paraphrasing therapy techniques

Reflecting and Paraphrasing

Part of the ‘art of listening’ is making sure that the client knows their story is being listened to.

This is achieved by the helper/counsellor repeating back to the client parts of their story. This known as paraphrasing .

Reflecting is showing the client that you have ‘heard’ not only what is being said, but also what feelings and emotions the client is experiencing when sharing their story with you .

This is sometimes known in counselling ‘speak ‘as the music behind the words .

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It is like holding up a mirror to the client; repeating what they have said shows the client they have your full attention. It also allows the client to make sure you fully understood them; if not, they can correct you.

Reflecting and paraphrasing should not only contain what is being said but what emotion or feeling the client is expressing.

Let’s look at an example:

Client (Mohammed): My ex-wife phoned me yesterday; she told me that our daughter Nafiza (who is only 9) is very ill after a car accident. I am feeling very scared for her. They live in France, so I am going to have to travel to see her, and now I have been made redundant, I don’t know how I can afford to go.

Counsellor: So, Mohammed, you have had some bad news about your little girl, who has been involved in an accident. You are frightened for her and also have worries over money now you have lost your job.

Client: Yes, yes ... that’s right.

Notice that the counsellor does not offer advice or start asking how long Mohammed and his wife have been separated, but reflects the emotion of what is said : ‘frightened' and 'worries'.

Reflecting and paraphrasing are the first skills we learn as helpers, and they remain the most useful.

To build a trusting relationship with a helper, the client needs not only to be ‘listened to' but also to be heard and valued as a person.

"Reflecting and paraphrasing should not only contain what is being said but what emotion or feeling the client is expressing."

Definition of Reflection in Counselling

Reflection in counselling is like holding up a mirror: repeating the client’s words back to them exactly as they said them.

You might reflect back the whole sentence, or you might select a few words – or even one single word – from what the client has brought.

I often refer to reflection as ‘the lost skill’ because when I watch counselling students doing simulated skill sessions, or listen to their recordings from placement (where clients have consented to this), I seldom see reflection being used as a skill. This is a pity, as reflection can be very powerful.

When we use the skill of reflection, we are looking to match the tone, the feeling of the words, and the client’s facial expression or body language as they spoke .

For example, they might have hunched their shoulders as they said, ‘I was so scared; I didn’t know what to do.’

We might reflect that back by hunching our own shoulders, mirroring their body language while also saying ‘I felt so scared; I didn’t know what to do.’

Using Reflection to Clarify Our Understanding

We can also use reflection to clarify our understanding, instead of using a question.

For example, suppose the client says:

‘My husband and my father are fighting. I’m really angry with him.’

For me to be in the client’s frame of reference, I need to know whether ‘him’ refers to the husband or the father. So I might reflect back the word ‘ him ’  with a quizzical look.

The client might then respond:

‘Yeah, my dad. He really gets to me when he is non-accepting.’

So you can get clarification in this way. You can adjust where you are to make sure that the empathic bond is strong and that you are truly within the client’s frame of reference.

"When we use the skill of reflection, we are looking to match the tone, the feeling of the words, and the client’s facial expression or body language as they spoke".

Definition of Paraphrasing in Counselling

Paraphrasing is repeating back your understanding of the material that has been brought by the client, using your own words.

A paraphrase reflects the essence of what has been said .

We all use paraphrasing in our everyday lives. If you look at your studies to become a counsellor or psychotherapist, you paraphrase in class.

Maybe your lecturer brings a body of work, and you listen and make notes: you’re paraphrasing as you distill this down to what you feel is important.

How Paraphrasing Builds Empathy

How does paraphrasing affect the client-counsellor relationship?

First of all, it helps the client to feel both heard and understood. The client brings their material, daring to share that with you.

And you show that you’re listening by giving them a little portion of that back – the part that feels the most important. You paraphrase it down.

And if you do that accurately and correctly, and it matches where the client is, the client is going to recognise that and to feel heard: ‘ Finally, somebody is there really listening, really understanding what it is that I am bringing.’

This keys right into empathy, because it’s about building that empathic relationship with the client. And empathy is not a one-way transaction .

..."Empathy [is] the ability to ‘perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the 'as if' conditions." Carl Rogers (1959, pp. 210–211)

In other words, we walk in somebody’s shoes as if their reality is our reality – but of course it’s not our reality, and that’s where the ‘as if’ comes in.

I’ve heard this rather aptly described as ‘walking in the client’s shoes, but keeping our socks on’!

Empathy is a two-way transaction – that is, it’s not enough for us to be 100% in the client’s frame of reference , understanding their true feelings; the client must also perceive that we understand .

When the client feels at some level that they have been understood, then the empathy circle is complete.

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Paraphrasing

What is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is repeating back your understanding of the material that has been brought by the client in your own words. A paraphrase reflects the essence of what has been said.

We all use paraphrasing in our everyday lives. If you look at your studies to become a counsellor or psychotherapist, you paraphrase in class. Maybe your lecturer brings a body of work, and you list and make notes: you’re paraphrasing as you distil this down to what you feel is important.

The Power of Paraphrasing:

• The speaker feels heard.
• Helps the listener to adjust frame of reference.
• Highlights areas of high importance.
• Acts as an invite to explore deeper.
• Can indicate an end to the current discussion.

How Paraphrasing Builds Empathy

How does paraphrasing affect the client-counsellor relationship? First of all, it helps the client to feel both heard and understood. The client brings their material, daring to share that with you, and you show that you’re listening by giving them a little portion of that back – the part that feels the most important. You paraphrase it down. If you do that accurately and correctly, and it matches where the client is, the client is going to recognise that and feel heard: ‘Finally, somebody is really listening, really understanding what it is that I am bringing.’

This keys right into empathy, because it’s about building that empathic relationship with the client – and empathy is not a one-way transaction. Carl Rogers (1959, pp. 210-211) defines ‘empathy’ as the ability to ‘perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” conditions’. In other words, we walk in somebody’s shoes as if their reality is our own – but of course it’s not our reality, and that’s where the ‘as if’ comes in. I’ve heard this rather aptly described as ‘walking in the client’s shoes, but keeping our socks on’!

Empathy is a two-way transaction – it’s not enough for us to be 100% in the client’s frame of reference and understanding their true feelings; the client must also perceive that we understand. When the client feels at some level that they have been understood, then the empathy circle is complete.

For example, if you watch a TV programme in which somebody achieves something that is really spectacular, you may find yourself moved for this person. You’re almost there with them on this journey, and as they’re receiving their award or their adulation, and the audience is clapping for what they’ve done, you may even be moved to tears. But the person on the TV cannot perceive your reaction – the empathy is empty, because it’s one-way.

