Hello Pat,
That's an awful feeling- when you are present, fully aware , and working
with someone so withholding. Was that her assigned role, someone terrified
of opening up to a peer, or a fellow counseling student out to give you a
hard time? Whatever the scenario, it sounds as if you did the best you could
under trying conditions. You stayed with her, worked at the relationship,
and, to your credit, are looking at your role in the process.
As a counselor who specializes in dance/movement therapy, I especially
appreciated your describing the woman's nonverbal behaviors, all of which
added to the picture of someone who was not ready to look inside. This is a
situation where applying the dance/movement therapist's use of movement
empathy would have been useful. Movement empathy is the kinesthetic analogue
of reflection, paraphrase, and verbal empathy.
As reflection, I would have attuned to her nonverbally by attending to her
breathing (I bet it was shallow, and perhaps even short or restricted on the
exhale.) and incorporated her breathing pattern into my own. I would have
done so for three reasons: first to feel what it is like to be her, second
to validate her nonverbally, and third to establish trust. The first reason
is self-explanatory. When we incorporate the essence of another person's
nonverbal behaviors we can feel in our bodies what is happening. This takes
us beyond the head and honors the power of the unified bodymind. This does
not mean imitating, but feeling with on the body level. I might also have
attended to the subtle changes in tension in her musculature (face & body)
to get a better sense of the resistance.
Incorporating the essence of another's movement or even mirroring it (not
imitating it), validates people nonverbally. The research has demonstrated
that shared movements, postures, and synchronous or echoed movement relate
directly to the interviewee's perceptions of rapport, empathy, and
validation. For my master's thesis, I examined the nonverbal behaviors of
counselors and their female clients and female friends. I found that echoing
related directly to empathy. Short (< 2 seconds and long delays (2 seconds
or more) characterized echoes in the affective and cognitive modes
respectively [Fraenkel, D.(1983).The relationship of empathy in movement to
synchrony, echoing, and empathy in verbal interactions.American Journal of
Dance Therapy, 31-48.]
Results in my doctoral thesis found a relationship between physician-patient
synchrony and information that patients recalled. This was important because
studies at the time had demonstrated that patients recall very little of
what their physicians tell them. (This was in the mid 80's.)
Once I got a deeper sense of what was going on somatically and saw how the
client responded to my nonverbal overtures, I would choose, depending on her
responses, when to "paraphrase." By paraphrase, I mean change the rhythm of
the breathing ever so slightly to see if she would follow in kind.
With regard to the building of trust, many dance/movement therapists
discriminate between trust (relationship to self and other) and empathy
nonverbally. The qualities of movements linked to breath and an individual's
relationship to "objects" refer on a nonverbal level to the individual's
relationships. To build trust, you focus on breath and the ways in which the
individual moves in relationship to self and others. In this case, the
interviewee crossed her arms, closing herself off, speaking as loudly as she
could.
Other qualities such as changes in muscle tension and the movement's
relationship to weight, space, and time speak to the individual's inner
life, defenses, and ego strengths. In this case I would have attended to the
level of tension in her arms, her face, and her jaw line in particular.
With all this in mind, I would have talked quietly as you did, but I may not
have been as inviting and warm. I would also try (and try is the operative
word in situations like this one) to tolerate the silences. Rather than
focus on questions and answers, I might have commented instead on how
stressful it is to be the center of attention, to talk to a stranger, to
feel on the spot, etc.
Getting information from a resistant interviewee is tough. It's awful when
that happens. I've experienced it most with adolescent clients and have
learned over time that pulling teeth just doesn't work. Sometimes it is just
best to sit quietly and be with the person. Also, building trust has to come
first. Why should anyone trust us from the start? Just because many people
do are immediately eager to talk, doesn't mean everyone will.
To my mind this was a great example of why counselor education needs to
begin attending to the nonverbal components of relationship building - not
just in terms of nods and body attitude, but in terms of the more subtle,
and even not so subtle, indicators of nonverbal expression.
Current research in neurophysiology has begun to demonstrate that each
cell on our body has the cellular makeup (?peptides and peptide
receptors? )we once thought was only characteristic of the cells in the
brain. Thus we can actually say that our thoughts and feelings are in every
cell of our body.
Pat, it sounds like you did the best you could possibly do in a situation,
for which training in traditional counseling methods does not address You
are NOT inadequate.You used all the skills you had. It's the training, not
just at your school, but at most institutions of higher learning where
training is still too often couched in the Cartesian split between the body
and the mind.That you were so aware of your interviewee's nonverbals is
testimony to your sensitivity. Now it's your school's job to share the
research and teach
you and others what to do with that nonverbal information.
Rogers knew what he was talking about when he said to get into our clients'
skin, but,
as far as I know, he did not tell us how to get there.
Danielle
Danielle L. Fraenkel, Ph.D., ADTR, NCC, LPC
Director, Kinections www.kinections.com
4 Elton Street
Rochester, NY 14607
USA
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Rauch <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:37 AM
Subject: HELP AM I INADEQUATE?
> Last night's class was not a lecture it was interviewing skills which I
had
> two classes in clinical interviewing already. Wow I hope it was not me
this
> never happened before.
> I got a partner started off by saying Hi. No response. The session went as
> follows arms crossed by interviewee I don't know, close to home, it was
all
> me asking questions I couldn't get a flow from this person no matter what
> subject I touched based on. It was the most horrible experience.
> I learned this person has no interests, doesn't know where she is going,
> what she likes. Most people use me as their sounding board I have to
> sometimes shut off the phone to study.
> Was this me I dressed casually relaxed position, soft voice, made comments
> on responses leading to next question when I realized she was offering up
> nothing but crossed arms and answers of I don't know.
> What went wrong was it me?
>
> PSYCHOLOGY IS TO HELP NOT HINDER
> Pat Rauch
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________
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