COUNSELING SPECIAL POPULATION

THE UNIVERSITY OF DODOMA

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

COUNSELING SPECIAL POPULATION

COURSE INSTRUCTOR: THEODORA BALI PhD

                                                                   

                                                                  QUESTION

What practical, client, and counselor barriers to effective counseling in Tanzania do you anticipate in working with client having physical and sexual abuse and how will you minimize them?

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction

·        What is counseling

·        Barrier in effective counseling

·        What is Physical abuse

·        What is sexual abuse

Main work

·        Practical barriers

·        Client barriers

·        Counselor barriers

·        The way to minimize those barriers

Conclusion

References

Counseling include giving advice to a person .it is the process of full understand of a person so as to promote self understand of that person or is a process of helping an individual to accept and use information and advise so that he can either solve his present problem or cop with it successfully. (Atkinson, 1993)

Counseling is the process of helping individuals discover and develop their educational, vocational, and psychological potentialities and thereby to achieve an optimal level of personal happiness and social usefulness. Also counseling has the work of orient the individual toward reach their opportunities afforded by his environment that can best guarantee the fulfillment of his personal needs and aspirations. (Encyclopedia 2012)

Lastly Counseling is an advice or guidance, especially as provided by a professional in a given field, (Encarta 2009).

Barriers in counseling are those obstacles, limitation, hindrance and blockage which affect the effective provision of entire process of counseling.

Physical abuse refers to the infliction of physical harm on a individual .It is not necessary for the harm to be intentionally inflicted, and in the majority of situations, physical abuse is the unintentional end result of harsh disciplinary methods or corporal punishment that have escalated to point of physical injury or the risk of physical injury. Physical abuse often occurs simultaneously with other forms of child maltreatment. An unfortunate but common example of this is when an individual is hit with close fists or an object while also being belittled. (Quinn.1997).

Physical abuse is physical force or violence that results in bodily injury, pain, or impairment. It includes assault, battery, and inappropriate restraint. Physical abuse is often mostly easily recognized form of abuse, physical abuse can be any kind of heating shaking, burning, pinching, beating, choking, throwing, biting and other action that cause physical injury, leave mark or cause pain. (Baumhover.2000).

Forms of physical abuse include striking, punching, pushing, pulling ,slapping, Striking with an object,Excessive,pinchingonthe,body,kicking,tripping,kneeing,strangling,headbutting,drowning,sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, freezing ,exposure to heat or radiation, burning ,exposure to electric shock, placing in stress positions (tied or otherwise forced),cutting or otherwise exposing somebody to something sharp, exposure to a dangerous animal ,throwing or shooting a projectile, withholding food or medication, blinding a person or causing impairment of sight ,biting ,exposure to stinking body odors ,releasing bodily, (spiting ,vomiting ,urinating, bleeding and scatting) (Klawsnik 1998).

Sexual abuse refers to any action that pressures or coerces someone to do something sexually they don't want to do. It can also refer to behavior that impacts a person's ability to control their sexual activity or the circumstances in which sexual activity occurs, including oral sex, rape or restricting access to birth control and condoms. Some examples of sexual assault and abuse are: Unwanted kissing or touching, unwanted rough or violent sexual activity, rape or attempted rape, refusing to use condoms or restricting someone’s access to birth control, keeping someone from protecting themselves from sexually transmitted infections (STIs), sexual contact with someone who is very drunk, drugged, unconscious or otherwise unable to give a clear and informed “yes” or “no. “Threatening or pressuring someone into unwanted sexual activity. (Elder Sexual Abuse (2008)

Sexual abuse is any sort of non-consensual sexual contact. Sexual abuse can happen to men or women of any age.  Sexual abuse by a partner/intimate can include derogatory name calling, refusal to use contraception, deliberately causing unwanted physical pain during sex, deliberately passing on sexual diseases or infections and using objects, toys, or other items (e.g. baby oil or lubricants) without consent and to cause pain or humiliation. (ibid )

The common examples of sexual abuse are; sexual touching of any part of the body, clothed or unclothed, penetrative sex, including penetration of the mouth, encouraging a child to engage in sexual activity, including masturbation, intentionally engaging in sexual activity in front of a child, showing children pornography, or using children to create pornography, encouraging a child to engage in prostitution. (Anetzberger.1987).

