From My PSY Desk(PsyDesk): Using The Client's Strengths In Therapy


This article highlights the importance of showing the real identity of counseling psychology which is aimed at bringing forth positive therapeutic process when dealing with clients. For any therapeutic process, the client looks forward to get better than they were when they came for help. It is therefore important to ensure that the client is not hurt further but helped to see positivity and possibility of making the best out of life. Using client’s strength during sessions is vital in helping clients move towards ideal human functioning. The mainstream therapy is seen to have a number of positive processes found in the main five themes; Amplification of strengths, Contextual considerations, Strength-oriented processes, Strength-oriented outcomes and Positive meaning-making. By using the client’s strength, the therapist helps the client to have a broad perspective and develops hope and motivation which in turn creates positive meanings through reframing and metaphors used during the session. The client’s strengths can be well identified through the interpersonal therapeutic process with the therapist. This can be explored fully by matching the client’s contexts through strengths, amplify strengths through encouragement and exception finding.
            By including the client’s strengths during counseling, the therapist can prevent more problems, promote human growth of the client as well as maximize human potential that makes the client to accept the therapy. Counseling psychology, unlike clinical psychology, invests a lot in the psychological strength and seeing people as assets. While clinical psychology looks for what is wrong and ways of treating it, counseling psychology looks for what is right and how to help the client use it making counseling psychologists aspire for strength-oriented methods. The use of positive psychology aims at helping the clients to develop healthy and positive self by paying attention to human strengths as well as positive development. In other words, a client is not a mere messed up individual looking forward to be fixed, a client is an individual with inner potentials that need to be unveiled through a helpful therapeutic process hence the need for counseling psychologists to identify the strengths of the client and build on them to make the clients come up with new stories of their lives built on the foundation of who they are.

Reviewed By Truphosah Fridah Monah (USIU-A) from the work of Scheel M. J.; Klentz D. C.; Henderson J. D. 2012.

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