So empathy is effective only if your client feels heard and understood – i.e. they sense that empathic connection. Using paraphrasing is a way of completing the empathy circle – a way of letting them know that we see and hear them.

Other Benefits of Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing also highlights issues by stating them more concisely. This is focusing down: it invites the client to go and delve deeper into part of what they have said. We can also use paraphrasing to check out the accuracy of our perception as a counsellor.

Below is an example of my use of paraphrasing to clarify my understanding of what was brought. This shows how paraphrasing affects the therapeutic relationship; because the paraphrase fits well for the client, she feels heard and understood. As this happens, the material deepens.

I really have a battle with doing things for the impression that others will have of me, or the approval that I will get from other people for what it is that I do. So much so that I will very often override myself, my family, so that I can gain the acceptance, I guess, of other people, whether friends, family or clients in a work situation. I will always favour what the action would be that would gain that acceptance, that would not bring up any sort of confrontation or maybe have a conflict situation arise from it.

So, I guess, I’m eager to please, wanting to make sure that all things are well and smooth – and that I’m liked and accepted with whatever the transaction or situation may be.

Counsellor:

As you’re saying that, it really feels like a lot of hard work. A lot of hard work, pre-empting whatever it is that they would have expected of you, and then ‘sacrificing’, I guess, is a word that came up for me – sacrificing your own wants/needs to be able to meet what you perceive is expected of you. Have I understood that correctly?

Yeah, the word ‘sacrifice’ really captures the feeling that comes up for me when I sort of reflect and look over that kind of situation. So often, I will sacrifice my own wants and my own desires…

In this example, the client really resonated with the word ‘sacrifice’, which the counsellor introduced as a paraphrase; she really felt understood. And it’s interesting to note that throughout the rest of this stimulated session, the word ‘sacrifice’ became almost a theme.

Another paraphrase in this example was ‘hard work’. Although the client hadn’t used this phrase herself, she was presenting visually as weighed down. Her shoulders looked heavy as she was bringing the material. So the counsellor was paraphrasing, not only the words of the narrative, but digging deeper, looking for the feelings and paraphrasing the whole presence of that client within that relationship.

Listening for ‘the Music behind the Words’

Here is another example of paraphrasing, from the same skills session. Try to see if you can hear, as Rogers would put it, ‘the music behind the words’, where the counsellor looks deeper than just the words the client is bringing, paraphrasing back their whole being.

Out of my own will or my own free choice, I would put that aside and favour what would be accepted – or what I think someone else would rather I do. And sometimes it’s hard. It leaves me with a situation of not knowing if they actually really realise what it is that I sacrificed, that I’ve given up, so that it can fall into what I think they would prefer in that situation.

It feels confusing to you in that situation of whether they even perceive what it is that you are sacrificing, what you’re giving up. That it almost feels like you’re giving up part of yourself to match what you think they may want or need from you. And I kind of got the feeling, as you were saying that you wonder if they even see that.

Yeah. As I was sort of verbalizing and talking through that, I actually realised that even within that sacrifice, it’s all my perception of what I think they might want me to do. And just saying that is actually a bit ridiculous. Because how am I to know what it is that they want or need to do? So here I am – disregarding my own desires, for lack of a better word – to do something I assume someone else would want me to do instead.

I thought it was really interesting that this client started off in what felt to me like an external locus of evaluation. She was confused, and wondering whether the people she refers to understood what she was giving up to meet their perceived expectations. Immediately after the counsellor’s paraphrase, this client experienced a moment of movement from an external to an internal locus of evaluation, where she realised it was all about her own perceptions and responsibility. In this way, she went from being powerless to having the power to change this situation.

Next Steps in Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is so much more than just repeating the client’s words back to them using your own words. Although it might feel very simplistic – and there’s often a tendency to paraphrase the narrative/story that the client brings, rather than their feelings/process – there’s so much more to it than that and so much deeper that we can go. There’s real power in paraphrasing.

I suggest that you:

• Practice active listening and paraphrasing in your day-to-day life.
• Practice paraphrasing in your own stimulated skills sessions.
• Try to look for the full person when paraphrasing, e.g. not just the client’s words, but also their body language, facial expressions, and way of being within the counselling relationship.
• Record these sessions (with your peer’s consent) and listen back to them.
• Speak to your peers about paraphrasing.
• Evaluate each other’s skills and explore how you might paraphrase more effectively.
• Look whether you’re getting empathic connection within your paraphrasing.
• Search out moments of movement when you paraphrase.
• Ask how paraphrasing affects both the client and you, as a counsellor.

Paraphrasing is definitely something that should be debated. I hope that this chapter will encourage you to go out there with a new passion for – and a new way of looking at – paraphrasing!

Alternatives to Questions

What else can we use when we’re not sure what exactly a client means? For example, if a client was speaking about his brother and father, he might say: ‘I really struggle with my brother and my father. They don’t get on, and at times he makes me so angry.’ Who does the client mean by ‘he’: the brother or the father? Not knowing who makes him angry means I cannot be fully within the client’s frame of reference.

I could ask: ‘Sorry, just so I can understand, who it is that you’re angry at – your father or your brother?’ This risks ripping the client out of that emotion (the anger). Instead, we could use reflection: ‘He makes you so angry.’ This invites the client to expand on what he has said. He might say: ‘Yes, ever since I was a young boy, my dad was always…’ In this case, I didn’t need to ask a question – we’re still in the feelings, and I’ve got what I needed in order to be fully in the client’s frame of reference.

Of course, the client might not reveal the information I need in his answer – for example, if he responded to my reflection: ‘He does. He makes me really angry – in fact, so angry that I don’t know what to do about it anymore.’ In that case, I would still need to put in a question: ‘Is this your dad or your brother that you’re referring to?’

Rogers, C, 1959. ‘A Theory of Therapy, Personallity, and Interpersonal Relations, as Developed in the Client-Centered Framework’, in S Koch (ed.),  Psychology: A Study of a Science  (Vol.3), New York: McGraw-Hill, 184-256.

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Paraphrasing in Counselling

Table of Contents

In essence, paraphrasing is a micro skill that allows counselors to create an authentic bond with their clients  Together with encouraging and summarizing, paraphrasing plays a crucial role in therapeutic communication, making the client feel understood and listened to.  In other words, paraphrasing in counseling is what makes the client say, “ Finally, someone who understands what I’m going through.” Without this essential ingredient, counseling sessions would be nothing more than dull and impersonal exchanges of ideas.

What is the difference between reflecting and paraphrasing in Counseling?

Paraphrasing and reflecting are close synonyms for most people, both playing a crucial role in any form of communication.

Although paraphrasing and reflecting are fundamental counseling communication skills [1], these two processes can have slightly different connotations in a therapeutic context.