There are several practical, client and counselor barriers toward the effective counseling in Tanzania which are experienced with most counselors in the counseling client with physical and sexual abuse.

In counseling sessions most of the practical barriers which led to ineffective provision of counseling are as follows.

Failure to show respect to client this include the act of assuming that client is unable to think properly without the counselor assistance and impose your own advice and opinion to be taken in great concern than that of client, poor respect to client include insulting, mocking, laughing in front of him, conduct other activities while client is narrating the story, picking of phone, unnecessary movement. ( Sue.1993).

Acting artificiality or failure to be genuine and real, fail to have the qualities or value claimed.( Sue.1993).Always client pose a great trust on counselor and believe that their problems will be solved and they will be enabled to back to normal life they had, so it is crucial for a counselor to be real and be focused in helping their clients, counselors should not pretend to someone else and poses two personality example some of counselors are managers,teachers, doctors and judges so they start to impose their status rather than focusing on mutual understanding and communication .

Failure to show empathetic understanding to client .empathetic understanding is more than a knowledge of the client based on knowledge .it is recurred that the counselor be able to use this knowledge as it applies to unique clients which involves entering into the client`s world and seeing it as he or she does. The ability of the counselor to show empathy may be of great important because this in one of the practice/techniques’ that make a client feel helped,free, valued and pose trust to counselor .The only way which a counselor can enter the world of the client is with the permission of the client who communicates the nature of his or her world to the counselor though self-disclosure ,thus the client self-disclosure is the sine qua non for counseling. Counselor respect and genuineness facilitate client self-disclosure (Sue.1993).

On the side of counselor there are issues of cultural barriers. With regard to the counselor, it may be difficult for him/her to understand the various cultural values that have an impact on her clients' lives without having an extensive knowledge of these cultures. This could, in turn, make it difficult to engage with a patient during therapy .Professor Eliezer Schnall of the Psychology Department at Yeshiva University identified that there are counselor barriers between Western counseling services and people from an orthodox Jewish background Asians and Africans. Some of these include fear on the side of the patient that the professional may not share the same religion and attempt to turn the client away from his religious beliefs or will misunderstand the importance of certain values. Also a client form third culture may consider the act of going to therapy as showing that his religion does not have all the answers and would therefore avoid seeking professional help (Burks.1979).

Language barriers are another factor that may lock some counselor in counseling client having physical and sexual abuse. If a counselor does not good speaking the prevailing language, he/she may not be able to engage in therapy with people who are physical and sexual abused. Additionally, lack of written information in other languages may also be a problem. Even if a person is able to speak the language well enough to be counseled, he may not have the same command of written language; therefore leaflets, paperwork and correspondence that may be sent out by the service could be a further barrier.

Failure of counselor to recognize symptoms of personal who had physical and sexual abuse disorder which may lead to be unable to reduce emotional distress, unable to enhance positive coping skills, and failure to prevent post traumatic reactions .Counselors should be fully competent and skilled enough so as to discover all the types of clients emotional disorders and how to install sense of positivity as well as teaching them self management skills that they can have self directed.

These counselor qualities are not only essential for effective counseling, they are also the element of all facilitate interpersonal relations. They are neither time-bound nor culture bound

On the side of client there several barriers that may lead to inappropriate provision of effective counseling as follows 

Psychological barriers like anxiety, depression, self-doubt and self-blame, eroded self-esteem, memory impairment. The clients which have the physical and sexual abuse have the anxiety and fear to express their problem to the counselor. Clients’ fear of spreading of their problem and not

trust the counselor as the result create the problem in counseling process and this led to poor communication with counselor.

