DIY: 7 Counseling Hacks to Develop Healthy Relations

You meet a disheartened friend after his breakup or console a colleague in grief for his father’s sudden bereavement. Someone dear that blames himself for his family’s miseries speaks his heart out to you or a neighbor that comes to you for a friendly advice for not meeting the expectations of his parents. Seeing our beloveds in pain needle us to reach to the forefront, rescue them and become a guide, a mentor, a helper, or an advisor.

It means that we all have acted as counselors at least once in our lives. However, there are some core virtues that counselors directly practice and preach to us for good. Those counseling services that we may embrace in our daily lives and become the better version of ourselves are:

Acceptance: Good counselling is the one in which there is a big empty room for accepting others. It means that the counselor is humble enough to welcome his clients wholeheartedly and embrace his positive and negative attitudes, behaviors and emotions, keeping typical judgmental stereotypes aside. Similarly, we can also endure acceptance in our daily life. Beginning to accept others with their blemishes and glowing bits, both, is a first step towards respecting their uniqueness. Whatever language one may use, showing others a sign of acknowledgement for who they are despite any moral standards encourages empathetic listening. With unconditional positive regard, effective interpersonal communication, and gives rise to a society where the exchange of thoughts, emotions, and feelings becomes easier.

Communication: Communication is the key is something we all are familiar with since ages. But it is just a verbal exchange of dialogues if there are no emotions involved. Therapists ensure to construct a bond with their clients by which clients can share their experiences and feelings easily and express their attitudes without any fear. Likewise, even when communication between people revolves around paying enough attention to each other’s needs, a mere conversation becomes a talking-therapy within itself.

Active-Listening: This is one principal word in counselor’s bible. Communication in which the counselor is a good listener indicates positive counselling. Adopting the skills of an active-listener in daily life helps us to get a clear picture of others’ problems that leads to accurate and constructive responding. Our body language give signals such as head nods, smile, and appropriate eye-contact is a shred of visual evidence that cultivate active-listening skills of a person during peer conversations. This way, the speaker neither feels distracted, nor his performance deteriorate.

Flexibility: Flexibility is another significant attribute of counselors. Flexibility teaches us to restrain from having rigid attitudes when we meet new people. As each one of us has a different approach towards looking at things, so when dealing with people, we should use methods that match with their demeanor, give advice and show empathy as they want. Likewise, we should also respond to people in the way that they want. Flexibility is simply about acting the way people want.

Self-awareness: Self-awareness is that core virtue that makes noticeable changes in one’s life. How much we know ourselves is displayed by the way we think, feel, and behave. The therapist’s first duty is to introduce his clients with the idea of self-discovery. By adequate self-awareness, people can correct themselves and make the necessary changes quickly. Similarly, if we start evaluating ourselves, then we will also be able to discover ourselves, through which we can detect the right and wrong within us and improvise for the better accordingly.

Respect: Respect is the fundamental key towards showing empathy. It means that the person sitting next to him neither has to worry about going through parameters of judgement, prejudice or any sort of discrimination nor he needs to explain his ideas unnecessarily. When we try to implement it in our lives, first, we should understand others' thought process. When we respect people for who they are, then it does not matter whatever school of thought they may own. Their ideas does not make you love or hate them anyway. However, it tells you to value others' opinions that necessarily do not have to be parallel to yours. Only if we start judging people based on how good of a person they are, this world will become a much better place to live.

Ethics and Healthy Humor: Live, Laugh and Love, we all have heard. But what adds fun, excitement and affection in our lives? It is the element of humor. We might think, humor is all about telling jokes and making fun of anything or anyone with friends, or on social media? But the definition of humor is beyond that in Psychology. The teachers of this field strongly encourage adding fun and entertainment to life but with ethical constraints in mind which is the difference between healthy and unhealthy humor. The counselor ensures to add light humor in therapy to cheer up the session but also ascertains to not get personal with the client in any possible way. Aforementioned teaches us that adding a healthy wittiness cultivates a positive outlook to life. Yet, it is also essential to stay away from lethal entertainment that may hurt the sentiments of others.