In essence, reflecting is like putting a mirror in front of your clients, helping them gain a better sense of the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors they experienced in a situation that has meaning for them.

Of course, this does not mean you have to parrot their message; simply highlight the link between different ideas and emotions and how one influences the other.

When reflecting, it is vital to match the client’s tone and even body language so that he/she knows that you’ve received the message and the feelings that accompany his/her story.

On the other hand, paraphrasing is about capturing the essence of their story with a brief statement that emphasizes the underlying emotional vibe.

This technique is particularly useful when clients know how ideas and emotions can merge to create a subjective experience, but you want them to feel understood and listened to.

In a way, we could argue that paraphrasing is a brief version of reflecting.

Let’s look at a brief example of paraphrasing in counseling:

Client: I had a huge fight with Andrew last night. At some point, he stormed out and didn’t come back ‘til morning. I tried calling him all night, but his phone was switched off. I was worried sick and thought he did something stupid. This whole thing was like a nightmare that I could not wake up from.

Therapist : It seems this unpleasant event has put you through a lot of fear and anxiety.

Now let’s take a look at reflecting:

Therapist : I can only imagine how terrifying it must have felt to see your partner storm out after a huge fight without telling you where he is going or when he’ll be back.

As you can see, both processes require active listening. But while paraphrasing is a short statement that highlights the emotional tone of the situation, a reflective response captures “the vibe” of the story, along with other essential details.

How do you paraphrase?

Start by listening.

Whether the purpose is to paraphrase or reflect, listening is always the first step.

Through active listening, counselors gain a better sense of what their clients have experienced in a particular situation. Active listening means looking beyond the surface and trying to connect with the client on an emotional level.

To achieve this level of emotional depth, counselors listen with both their ears and their hearts. That means putting themselves in their clients’ shoes and zeroing in on the emotional aspect of the experience.

Focus on feelings and thoughts rather than circumstances

When we listen to another person’s story, the most visible aspects are related to the actual events that he or she has gone through.

But details like names, dates, locations, or other circumstantial issues are less relevant than how the person interpreted and consequently felt in a particular situation.

When it comes to paraphrasing, counselors are trained to look beyond circumstances and identify why a client has chosen to talk about a particular event.

In almost every case, the reason is a set of emotional experiences.

Capture the essence of the message

Although people can experience a wide range of emotions in a given situation or context, there’s always an underlying feeling that defines how they react.

That underlying emotional vibe is the “golden nugget” that counselors are looking to capture and express through paraphrasing.

If done right, paraphrasing in counseling creates an emotional bridge that sets the foundation for authentic and meaningful interactions. This will encourage clients to open up and share their struggles.

Offer a brief version of what has been said

The last step is providing a concise version that highlights the emotional tone of the story.

Once this message reaches the client, it creates a sense of understanding that builds trust and authentic connection.

Long story short, paraphrasing is a valuable tool for cultivating empathy and facilitating therapeutic change.

How does paraphrasing help in communication?

Cultivating clarity (on both sides).

Any form of communication, whether it’s a therapeutic process, a negotiation, or a casual chat between friends, involves exchanging ideas.

And when people exchange ideas and opinions, there’s always the risk of confusion and misunderstanding.

By paraphrasing what the other person has shared, not only that you cultivate empathy, but you also let him/her know that the message has been received and understood correctly.

Research indicates that paraphrasing in counseling helps clients clarify their issues. [2] The more clients understand the inner-workings of their problems, the better they can adjust their coping strategies.

In a nutshell, paraphrasing eliminates ambiguity and paves the way for clarity.

Facilitating emotional regulation

One of the main functions of paraphrasing is to build empathy between two or more people engaged in conversation.

But the effects of paraphrasing on emotions extend way beyond empathy and understanding.

One study revealed that empathic paraphrasing facilitates extrinsic emotional regulation. [3] People who receive empathy through paraphrasing feel understood, and that prompts them to engage in a more intense emotional regulation process.

What starts as extrinsic emotional regulation slowly becomes intrinsic emotional regulation. This is the reason why someone who’s going through a rough patch can feel better by merely talking to a person who listens in an empathic manner and doesn’t necessarily hand out solutions or practical advice.

Paraphrasing can be a vital skill in heated arguments where two people have opposing views that result in emotional turmoil.

If one of them manages to exercise restraint over their intense emotional reactions and tries to paraphrase what the other shares, it could change the whole dynamic of the conversation.

What is the role of paraphrasing in listening?

As we discussed throughout this article, paraphrasing is one of the critical aspects of active listening.

It’s what turns a passive individual who listens only to have something to say when it’s his/her turn to speak into an active listener who understands and resonates on an emotional level.

Furthermore, paraphrasing is a means by which we provide valuable feedback on the topic of discussion, keeping the conversation alive.

It is also the tool that allows therapists to build safe spaces where clients feel comfortable enough to unburden their souls by sharing painful experiences and gaining clarity.

To sum up, paraphrasing in counseling is a vital micro skill that creates an authentic connection, providing clients with the opportunity to experience a sense of understanding.

Knowing there is someone who resonates with your emotional struggles makes your problems seem less burdensome.

Clinical psychology

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• Feeding and eating disorders
• Mood disorders
• Neuro-developmental disorders
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How Can Paraphrasing Be Used in Counseling? (3+ Main Indications)

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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter.  The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.

In this article, we will be discussing the topic: paraphrasing in counseling, which is one of the main counseling skills of a counselor. We will be looking at nature, importance, and the way of using this skill in the process of counseling. 

Paraphrasing in counseling

Paraphrasing refers to one of the counseling skills which holds paramount importance in the process of counseling. It is that skill which the counselor uses to repeat what the client has said at the present moment using fewer words and without any intention of changing the meaning of what the client conveyed through his words. 

The main intention behind paraphrasing is to feedback on the essence of what the person has just said. Paraphrasing is useful in the following situations:

• When you want to let the client know that you are actively listening and understanding the information provided by the client
• When you want to clear and clarify doubts concerning confusing content, given by the client.
• When you want to highlight issues that need more explanation and precision
• When you want to evaluate the accuracy of your perceptions as a counselor. 

Though paraphrasing looks quite simple and quick, it demands a sufficient amount of concentration and articulation skills from the side of the counselor. It is more difficult than it appears to be. While paraphrasing the words of the client, they should not end up feeling interrupted or misunderstood, in the process. The paraphrase should be kept, short, precise, and simple. There must be no unwanted complications or assumptions involved in it.

Although, if the paraphrase is kept too short, it would make the client feel confused and sometimes, dejected for being interrupted in between. Hence, paraphrasing must be initiated and put into action in a non-complex and understanding manner. It is very important to practice paraphrases that come in various lengths, variations of content, or emphasis of the wording. This will help you to understand what works best for your intentions and goals, as a counselor.