Denial, one of the most common barriers of clients in counseling is the denial of the existence of a problem, or at least a problem bad enough to seek to professional help. There is something stoic and resilient about humans; we want to prove ourselves, we want to overcome. We can admire people for this hardy approach to life, but we must also mourn for them at times. Refusing to come to terms with an obvious problem in our life is not laudable, it is foolhardy
exams this may be a little bit had for a counselor to conduct effective counseling because people with self denial poses two personality and confuse to understand themselves and pose a strong resistance in counseling .

Bad experiences with counselor /therapist, having a previous bad experience with a therapist a client experienced physical and sexual abuse can be hard to overcome their problem. A client with a prior experience that has not helped, not been focused, or has led to counseling abuse (a rare, but real occurrence), is unlikely to ever return. This negative experience compounds the initial trauma or situation that led the person to seek help but failed to explain their problem, and may actually increase individual into his internal pain for the rest of his/her life. A counselor in this situation encourage clients to express their problem, whatever past experience clients may have had, there are steps they can take to ensure clients express their own problem.

Showing intensive fear, horror and helpless most of the client who have experienced physical and sexual abuse tend to behave fearfully in counseling sessions because of the lost of self esteem and failure to recover from traumatic disorder, client of this type tend to fear every kind of people who resemble with those showed them abuse, more over they fear to stay in isolated place individual or even with people of the opposite sex. 

Exposing sense of anger, feeling of worthlessness, and sometime depression, may be one among the client barrier to effective counseling due to the physical and sexual abuse the client tend have sense of flash back that led to anger and depression when they are reminded to narrate the event of their abuses, depression and anger may sometimes become intensive and become barrier to the provision of effective counseling.

The are several ways where by a counselor can minimize the all those berries during the counseling session as follows

Break the Silence, One among the client barrier is excessive silence in counseling  .If clients is the victim of sexual abuse the counselor should friendly encourage to speak their problem .  Counselor should then decide use professional to help the clients by breaking the silence by encouraging to explain with confidence his/her problem, and be careful in using the word and active listening to allow clients to be free to express themselves. Don't be afraid to ask them questions about their credentials, what they understand about abuse and if they believe you can truly be free to enjoy life and do more than just "cope.” (Dr. Mollering 2008)

On side of minimizing practical barriers counselor should be genuine, emphatic understanding, respect to clients, improve good communication skills such as rephrasing, paraphrasing, and following. Otherwise the counselor should be self updated and acquire or learn multicultural counseling perspectives so as to be able helping and understand clients from diversity of culture. This also may help counselor not to pose his/her cultural beliefs and opinion in counseling.

                                                                 REFERENCE

Atkinson.D,&Sue.D,(1993),Counseling American minorities: cross-culture perspective,4^th ed                                                         Dubuque,ia,brown

Anetzberger, G.J,(1987). The etiology of elder abuse by adult offspring. Springfield,IL:Thomas.

Baumhover .L, & Beall, .S (1996). Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation of Older Persons: Strategies                                                                 for Assessment and Intervention. Baltimore, MD: Health                                                                       Professions Press.

Burks.H,Stefflre, (1979). Theories of Counseling, New York: McGraw-Hill

Dryden. W,Feltham. C, (1993), Brief Counseling, A practical guide for beginning practitioners,                                                      Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., (2012) Web. 01 Jun.

Elder Sexual Abuse (2008), Research Finding and Clinical Issues," Vol 20, No. 4

Klawsnik, An interview about elder sexual assault in nexus, A Publication for NCPEA Affiliates,                       April 1998.Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect

Microsoft  Encarta,(2009) ,What is counseling :Microsoft Corporation

Quinn.M, & Tomita.S,(1997). Elder abuse and neglect: Causes, diagnosis, and intervention                                                            strategies. 2nd ed. New York: Springer Publishing Co.

www.centrestreetchurch.ab.ca, Dr. Mollering.

Prepared by Reward Gerald Kihedu-Bachelor of Education in Guidance and Counseling

Rewardgearld85@gmail.com

Rewardgk.blogspot.com

Phone +255757260116