The Heart of Counseling: Counseling Skills Through Therapeutic Relationships

Summary

More than any other text on the market, The Heart of Counseling is effective in helping students to understand the importance of therapeutic relationships and to develop the qualities that make the therapeutic relationships they build with clients the foundation of healing. In these pages, students come to see how all skills arise from and are directly related to the counselor’s development and to building therapeutic relationships. Student learning ranges from therapeutic listening and empathy to structuring sessions, from explaining counseling to clients and caregivers to providing wrap-around services, and ultimately to experiencing therapeutic relationships as the foundation of professional and personal growth.

The Heart of Counseling includes:

• extensive case studies and discussions applying skills in school and agency settings
• specific guidance on how to translate the abstract concepts of therapeutic relationships into concrete skill sets
• exploration of counseling theories and tasks within and extending from core counseling skills
• videos that bring each chapter to life
• test banks, instructor’s manuals, syllabi, and guidance for learning-outcomes assessments for professors

Table of Contents

Preface  Introduction  1. Twelve Concepts: Roots that Ground and Grow with The Heart of Counseling  2. The Rich and Subtle Skills of Therapeutic Listening  3. Striving for Empathy  4. Expressing Empathy  5. Striving for and Communicating Unconditional Positive Regard  6. The Delicate Balance of Providing Empathy and UPR in a Genuine Manner  7. Beginning with New Clients and Questions of Client Conceptualization  8. Structuring Therapeutic Relationships  9. When Clients Need Help Getting Started  10. Managing Client Crises with Therapeutic Relationship Skills  11. Ending Therapeutic Relationships  12. Therapeutic Relationships across Cultures  13. Connecting Heart to Hand: Doing More, Going Beyond, Staying True  14. Hear and Mind: Major Counseling Theories and Therapeutic Relationship  15: Bringing Heart to All that You Do  Concluding Thoughts: Growing Your Therapeutic Relationship Skills to Become Who You Are  Index

Author(s) Bio

Jeff L. Cochran is a professor in the department of educational psychology and counseling at the University of Tennessee.

Nancy H. Cochran is an adjunct faculty member in the department of educational psychology and counseling at the University of Tennessee and the treatment coordinator of the UT REACH Project.