It is also important to understand that over-reliance on paraphrasing to the point of avoidance of reflection is indicative of discomfort on the part of the counselor, for encouraging the client to be emotionally open and expressive. 

Emphasis on essence

The intention of a counselor, when using paraphrases must be to reveal the essence of the client’s words. The client should get clarity, in terms of the paraphrases you use to communicate with them and must not feel confused or at loss for words once they’ve heard you out. They must be able to smoothly continue with their communication and not be intimidated or taken aback by your choice of words. 

Growth of empathy

Paraphrasing in counseling has a huge impact on the relationship between the therapist and the client. First ad foremost, it aids both the therapist and client to feel heard and understood. This forms the foundation for the client-therapist relationship. The client feels more free and brave to share their innermost and private experiences with the therapist. In turn, the therapist actively listens to the client and provide genuine feedback to the client on the most relevant parts of the client’s information using paraphrasing. 

If paraphrasing is carried out accurately and without the creation of confusion, it helps the client in recognizing the effort of the therapist and the amount of empathy the therapist holds for their state of mind. Hence, paraphrasing, in one way, helps in building the empathetic relationship between the client and the therapist which is important as empathy is not a one-way transaction. 

This is because it is important for the client to feel the empathy that is being conveyed by the counselor. Empathy is not just the counselor being able to put themselves in the client’s state of mind and understand their issues. It also involves the client receiving the empathetic energy that is being conveyed through the words and actions of the counselor.

A form of acknowledgment 

Paraphrasing is a form of acknowledgment that is provided by the counselor. This is done by mindfully restating the words of the client, conveying empathy, acceptance, and genuineness. A therapist’s role does not comprise of reading the minds of the clients or assuming their emotional states. Hence, it is very essential to learn the art of rephrasing the client’s words briefly and acknowledge them with honesty. 

By engaging in paraphrasing, you are letting the client know that you are understanding what they are trying to convey and you are ready to be corrected in case of any misunderstanding.

The important thing to be kept in mind is not to make judgemental statements or use biased terms in the form of paraphrases. This puts off the client and makes him/her trust the therapist less. You must allow the client to come to conclusions on their own and not put words in their mouth. 

Tone of voice

It is a good thing to keep a tab on the tone of voice used with the client while paraphrasing the client’s words. Be mindful of the following:

• A high or low voice
• A loud or soft voice
• Fast or slow voice
• Accommodating or demanding
• A lighthearted or gloomy voice

Be aware of the moderations used in voice, pitch, tone, and your body language as well. The client places an immense amount of trust in the therapist and they tend to remember how the therapist made them feel, at the end of the process. Therefore, it is imperative to be careful and gentle while dealing with clients and the information they provide. At the end of the day, the aim of the counselor must be to help the client feel validated and more confident through the usage of paraphrases. 

Alternatives that do not define paraphrasing

• Paraphrasing is not equivalent to repeating what the client just said. That is called repetition. Paraphrasing involves empathetic understanding and the right choice of words to help the client feel safe and heard.
• Parroting the words of the client reveals the idea that the therapist is not there with the client mentally and might cause irritation and frustration in the client. Eventually, they might even stop communicating, as a consequence. 

In this article, we discussed the topic: paraphrasing in counseling. We saw the importance of paraphrasing as a counselor’s skill, its emphasis on the essence, how it helps in the theme growth of empathy, and things to be kept in mind while using paraphrases. 

FAQs: paraphrasing in counseling

Why do counselors use paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is one of the most important skills that is required, in the process of counseling. Paraphrasing in counseling is a way of responding, which informs the client that the counselor has precisely heard what the client has conveyed. These kinds of paraphrases, encouragers, and summaries are important and helpful for the client to feel understood in the process of counseling. They make the client feel more comfortable and less vulnerable in the relationship with their therapist. Paraphrasing and summarising are active and efficient ways of communicating to the client that they have been heard. 

What is the difference between paraphrasing and reflecting in counseling?

The difference between paraphrasing and reflecting in counseling is that in paraphrasing you are only summarizing what the client has conveyed. When the client conveys certain information to you, you use paraphrasing skills to reaffirm the meaning of what the client conveyed through his words. On the other hand, the skill of reflection is slightly different. In reflection, you go beyond the process of summarizing what the client said to try to identify the feelings and thought patterns the client may have not identified, but their words and attitudes indicate the presence of such feelings and thought patterns. 

How do you reflect in counseling?

Reflection is an extremely useful and comprehensive skill use by counselors in the process of counseling. It can be compared to holding up a mirror to see the reflection of yourself in it. While reflecting on what the client said, you repeat the client’s words back to them in the exact way they conveyed it to the therapist. In the process, the therapist might choose to reflect on a selected set of words, the whole sentence, or sometimes, just a single word is used for the purpose. This helps the client in gaining insight into his thought process and how it works. It also helps him to connect many events in his life to his way of thinking and feeling and how it affected those events. Clients find the process of reflection a potential tool for growth and meaningful understanding of their obstacles in the process of counseling and how to overcome them. 

How is paraphrasing helpful?

Paraphrasing is important for the mutual understanding of both the client’s and the therapist’s understanding of the client’s situation. It helps the client in revealing the source of his thoughts and emotions in many instances and it acts as a breakthrough for the client in the process of counseling. The therapist also makes good use of the paraphrasing skill to confirm and reaffirm the meaning and tone of emotion used to convey anything that is said by the client, to clear the air of doubts or confusions and make the process of counseling smooth and hassle-free. It provides a good deal of understanding between the client and the therapist.

What are some counseling skills?

The most essential and primary ten skills required in counseling are as follows:

Listening: the counselor must be able to provide their undivided and complete attention to the client, while they are sharing their thoughts, emotions, and their queries. Empathy: the counselor must be empathetic, genuine, non-biased, and able to sincerely understand the emotional state of their clients.  Genuineness.  Unconditional positive regard: the counselor must be non-judgemental and completely accepting of the client as a person, without any expectation of personal gain or rewards.  being concrete Open-ended questioning: open-ended questioning is a form of questioning process which is used to assist the client in clarifying or exploring thoughts. Self-disclosure of the counselor Meaningful interpretation and explanation skill Appropriate and helpful delivery of suggestions, when needed Consistent removal of obstacles in the way of change.

What is the primary goal of counseling?

