Question

What are influence skills in addiction counseling? How can a counselors emotions affect these skills?

Answer 1

Influencing is part of all types of counselling techniques. Even if the counsellor only uses attending skills to actively listen to the client, being genuinely heard by another person can influence a person’s behaviour. Influencing skills take a more direct approach to client change, with specific alternatives for actions that can promote change quicker and in some cases be more permanent. A counsellor’s emotions can heavily impact these skills. This means that if a counsellor has a disconnection between what is preached and practiced; it will impact the emotions & thereby reflect during counselling process. It is important to have conviction in what is being delivered to the client during the process. This means that certain level of elevation is expected out of the therapist during this process of uplifting another being. For instance, a counsellor condemns the use of substances and once had a connection with substances himself/herself on a personal level, it will impact the way this is dealt with during sessions. There may be no sense of conviction in what is delivered to the client leading to little or no impact on the client. Thus the client is then less likely to be persuaded/influenced by the process.