195 – Therapeutic Impasse

Counselling Tutor

Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes

Education, Courses

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Seven Tasks of Supervision - Managing Scepticism in Counselling Clients Episode 195 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast opens with presenters Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly discussing therapeutic impasse in 'Student Check-In'. Then, in 'Focus on Supervision', they explore Michael Carroll's seven tasks of supervision. Last, Rory talks with counsellor Sally-Anne Armitage about working with sceptical clients. Therapeutic Impasse (starts at 1.10 mins) Rory summarises in plain English what therapeutic impasse is: 'stuckness'. He and Ken then go on to discuss some of the possible reasons for this, including: thin material transference or countertransference the diversity that is not fully understood by the counsellor When the feeling of stuckness emerges, it is important not to assume that this relates solely to the client: do look at yourself, too, and reflect, for example, on whether any countertransference may be taking place. Even if you have not yet experienced a therapeutic impasse, you likely will at some point in your practice. When it does happen, Rory and Ken advise the use of congruence in verbalising the 'stuckness', and supervision to delve into its causes and how to work with it. You can download a handout on therapeutic impasse here. This is taken from Counselling Study Resource, our online learning platform that's accessible 24/7, offering online assignment guidance and study support for students of counselling and psychotherapy. Seven Tasks of Supervision (starts at 12.35 mins) Supervision is a topic that crops up frequently in the Counselling Tutor Facebook group. If you aren't already a member, do come along and join over 37,000 students, qualified practitioners, tutors and supervisors interested in the world of counselling and psychotherapy. The model of the seven tasks of supervision was developed by Michael Carroll, following research for his doctorate at the Department of Psychology at the University of Surrey in 1994. He gathered a wide range of material from both supervisors and practitioners. Rory and Ken discuss the seven tasks of supervision: creating the learning relationship the teaching task the counselling task monitoring professional/ethical issues the evaluating task the consultative task the administrative task They talk through each of these tasks in some detail, explaining their meaning and relating them to their own practical experience as supervisors and practitioners. You may like to link the material here to the concept of the supervision triangle, presented in Counselling Tutor Podcast 192. Counselling Tutor has recently developed an Advanced Certificate in Counselling Supervision. This allows practitioners with a minimum of one year's post-qualification experience to gain the competence and training to offer both face-to-face and online counselling supervision, in line with evidence-based practice. The course is mapped to the supervision competences set by the Association for Counselling & Therapy Online (ACTO), British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and National Counselling Society (NCS). Managing Scepticism in Counselling Clients (starts at 26.50 mins) Rory talks with person-centred counsellor, lecturer and supervisor Sally-Anne Armitage, who works with the police force. Sally-Anne explains how this occupational group - who are accustomed to having to contain their feelings, and to having very difficult experiences - may find it difficult to see the value of speaking about their emotions. This led her to develop a particular interest in working with scepticism in the counselling room. Rory and Sally-Anne discuss a range of topics relating to clients' scepticism, including: the importance of reflecting on how scepticism impacts your own feelings as a counsellor applying Karpman's drama triangle prevalence of scepticism in different groups

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Counseling Tutor Podcast. The must listen to podcast for students of counselling and psychotherapy.
0:10.6	Here are your hosts, Rory Lee's Oaks and Ken Kelly.
0:15.8	Hi, I'm Rory and with me as always is Ken. How are you, Ken?
0:19.8	I'm well, Rory. Thanks for asking. I'm exceptionally
0:22.4	grateful for being here and we're really grateful that you have joined us, that you've tuned in to
0:26.6	the counselling tutor podcast and joined us for episode 195 where we're going to be covering
0:32.2	three sections, starting off with our student check-in, where we're going to put look at therapeutic impasse.
0:40.2	Then we go on to focus in supervision where we're going to look at the seven tasks of supervision.
0:45.9	And finally, we're going to close out episode 195, speaking about managing skepticism when counseling clients. So if a client is skeptical about engaging in the
0:58.0	relationship or during the relationship, and that is in our practice matters section. And that is a
1:03.6	recent lecture that we had in our counselor CPD library. So we'll get there in a moment. Let's
1:09.5	start off by that student check-in where we speak
1:12.3	about something that you may come across in your formal studies to become a counsellor, but we know
1:16.7	that this section also really interesting and holds value for our qualified practitioner
1:22.3	friends as well. Therapeutic impasse. What do we mean by that, Rory? Well, I would say a very short-hand way of
1:31.6	describing therapeutic impasse would be stuckness. When the client is stuck, and this can happen
1:38.8	for a number of reasons. It may be that you have a client and all of a sudden there's no material. It's
1:47.3	sometimes referred to in training as thin material. Nothing of deep process going on for the
1:54.1	client. And I think that, I think that, you know, certainly if you're a student counselor
1:58.6	with not a lot of experience, this can be quite a difficult place to be because you're, you know, certainly if you're a student counselor with not a lot of experience, this can be
2:01.1	quite a difficult place to be because you're, you know, you're new into practice and all
2:06.3	a sudden the process seems to halt. And there could be many, many reasons why clients become
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ken Kelly and Rory Lees-Oakes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.