The primary goal of counseling is to enable the client to make their own decisions, concerning various aspects of their life, such as career, education, personal growth, relationships, and health. The client should be able to think and act for themselves, without the aid of external influential sources. Counseling will help the clients gain information and also to clarify emotional concerns that may interfere with or be related to the decisions involved. It enhances their problem-solving skills and let them depend less on people’s opinions and judgments.

http://www.csun.edu/~hcpsy002/Psy460_GrpTask05_Paraphra.pdf

https://counsellingtutor.com/basic-counselling-skills/reflecting-and-paraphrasing/

https://www.basic-counseling-skills.com/paraphrasingtone.html

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Encouragers, Paraphrasing and Summarising

A counsellor can encourage a client to continue to talk, open up more freely and explore issues in greater depth by providing accurate responses through encouraging, paraphrasing and summarising. Responding in this way informs the client that the counsellor has accurately heard what they have been saying. Encouragers, paraphrases and summaries are basic to helping a client feel understood.

Encouragers, also known as intentional listening , involve fully attending to the client, thus allowing them to explore their feelings and thoughts more completely. Paraphrasing and summarising are more active ways of communicating to the client that they have been listened to. Summarising is particularly useful to help clients organise their thinking.

The diagram below shows how encouragers, paraphrases and summaries are on different points of a continuum, each building on more of the information provided by the client to accurately assess issues and events.

Encouragers – Encouragers are a variety of verbal and non-verbal ways of prompting clients to continue talking.

Types of encouragers include:

• Non-verbal minimal responses such as a nod of the head or positive facial expressions
• Verbal minimal responses such as “Uh-huh” and “I hear what you’re saying”
• Brief invitations to continue such as “Tell me more”

Encouragers simply encourage the client to keep talking. For a counsellor to have more influence on the direction of client progress they would need to make use of other techniques.

Paraphrases – To paraphrase, the counsellor chooses the most important details of what the client has just said and reflects them back to the client. Paraphrases can be just a few words or one or two brief sentences.

Paraphrasing is not a matter of simply repeating or parroting what the client has stated. Rather it is capturing the essence of what the client is saying, through rephrasing. When the counsellor has captured what the client is saying, often the client will say, “That’s right” or offer some other form of confirmation.

Example: I have just broken up with Jason. The way he was treating me was just too much to bear. Every time I tried to touch on the subject with him he would just clam up. I feel so much better now. Paraphrase: You feel much better after breaking up with Jason.

Summaries – Summaries are brief statements of longer excerpts from the counselling session. In summarising, the counsellor attends to verbal and non-verbal comments from the client over a period of time, and then pulls together key parts of the extended communication, restating them for the client as accurately as possible.

A check-out, phrased at the end of the summary, is an important component of the statement, enabling a check of the accuracy of the counsellor’s response. Summaries are similar to paraphrasing, except they are used less frequently and encompass more information.

• July 21, 2009
• Communication , Counselling Process , Encouraging , Microskills , Paraphrasing
• Counselling Theory & Process

Comments: 23

Yeah,must say i like the simple way these basic counselling skills are explained in this article. More of same would be most welcome as it helps give a better understanding of the counselling process and the methods and techniques used within the counselling arena

I really find this information helpful as a refresher in my studies and work. Please keep up the excellent work of ‘educating’ us on being a better counsellor. Thank you!

Wonderfully helpful posting. Many thanks!

Thankyou so much. I am doing a assignment at uni about scitzophrenia and needed to clarify what paraphrasing truly meant. Cheers

So helpful to me as a counselor.

Thankx so much for these post. I’m doing Counselling and Community Services and I need to clarify what summarising and paraphrasing really meant. Once again thank you, this information it’s really helpful

Hello Antoinette friend and doing guidance and counselling need uo help about this question With relevent examples explain the following concepts as used in communicating to clients. (I;listening to verbal messages and using encouraged minimal prompts. 2)making use of non verbal communication and exhibiting attending behaviours using Gerald Eganis macro skill SOLER/ROLES. 3.paraphrasing 4.identifying and reflecting feelings and emotions from the clients story 5.summarizing 6.confrotation 7.counsellor self disclosure 8.asking open and close open ended concept 9.answering questions 10.clarifying

thanks I am doing a counselling community services at careers Australia

Really love the explanations given to the active listening techniques it was really useful and helpful good work done.

Helpful. Thanks!

I really like hw u explain everything in to simple terms for my understanding.

Hai ,thanks for being here .Am a student social worker,i need help an an able to listen to get the implied massages from the client.and to bring questions to explore with them .I love to do this work .What shall I do.how do i train my self in listening.

really appreciate.

You explanation of these three basic intentional listening are very helpful. Thank you for remained us.

very helpful indeed in making the client more open and exploring the issues more deeply

Very important cues.thanks

the article was helpful .thank you for explaining it in more clear and simple words.appreciate it alot .

I need to write about what counselling words mean ie I understand summarising and paraphrasing any more would be useful as I’m near the end of my course

I have a role play exam tomorrow on counselling and find above explanation very useful. thanks for sharing.

This explanation is clear and precise. Very easy to understanding than the expensive textbook. Please keep posting as this helps a lot. Thanks and God bless.

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One of the simple and memorable descriptions of this I’ve read, thanks so much!

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21 Therapy Interventions and Techniques to Apply Today

Therapy is available in schools, hospitals, and even churches.

Many modalities are finding preventive therapy to be helpful in preventing high-risk behaviors (Singla, 2018).

In order to help spread good therapy practice, this article lists popular therapy interventions, must-have skills, and techniques that you can use in your practice.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free . These science-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains

5 therapy techniques you can apply today, 12 must-have skills in therapy, 5 therapeutic intervention strategies, worksheets and activities to use in sessions (incl. pdf), 4 useful tests, assessments, and questionnaires (incl. quenza), 5 interesting therapy ideas, a look at common therapy theories, a take-home message, frequently asked questions.

Research has shown that only 25% of the population is flourishing (Niemic, 2017). A call to action has helped to shift mental health care, but not nearly enough. A deeper and widespread understanding of the benefits of therapy is called for in schools, workplaces, and medical facilities.

Some examples of where this action is already happening are:

• Inclusion of stress and depression related questionnaires in primary care offices.
• School counselor expansion of mindfulness and mental wellness education for students.
• Office place wellness benefits.
• Availability of apps to increase mental well being.

Some of these techniques can, however, be used in your own life too.

Some clients are comfortable just being heard by their therapist. Others might be seeking a transformative process utilizing tools that are unique and come from other modalities. Therapists having open minds and consistently improving their approach, with an increased variety of techniques, will help more clients due to their individuality and personalized needs.

In Solution Focused Therapy , the Miracle Question is a powerful way for therapists to help their clients understand what they need on a deeper level (Santa Rita Jr., 1998). The technique can be used across types of therapy and is also used in coaching. We all want to believe in miracles, and they are incredibly subjective, yet powerful ways for clients to internalize what it would be like if their miracle occurred.

