Decisional Counselling Model

In a counselling session, micro-counselling skills and attending behaviour is essential as it helps to establish rapport and enable the counsellor to draw out the resource that the client has thus empowering them.

For this counselling session, I used the five-stage decisional counselling model which comprises of five stages namely: “Empathic relationship”, “Story and strengths”, “Goals”, “Restory” and finally the “Action “stage which would be discussed below (Ivey, A. E., Ivey, M. B., & Zalaquett, C. P.,2014).

1st Stage: Empathic Relationship
This stage serves the purpose of building rapport and relationship with the client, allowing them to feel comfortable and feel safe to express their problems during the counselling session (Ivey et

Seeking permission from the client balances the power difference between the client and the counsellor as some clients may view the counsellor’s position as a position of authority and with this view in mind, clients may be hesitant to correct any misinterpretation made by the counsellor or may be eager to please the counsellor which can be determinantal to the progress of the counselling session. By balancing the power difference, the client can have a more realistic expectation of the counsellor and feel more at ease during the

Firstly, summarising helps the counsellor to consolidate what the client says in a meaningful way which provides clarity to the client about what had happened since the beginning of the session. Secondly, it is to clarify with the client on whether what the counsellor had summarised is correct. This is important as there could be misinterpretations during the summarisation since it was from the counsellor’s point of reference and thirdly, it helps to redirect the client into setting and choosing what goals does she want to work on since the client could go on and on with expanding the story and lose sight with the original purpose in mind.

4th stage: Restory
The purpose of restorying is to help the client come out with alternatives and expand on the possibilities of what could she had done things differently.

In the session, the client came out with different possibilities while she was expanding on her story and thus the counsellor could focus more on the action and implementation of her ideas. It was clear that the client knows what she wants thus the counsellor’s roles is to make the ideas concrete and practical for her to