Introductory Counselling books/courses/advice?

[Lavandula]

I am a holistic therapist with no desire to become a counsellor. However, I do feel that I would benefit from some counselling skills/listening skills to help me (and my clients) during consultations. When I did my training, we briefly covered listening skills and I have a book "counselling skills for Complementary therapists" which again doesn't go in to much depth. I thought about buying a book on introductory counselling but want to get one which is easy to understand by a non-counsellor. Do you have a recommendations? Also, can anyone recommend any short courses that might be helpful? Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[beckyboop922]

Hello Lavendula,

The kind of book you might be looking for it Person Cented Counselling In Action by David Thacker and Micheal Mee. Also a lot of colleges do a ten week taster course usually in summer in order to give it a go to see if you might like it or not, if there are no colleges in your area offering the ten week taster then the actually certificate in counselling skills is only 8 months at college (Oct-June) and it never seems that long because of the amount of holidays in between.
In the meantime I will try to think of some more books for you, also you can go on utube and watch Carl Rogers actually counselling somebody, Rogers is the person who invented the person centred approach this means the counsellor feels the client is the expert on themselves and not the other way round. The person centred approach employes what are called 'the 3 core conditions' which are Empathy, Unconditional Positive Regard and Congruence, if you want some basic tips to start you off let me know and I will help you.

Love

Rebecca x

[DaveUK]

Person Cented Counselling In Action is very good, but may be a little advanced. First Steps in Counselling and Counselling Skills For Dummies may be more accessible,

As for courses, I'd suggest courses accredited by CPCAB rather than ABC. If you do the CPCAB diploma you can do additional courses to convert it to a foundation degree. You can't do that if you use any other awarding body. You can find centres offering CPCAB courses here.

Good luck with your training.

[Energylz]

Hi Dave,

I've had to edit your post as your links to Amazon weren't working correctly.

Also note that this thread is a couple of years old, so I suspect that your advice may be a little late in the day for Lavendula, though it may be of benefit to those who come to read this in the future.

All Love and Reiki Hugs