Like the use of the miracle question, open-ended questions are crucial in therapy. These types of questions allow clients to explore their minds without therapist presumptions. Along with open-ended questions, the following are communication techniques that should be in every therapist’s toolbox:

• appropriate use of silence
• rephrasing or paraphrasing
• summarizing
• acknowledgment

An intriguing technique developed from the theory by psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone (n.d.) is called Voice Dialogue . From their theory of Psychology of the Selves, we all operate from a multitude of selves working for or against us all the time. You’ve heard of the inner critic, the self-saboteur, and the inner child. This technique allows for these inner selves to have a voice.

By becoming aware of the presence of these alternate selves and allowing them to be heard, a client may find a more manageable balance in finding a new way of being in the world. Allowing for a dialogue with an inner self who has continuously been problematic can allow another self to stand up and be heard. It’s a creative and powerfully introspective technique that can help clients overcome self-limiting beliefs and behaviors.

The Hunger Illusion is an interesting technique that can be used across many forms of positive psychotherapy . It is a technique that anyone can use at home too. It helps clients to overcome habitual behavior. This helps clients become aware of unconscious motivations for behaviors by tuning into thoughts.

The technique works like this:

• Notice the moment you tend to act automatically.
• Don’t act automatically
• Keep track of thoughts and feelings that pop up in those “Don’t” behaviors

In Gestalt Therapy , the Empty Chair is an interesting way to allow clients to communicate their abstract thinking effectively. Gestalt Therapy focuses on the whole client, including their environment, the people in it, and the thoughts around the whole (Kolmannskog, 2018).

This technique opens up the ability to speak to a problem in a safe and supported way. It is especially useful for clients who are not verbalizing their abstract thinking concerning people in their environment. It is not as helpful for a client who is already adept at dramatically presenting their emotions.

The idea is creating a cue for a client to unleash their inner thoughts on an imaginary person sitting in an empty chair. The technique brings the client into a present moment experience. It offers clients a new way to interact with personal conflicts.

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Therapists go through many hours of training to develop special skills to treat their patients. The following skills should be considered a “must-have” list.

Therapists must possess the ability to understand or feel what their client is experiencing.

2. Self-Management

Therapists sit with uncomfortable emotions regularly. Deeply understanding how providing therapeutic services might influence one’s emotional state is vital.

The ability to compartmentalize the emotions that are experienced in a therapeutic setting from one’s personal experience is important to the therapist’s well being.

3. Listening Skills

Therapists’ listening skills are finely tuned. Utilizing intuitive and active listening is necessary to serve patients in a transformative way. Through observation and fully attending to patients, a therapist creates an environment where they feel safe and heard.

4. Ability to set boundaries

Providing appropriate parameters within which a therapist works with a patient is foundational to therapeutic success. This skill enables professionalism to exist in the therapist/client relationship.

5. Authenticity

Once the boundaries are set, a therapist can show up for their client as their best self. With a warm and nurturing approach, a therapist can utilize humor and deep understanding to hold space for a patient to create change.

6. Unconditional positive regard

A good therapist cultivates the ability to attend sessions with their patients in a non-judgmental and caring capacity.

7. Concrete Communication

Making sure that the client is the focus of communication without a great deal of self-disclosure is important. Staying in a task-oriented communication focus will help the client move forward.

8. Interpretation

Interpretation is a skill that takes some practice to cultivate well. It is utilized to give clients perspective but should be used sparingly.

9. Solution collaboration

Considering self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012), a good therapist will know that solutions coming from a client are more effectively created.

However, once a client has exhausted their personal resources for finding a solution, a collaborative approach is helpful when forging solutions for behavior change.

10. Business management

Most therapists don’t get into this type of work to become millionaires. They begin their practice to help people. It is imperative to understand the business of therapy, however. You don’t have to become an MBA, but knowing how to run a successful business is necessary for a practice to survive.

11. Cultivated interest in others

A therapist who shows up as an arrogant “know it all” will likely have an empty waiting room. Developing an authentic interest in others will aid in creating a safe and trusted environment for clients.

Being well versed in intervention strategies gives therapists a full palette from which to paint their approach to helping clients heal. Here are a few of the most well known.

1. For Addiction

A commonly utilized approach to help an individual who has in the past refused to participate in changing habitual and harmful behavior is group intervention. A mediated, supportive, and gentle meeting is often staged to support this individual. Members of a client’s family, friends, and others from their environment will voice their concerns directly to the client.

2. Individual Behavioral Interventions

Strategies commonly utilized when working with youth. They include, but are not limited to positive reinforcement, time-limited activities, and immediate behavior reinforcement. When attempting to help a youth who has had difficulty with inappropriate reactionary behaviors in the past, these strategies are vital for safety and growth.

3. Crisis Intervention

When someone has suffered a trauma, a therapist or qualified professional can support a healthier processing of an extreme situation. Helping someone after a crisis occurs helps them to gain a clear perspective and support when it is most needed. This type of intervention takes special training and skills.

4. Psychopharmacology Interventions

These are typically used in patients presenting with more severe symptoms, although they seem to be used broadly. When in combination with effective psychotherapy, improvements can be made in a significant number of presenting psychological disruption. It does require the participation of a licensed prescriber.

5. Positive Psychology Interventions

A great deal of research has been done in supporting a patient in applying interventions in positive psychology into their life. Therapists with a deeper understanding of the benefits of these types of interventions can not only help patients return to health. They can also help patients lead lives that are more fulfilled. Here are the best Positive Psychology Interventions .

Providing therapy for children can be a very creative process. There are hundreds of ideas for helping kids effectively express their emotions.

Through art, writing, and interactive play, kids can find a new perspective for handling behavior change. Here is an extremely useful and well-formed e-book of strategies and interventions used in family and child therapy settings.

Here is a fantastic article on positive psychotherapy exercises  complete with worksheets to apply today.

Another helpful and robust article that contains useful activities and worksheets to be used in group therapy .

Likewise, therapists may find questionnaires necessary to assess the symptoms associated with various psychological conditions or disorders, better understand a client’s goals, or assess progress throughout their treatment.

Here are useful examples:

• Here is a healthy living questionnaire . This is another self-report test that can reveal whether emotional difficulties are disrupting daily life.
• The Global Mental Health Assessment Tool assists physicians in the referral process. Trained professionals administer it.

For a convenient way to administer these assessments as a therapist, consider doing so digitally using a platform such as Quenza (pictured here). The platform incorporates a simple drag-and-drop builder that makes crafting and sharing questionnaires, as well as a range of other activities, simple and intuitive.

And if you’re a therapist looking for even more assessments, Quenza includes a continually growing library of pre-loaded questionnaires, which are widely used by practitioners and scholars worldwide.

You can access Quenza’s complete library of activities for yourself by taking advantage of the platform’s 30-day trial.

