The Client's Confession

At the beginning of the consultation, the client needs to talk about themselves and their problems. Clients often begin telling their story without a special invitation. If the client stays silent, waiting for the counselor to speak, they can be helped to begin talking with remarks such as: “Tell me what brought you here”, “I’m listening carefully”.

When the client says they don’t know where to start, they can be offered: «Start with anything», or «Tell me what you consider important».

Counseling influence is, above all, influence through the word. Therefore, the counselor must be careful in the use of words. For instance, the counselor’s use of the word «problem» before the client has applied it to themselves is unacceptable, since it may provoke a negative reaction. “Problem” can sound like a verdict or a diagnosis.

The main content of this stage is the client’s account of themselves and their problem – the confession. In psychological counseling, a confession refers to a sincere, emotionally rich, detailed account by the client about themselves and their problem. The counseling psychologist listens to the client’s confession and, based on its analysis, clarifies and refines the client’s problem. From time to time the counseling psychologist may ask the client questions, clarifying certain points for themselves, but without interrupting the client’s confession. The psychologist’s questions should not throw the client off their train of thought. While listening, the counselor should remember facts, events, names, dates – everything important for understanding the client’s personality and for finding the optimal solution to their problem. Information coming from the client is best retained in memory, or occasionally jotted down as brief notes in a notebook. A more detailed record can be made immediately after the counseling session ends. If the counseling psychologist is not entirely confident in their memory, they may, after asking the client’s permission, make brief written notes of what they hear from the client.

At this stage the counselor needs to show the utmost sincere interest, empathy, and care, without resorting to evaluation or manipulation. The client should be encouraged to examine their emerging problems in depth. Important tasks at this stage are recording the client’s feelings, the content of their statements, and their nonverbal behavior.

The main methods of the psychologist’s work at this stage are observation and attentive active and empathic listening. So that the client feels they are being listened to attentively, the counselor encourages and affirms them, nodding or expressing agreement with interjections such as: “Uh-huh”, “Yes, yes”, “Of course”. The counselor’s nonverbal behavior also plays a role in providing emotional support: an appropriate nod of the head, a smile or sympathy expressed through the eyes, facial expressions, leaning the body forward, and mirroring some of the client’s movements.

The task of empathic listening is to achieve a sufficiently deep, emotional understanding of the client. This is accomplished by the counselor identifying with the client while simultaneously remaining in their own role and continuing to reflect on what the client is telling them. The counseling psychologist, immersing themselves in the client’s image, experiencing and feeling what the client says, tries to understand not themselves in the client’s image, but the client in their own image. Empathic listening involves accurately reflecting the interlocutor’s experience, feeling, and emotion, with verbalization and demonstration of understanding and acceptance of them (see Document 12: «Reflecting Feelings»).

In the course of active listening, the counselor may resort to using the procedure of clarifying the client’s thought. It consists in the counselor periodically entering into dialogue with the client in cases where the client’s thought is not entirely clear to them or is imprecisely expressed by the client themselves, and clarifying the client’s thought aloud for themselves or helping the client formulate it more precisely. For this, active listening techniques such as «Clarifying Questions», «Repetition», «Reformulation», «Summarizing» are used (see the topic «Methods of Psychological Counseling» in Section 1 and Document 13: «Reflecting Content: Paraphrasing and Summarizing»).

Most active listening techniques aimed at accurately understanding and reflecting the speaker’s information follow the principle of using features of the client’s language in conversation with them. The counselor, listening attentively to the client, tries to grasp the peculiarities of their speech style, key words, and phrases, paying attention to expressions and turns of phrase frequently used by the client. After some time, the counseling psychologist themselves begins consciously using the same speech techniques in communicating with the client (it is important, however, not to overdo the use of this technique, so that the client does not get the impression of being mimicked). As a result, greater mutual understanding arises between the parties in communication. The client unconsciously begins to perceive the counselor as a person psychologically close to them and feels more confident.

During the listening process, it often becomes clear how the client interprets their situation, and what and how they see as the causes of their problems. At this stage, one should not disagree with the client by pointing out their mistakes, adhering to the principle of “accepting the client’s concept.” Often, already in the course of the narrative, carefully listened to by the counselor, the client’s point of view changes, and they become ready to accept a new perspective on themselves and others.

+It is known that when a person fully «speaks out», this brings them relief. A feeling that does not express itself in words, in action, that is not objectified externally, is doomed to remain within, without reaching its external addressee. The consequence of an unexpressed feeling is the phenomenon of alexithymia («feeling without a word», a term introduced by P. Sifneos)²⁷, which accompanies a whole range of psychosomatic symptoms. Verbalization helps the client, to a certain extent, separate themselves from the surrounding world and from the world of their own emotions and thoughts. Such psychological distancing from the self is necessary for understanding, controlling, and changing oneself.

Listening can take very different amounts of time (on average, from 10–15 minutes to 1 hour).