A Model of Effective Helping: Doing What Works
Therapists do their best to help their clients overcome a variety of problemsùfrom milder problems like short-term anxiety and depression to long-term, more serious challenges like schizophrenia (Dorman, ôDante's cure,ö 2004) and dissociative identity disorders (Schreiber, 1989). However genuine the clinician's desire to help heal the client, the therapist will be limited by the tools he or she chooses. The most effective tools will yield the best results. It makes sense, then, as a clinician to focus one's attention on models that have been shown to be effective, not just in providing temporary emotional relief to patients, but in leading to a recovered state. Such tools can be drawn from a variety of sources, and often outside-of-the-box application of tools from other fields can be of use to the conscientious therapist. Three tools that a therapist may apply that have a high level of efficacy in leading people toward self-actualization are 1) pursuing honed listening skills, 2) applying performance based objectives, 3) utilizing personality typing to understand and reinforce a client's strengths.
Listening is a key objective of a therapist, as it is through this art that much of the work of psychological healing can be achieved. Listening comprises more than just hearing and repeating a client's ideas, but encompasses gaining a true understanding and integration of ideas within the listener and then establishing a bond with the speaker by communicating back understanding (Towne, et al., 2004). This understanding involves more than just the words and concrete details of the client's experience; it requires the clinician to look beyond words for the feeling, and the meaning, the authentic communication of thought from the client's soul. Abstract as this may sound, the application is in principal simple. Good listeners are sought out by others because they listen without judging ...