Some of the most significant advances in mental health treatment have grown from unconventional approaches. Here are some of those unconventional ideas and their summaries. Talk therapy seems to be shifting in all sorts of ways.

1. Dance/ Movement Therapy

This approach has been used since the 1940s (Pallaro, 2007). The use of movement increases creative access to emotions. The movement seeks to improve psychological, physical, and social health.

We discuss some aspects of this in our Expressive Arts Therapy article, which includes exercises.

2. Laughter Therapy

This approach improves well being by boosting positive mood and maximizing the benefits of laughter. Some of the benefits are listed below (Dunbar et al., 2011; Foot & McCreaddie, 2006).

• elevated pain threshold
• increases trust in turn improving social relationships
• stimulates the release of endorphins
• reduces depression and anxiety
• boosts problem-solving skills and creativity
• improves sleep
• enhances memory
• broadens minds

We have an interesting read on Laughter Yoga Therapy for you to explore.

3. Drama Therapy

Drama therapy is the use of theatrical techniques to promote positive mental health and foster personal development (Landy, 1994). Here’s another excellent article outlining drama therapy and the activities that go along with it.

4. Hypnotherapy

This is guided hypnosis achieved by a licensed professional. This can be used in conjunction with other forms of therapy to treat many forms of habitual behavioral dysfunction. Anxiety, substance misuse, phobias, and sexual dysfunction are a few examples of the spontaneous behaviors that can be treated with hypnotherapy .

5. Music Therapy

Music therapy has long been seen as a tool for managing emotions, and handling an instrument can have positive implications in the abilities of the patient. Beneficial for stress management and improving the cognitive abilities of differently-abled children, music therapy is becoming a popular new approach (Wigram & De Backer, 1999).

Finding the type of therapy that results in improvement for each individual starts with knowing what types exist.

Over 400 different types of psychotherapy are available. The following were chosen because they are the broadest categories of those 400 types.

Psychodynamic Theory

Everyone is familiar with the name Sigmund Freud. His work developed into the field where therapists focus on the unconscious and how it manifests in a person’s behavior. The approach has shifted since the time of Freud and is one of the most widely utilized in therapy.

Psychodynamic therapy has been primarily used to treat major depression and other serious psychological disorders (Driessen et al., 2013). It has been used to treat addiction, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders as well. Knowing that other theories are used for these same disorders, let’s take a look at what sets this approach apart.

The focus on repressed emotions and their role in behavior, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making give a patient a new way of understanding themselves. A therapist talks with each patient to help reveal these repressed emotions.

By allowing a patient to speak about whatever comes to mind freely, new insights can be revealed. The approach helps people who are aware of their problems but are not able to overcome them on their own.

Behavioral Theory

Evolving from Pavlov’s, B.F. Skinner’s (Skinner, 1967), and John B. Watson’s (1913) theories on conditioning, behavior therapy has found its place in the top 5 commonly used therapy approaches. Many psychologists have added to and influenced this theory, which is a highly effective approach to therapy. Another name for behavioral therapy is behavior modification.

It works from the belief that behavior is learned and that it can be modified through interventions with a therapist. Many different approaches operate under this umbrella term to treat many kinds of maladaptive behavior. Exposure Therapy , Applied Behavior Analysis, and Social Learning Theory are all major approaches that draw on Behavior Theory.

This approach is particularly practical with psychological disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias, and anxiety. Through a supported change, a patient is given what they need to transform maladaptive behaviors. Behavior Therapy is not recommended for major psychological dysfunction, such as major depression or schizophrenia.

Cognitive Theory

This type of therapy is based on the belief that spontaneous thoughts create beliefs that result in emotional response, psychological response, and behaviors. Cognitive Therapy aims at reducing or eliminating psychological distress (Beck & Weishaar, 1989).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy weaves cognitive theory with behavioral theory to reduce psychological distress in addition to changing behavior (Craske, 2010). The theory focuses on present thinking and is solution-oriented. This type of therapy has been utilized and proven effective in a broad range of problems. Therapists have treated depression, anxiety, OCD, eating disorders, relationship dysfunction, and many other problems using this theory (Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer, & Fang, 2012).

Humanistic Therapy Theory

Humanistic Therapy Theory evolved from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Roger’s person-centered approach to counter what was seen as limitations to psychoanalysis in the 1950s. These types of therapists believe that people are inherently motivated to solve their own problems. The overall motivation is for patients to achieve self-actualization through a personal approach to that height.

This approach works with the understanding that a person must be their authentic self to find fulfillment and purpose in their life. Therapists in this modality work with positive aspects of a patient’s whole self to better understand and improve a person’s well-being, as seen from the patient’s perspective (Cain, Keenan, & Rubin, 2016).

The therapy incorporates a gestalt approach allowing the therapist to create an empathetic, supportive, and trusting environment where a patient can share without judgment.

Integrative or holistic theory

This approach to therapy is client-centered and utilizes tools and techniques from other approaches. Any therapist can integrate techniques from another modality. Patients are individuals and may respond to treatment in individual ways, hence the need to shift techniques to serve clients well.

Psychopharmacology Therapy

Psychopharmacology therapy is the utilization of medicine to treat psychological dysfunction. It is commonly used to treat depression, anxiety, attention difficulties, and many more psychological problems. This approach works best in combination with another form of psychotherapy.

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The more people understand the theories and practice of therapy, the more likely they are to seek help. Reducing uncertainty in the process can help create a reduction of the stigma around mental health care.

Just because a person is not ill, does not mean that they are flourishing and therapy can assist in moving people toward a thriving wellbeing.

The more information people have about therapy, the stronger their ability to self-advocate. Help can come in many forms. Being open-minded about therapy is a great place to start.

Thanks for reading!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

In therapy, an intervention strategy refers to a specific approach or technique used to address a particular problem or issue.

There are various interventions, but four major types are (Garland et al., 2010);

• psychotherapy,
• pharmacotherapy,
• community-based interventions, and
• technological interventions.

The three components of a successful intervention are (Hoffman et al., 2012),

• the person or people conducting the intervention,
• the content of the intervention, and
• the environment in which the intervention takes place.

These components must work together to produce the desired outcomes.

