Читать книгу Theory and Practice of Couples and Family Counseling - James Robert Bitter - Страница 70

In this section, I describe the values, traits, attributes, characteristics, and orientations that are commonly associated with effective family counseling. No one has all of the characteristics mentioned here. There is also no ideal combination of characteristics, because in reality a wide range of people and personalities have become very successful family practitioners. If you are just starting in the field, however, it may be useful to consider the following attributes and their importance to you as a person and to your work as a facilitator of family growth and development.

 Presence. Of all the qualities listed here, none is more important than the ability to be present in counseling sessions. To be present is to focus on clients with interest and even fascination, which means bringing all of our senses to bear in meeting the people with whom we will work.

 Acceptance, interest, and caring. Human beings spend most of their lives in systems and institutions permeated with criticism and authoritarian structures. Effective family practitioners position themselves as antidotes to such negative experiences and situations. They seek to replace critical, negative judgments with understanding, reframing, acceptance, and encouragement. They set a tone from the very first session that allows anything to be expressed and to be heard with interest.

 Assertiveness and confidence. Although there is no specific personality type that a family practitioner must be, it is difficult to imagine a shy or reticent person achieving any measure of success. Especially when families include young children and teenagers, family counseling requires a certain degree of assertiveness. Assertiveness is related to confidence. It is speaking in a clear, even voice and communicating without defensiveness. It includes setting boundaries in the service of psychological freedom. It is being comfortable as a leader of the process without taking over for the family itself.

 Courage and risk. Courage is usually the foundation for assertiveness and confidence. Courage walks hand in hand with respect. It starts with faith in oneself as well as the processes involved in family practice. Courage frees family practitioners to listen and allows them to stay calm and relaxed while observing family dynamics and interactions. There is always a risk in any new therapeutic relationship; family counseling involves taking reasonable risks in the service of better or preferred lives.

 Adaptability (openness to change). Family counseling rarely progresses in a linear fashion. Families move forward and then fall back; they take in, but they also block. Family systems are like any living organism: They require constant adaptation within the process of change. Effective family practitioners come to expect the ebbs and flows of therapeutic process. Adapting to the needs of the situation is not just an option in family counseling: It is a necessity.

 Listening teleologically. Teleology is the study of final causes, an intended future, or purposes and goals. Both human beings and families intend the future. Everything that people do is in the service of some envisioned end or goal. Knowing the goals and desired outcomes of a person or a family directly impacts the process of therapy. As Satir and Baldwin (1983) noted, every complaint also contains a hope: This is the basis for reframing, which we consider in later chapters.Adlerians are perhaps the most teleologically oriented (Carlson & Englar-Carlson, 2017; Carlson et al., 2006; O. C. Christensen, 2004). They tend to transform all problem statements into interactions by asking, “When was the last time this problem occurred? How did it go?” It is in the interaction that Adlerians discover the goals, motives, and purposes that individuals and families intend with their behaviors.

 Working in patterns and holism. Patterns occur across the human experience. Both individuals and families establish patterns to organize their lives and bring a certain level of consistency and predictability to what they do. To understand individuals and families is to understand the patterns that they have chosen to enact. Holism is an understanding of human patterns and processes within the social contexts that support them (Smuts, 1926/1996). Individuals grow and function within family systems, and family systems exist within communities and cultures that are further influenced by nations and even global considerations. Getting to know people and their families requires a very wide focus that includes an assessment of the impact that larger systems play in the lives of clients.

 Appreciating the influence of diversity. Most of us grow up in a given part of the world in a certain community within a family that has influencing, if unrecognized, cultures and a socioeconomic status. We absorb both the attributes and the evaluations of the life situations in which we grow up. Slowly we come to recognize that other people in other parts of the world are different from us. Family practitioners, like other members of the helping professions, realize that tolerating differences is not enough; today’s counselors need to be sensitive to and actually understand and appreciate differences in social class, race, ethnicity, creed, gender, health and ability, and sexual and affectional orientation and to bring this understanding and appreciation right into the middle of their work.

 Having a sincere interest in the welfare of others. What effective family practitioners initially bring to counseling is a focused interest on the family and its members. They want to get to know the family, to feel their way in as Carl Whitaker suggested (Whitaker & Bumberry, 1988). Eventually they may come to care about the family members they see, but even before that caring develops, they are interested in the welfare of their clients. Effective family practitioners know that the kind of relationship they form with the family and its members has a greater impact than whatever techniques or interventions are used (Carlson et al., 2005).

 Tending the spirit of the family and its members. Tending the spirit is about creating and maintaining meaning and the connections among family members that support that meaning. Harry Aponte (1994) has most directly integrated meaning, spirit, and family systems interventions, but we can also find an emphasis on tending the spirit of the family in the family violence work of Cloe Madanes (1990). Adlerians emphasize the development of a community feeling and social interest in families. Feminists remind us of the importance of the female spirit, and social constructionists emphasize the meaning that is coconstructed in counseling and therapy as well as in family life. Tending to the spirit of the family is part of the evolution of the field that has reinserted human issues into the processes of family systems work.

 Involvement, engagement, and satisfaction in working with families. Effective family practitioners love the involvement and engagement of working with the family as a unit. They find satisfaction in working with the issues of intimacy, contact, rituals, and routines of family life. They see families and the world in terms of the interactions and transactions that take place. They see family life as developmental and are prepared to facilitate family transitions. In short, family practitioners are effective because they are interested in and excited about the possibilities for wellness and resilience that family work provides.