these skills might not come naturally to you, and that is okay! Some skills you have never used before in discussions with other people, so it makes sense that you will need to practice them. There is no shame in that.

As you are training to be a counselor, it is important to try to include these skills in your daily life so that they become more natural to you. The more natural they are to you, the more you can focus on other aspects of counseling with your clients.

In this post, we will discuss how to do the following skills:

• Active listening
• Being present
• Open body language
• Open questions
• Non-judgmental statements
• Reflecting content, feelings, and meaning
• Perspective-taking

How To: Counseling Skills

Active Listening

We can’t talk about counseling skills without talking about active listening. It is most likely the first skill that will be talked about in your counseling program.

Active listening is so important because it helps you build trust and rapport with your clients.

Active listening involves everything you say, how you are presenting yourself (body language), how well you are withholding judgment, and how you demonstrate empathy. These will be talked about further below.

Being Present

When you are starting out as a counselor, it is a real battle to be present. Being present involves staying out of your head. We try so hard to come up with something amazing to say next that we end up not hearing what the client said. We think so much about making progress with the client that we miss what they might really be needing right now: regular person-to-person small talk to ease them into the session.

Word of advice: Trust your training. Stop trying to think about what you are going to say next. Instead, focus on the client and say what naturally comes to you. You have been training for this for a while. You have all of the skills you need to do this successfully.

Being present involves focusing so much on your client and what they are talking about that you can see all of the things they aren’t saying verbally. You will pick up on their body language, the underlying meaning, and the connections to what they have told you before. There is so much you miss if you are not present with them.

Open Body Language

Open body language means that you are demonstrating with your body that you are present and available for your client.

Open body language looks like:

• Upright, relaxed posture
• Uncrossed arms with hands visible
• Comfortable, direct eye contact
• Soft facial features
• Fully face the client (torso and feet should be pointed in their direction)
• Subtly mirror the client’s body language (when appropriate)

It is important to be mindful of how your body might be coming across to your client. If you appear closed off or demonstrate RBF, they could be misinterpreting how you are reacting to something they said. This could lead to damaged rapport if it is not discussed. When in doubt, be honest with them:

Example: “Sorry if I came across the wrong way there. I sometimes [look away, pinch my eyebrows together, etc.] when I am thinking deeply about something. What you are saying is important to me, and I want to make sure I have a good, helpful response for you.”

We are all human. None of us is perfect. So it is best to just be honest and do the best we can to use open body language. It becomes more natural the more you do it.

Asking Open Questions

It makes a huge difference in counseling when you use open questions instead of closed questions.

Closed questions involve answers that are only a few words long at most. Example: Did you feel angry when your partner said that?

Open questions involve answers that can be expanded upon as much as the client wants. Example: What was it like for you when your partner said that?

When you use open questions, it makes it easier to get to a deeper level with your client conversationally. The client has more freedom in what they say, and you are not leading them into giving a certain answer that you might be expecting.

Some closed questions can also come across as judgmental, such as questions that start with “why.” It is best to avoid these as much as you can, unless you know for a fact that it is not a judgmental question. It’s best to just think about how the client might take the question that you give them.

Non-Judgmental Statements

As a counselor in training, you know how important it is that you don’t come across as judgmental to your clients. This is something that really takes practice, because we use so many “judgmental” statements in our day-to-day conversations. “Judgmental” does not necessarily mean that you are being rude or criticizing them. It means that you are voicing your beliefs or values in response to what they said.

Example judgmental statements that we say without thinking:

• “Good!”
• “That’s awesome!”
• “At least you…”

There is a time and a place for each of these. You will know when the time is right based on how they are interacting with you in the moment, if you know they feel the same way, if you have talked about it before with them, and so on.

There are certain ways to word things instead of using these common judgmental statements. For example, if a client came to you and said they were getting married, instead of saying “That’s amazing, I’m so happy for you!” you could say something along the lines of, “Wow! How are we feeling about that?” It can also help to mirror their body language and facial expressions. Getting married is not a good or exciting thing for everyone. Even if they were slightly smiling while they said it, they could have done that because it is expected that they would be happy. As counselors, we never want to assume what our clients are going through or feeling.

Reflecting Content/Feeling/Meaning

These are major skills that you likely have already learned in your counseling program. You may already be good at talking to people and listening to them, but it takes practice to incorporate these reflections naturally into your conversations. Eventually, you will get to a point where you are using these in conversations, and nobody will even know that you are using counseling skills; it just seems like a normal conversation to them.

So what do these reflections look like?

Content reflections: Summarizing what they said without parroting (repeating word for word).

Feeling reflections: Noting the emotions behind what they are saying.

Meaning reflections: Recognizing the underlying meaning or value behind what they said.

You will use these so often in counseling, so you might as well start practicing now so that it becomes second-nature to you. It gets easier the more you practice!

Perspective-Taking

Perspective-taking involves “being” the other person. When people say to “put yourself in their shoes,” you don’t assume what it must be like for them based on your own lived experiences. Instead, you try to understand what it is like for them based on what you know about them and what they have talked to you about before.

This helps you to stay present, understand your clients better, and build rapport.

Concluding Thoughts

There are so many things that go into being a counselor. It makes it so much easier on you if you start practicing your skills early so that they become second-nature to you.

By focusing on these basic skills now, you free up your mind to focus solely on your clients. This is especially important when you are first starting out with clients because you will be dealing with nerves and self-doubt as well. If you end up going on autopilot, you already have these skills to fall back on.

It’s definitely worth putting effort and practice into. Your future counselor self will thank you!