The Helping Theory Of Alfred Adler's Approach To Counseling

My helping theory is one that takes in both a holistic approach as well as the person centered approach to helping others. When I help others I take each situation on its own merits. I do not try to compare situations because each person’s situation is very different. You can have two people facing the same situation but because of human nature they will react to that situation in two very different ways. I like in employ the helping theories of Alfred Adler who takes the holistic or individual psychology approach to helping. This approach takes into account the mind, body, and soul. Adler says that you want to look for the good and encourage the positive approach when helping someone (Ivey 221-222). The person being helped is already facing a situation that they feel is terrible so when helping we don’t want to focus too heavily on the negative. When looking at the holistic approach to counseling we also want to as Adler says praise the effort someone is giving and not necessarily the end result. This approach to helping is user friendly and supportive and an advantage to this technique is that it can be flexible and that it does integrate other approaches as well. Adlerian counseling is broken down into four stages. They are building a trusting relationship, the assessment stage, promoting insight, and the reorientation stage. In stage one the counselor is building a trusting relationship with the client. This is because the client is facing their fears in the