• Beck, A. T., & Weishaar, M. (1989). Cognitive therapy. In A. Freeman, K. M., Simon, L. E. Beutler, & H. Arkowitz (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of cognitive therapy (pp. 21-36). New York, NY: Springer.
• Cain, D. J., Keenan, K., & Rubin, S. (2016). Humanistic psychotherapies: Handbook of research and practice (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Craske, M. G. (2010). Cognitive-behavioral therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-determination theory. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 416-436). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Driessen, E., Van, H. L., Don, F. J., Peen, J., Kool, S., Westra, D., … & Dekker, J. J. (2013). The efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychodynamic therapy in the outpatient treatment of major depression: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Psychiatry ,  170 (9), 1041-1050.
• Dunbar, R. I., Baron, R., Frangou, A., Pearce, E., Van Leeuwen, E. J., Stow, J., … & Van Vugt, M. (2012). Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold.  Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ,  279 (1731), 1161-1167.
• Foot, H., & McCreaddie, M. (2006). Humour and laughter. In H. Owen (Ed.), The handbook of communication skills (3rd ed., pp. 293-322). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
• Garland, A. F., Bickman, L., & Chorpita, B. F. (2010). Change what? Identifying quality improvement targets by investigating usual mental health care. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 37(1-2) , 15-26.
• Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy and Research , 36 (5), 427-440.
• Kolmannskog, V. (2018).  The empty chair: Tales from gestalt therapy . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Lammers, M. W., & Murphy, L. B. (2020). Mental Health and Behavior Change: Insights From Social and Behavioral Science. Global Heart, 15(1) , 25.
• Landy, R. J. (1994).  Drama therapy: Concepts, theories and practices . New York, NY: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
• Niemic, R. (2017). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners. Boston, MA: Hogrefe Publishing.
• Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2018). Psychotherapy relationships that work: Evidence-based responsiveness . Oxford University Press.
• Pallaro, P. (2007). Authentic movement: Moving the body, moving the self, being moved: A collection of essays (Vol. 2) . London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
• Santa Rita Jr, E. (1998). What do you do after asking the miracle question in solution-focused therapy.  Family Therapy ,  25 (3), 189-195.
• Singla, D. R., Raviola, G., & Patel, V. (2018). Scaling up psychological treatments for common mental disorders: A call to action. World Psychiatry, 17 (2), 226-227.
• Skinner, B. F. (1967). B. F. Skinner. In E. G. Boring & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The century psychology series. A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 5, pp. 385-413). East Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Stone, H., & Stone, S. (n.d.). Voice dialogue: An introduction to the use of voice dialogue. Retrieved from http://www.voicedialogueinternational.com/articles/Voice_Dialogue-_An_Introduction.htm
• Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it.  Psychological Review, 20 (2), 158-177.
• Wigram, T., & De Backer, J. (1999).  Clinical applications of music therapy in psychiatry . London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication

Unlock profound connections with Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication. This comprehensive guide delves into the art of rephrasing, empowering you with effective communication examples. Elevate your interactions with therapeutic finesse, understanding the pivotal role of paraphrasing in fostering genuine connections. Gain valuable insights and masterful techniques to enhance your therapeutic skills. Dive into a world where words create bridges, not barriers. Communication examples illuminate the transformative power of paraphrasing in forging meaningful connections.

What is Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication?

Paraphrasing is a communication technique where a listener rephrases or rearticulates the speaker’s words. In therapeutic communication, this skill is employed to convey understanding, validate emotions, and promote a deeper connection. It involves capturing the essence of the speaker’s message while using one’s words, fostering trust, and facilitating meaningful dialogue. By mastering this technique, practitioners enhance empathy, ensuring clients feel heard and valued in the therapeutic process.

20 Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication Examples

Paraphrasing in therapeutic communication involves skillfully rephrasing a speaker’s words to convey empathy and understanding. This technique fosters a deeper connection and validates the speaker’s feelings, contributing to a supportive therapeutic environment.

• Client’s Anxiety: “You seem anxious about the upcoming session. Let’s explore your concerns together.”
• Child’s Frustration: “It looks like you’re frustrated with homework. Tell me more about what’s challenging.”
• Patient’s Grief: “Expressing sadness about the loss. I hear you. Share more about your feelings.”
• Co-worker’s Stress: “Noticing stress at work. Can you elaborate on specific stressors you’re facing?”
• Teenager’s Rebellion: “Rebelling against rules. Help me understand what you find restrictive.”
• Friend’s Confusion: “Detecting confusion. Let’s clarify any points causing uncertainty in our discussion.”
• Spouse’s Disappointment: “Your disappointment is apparent. Share more about what didn’t meet your expectations.”
• Patient’s Joy: “Expressing joy after progress. Celebrate this achievement and share more about it.”
• Client’s Ambivalence: “Mixed feelings detected. Let’s explore your conflicting thoughts and emotions.”
• Colleague’s Success: “Noticing success in your project. Congrats! Share more about your key strategies.”
• Child’s Fear: “Detecting fear during our activity. Let’s address and work through these fears together.”
• Friend’s Isolation: “Your isolation is noticeable. Is there something you’d like to discuss or share?”
• Employee’s Burnout: “Signs of burnout are evident. Let’s strategize ways to manage and alleviate stress.”
• Teenager’s Hesitation: “Hesitation detected in your response. What reservations or concerns do you have?”
• Patient’s Uncertainty: “Noticing uncertainty about treatment. Share your concerns and let’s address them.”
• Sibling’s Resentment: “Your resentment is apparent. Let’s explore the roots and work towards resolution.”
• Client’s Resistance: “Detecting resistance in our conversation. Can we discuss the source of discomfort?”
• Co-worker’s Elation: “Elation detected in your demeanor. Share the positive news; I’m here to listen.”
• Friend’s Guilt: “Detecting guilt in your expression. Let’s talk about what’s weighing on your conscience.”
• Teenager’s Defiance: “Defiance observed. Help me understand the reasons behind your opposition.”

Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication Examples for Nursing Students

Paraphrasing in therapeutic communication is vital for nursing students to enhance patient interactions. It involves restating patients’ concerns in a supportive manner, promoting empathy and understanding within the healthcare context.

• Patient’s Pain Disclosure: “You’re expressing discomfort. Can you share more about the type and intensity of the pain?”
• Family’s Concerns: “Your family seems worried. What specific concerns do they have about the treatment plan?”
• Patient’s Anxiety: “I sense anxiety. Help me understand the triggers so we can work towards a calming approach.”
• Concerns about Medication: “You have reservations about medication. What aspects make you hesitant or uncertain?”
• Patient’s Emotional Expression: “Your emotions are evident. Let’s explore what’s behind this emotional response.”

Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication Example for Patients

Patients benefit from paraphrasing in therapeutic communication as it ensures their feelings are accurately interpreted, fostering trust and collaboration with healthcare providers.

• Acknowledging Fear: “I see fear in your expression. Can we discuss specific fears or concerns about the procedure?”
• Understanding Discomfort: “You seem uncomfortable. Share more about the discomfort so we can address it effectively.”
• Expressing Uncertainty: “Detecting uncertainty. What information or details would help clarify your understanding?”
• Sharing Symptoms: “You’ve mentioned symptoms. Let’s delve deeper into each symptom for a comprehensive understanding.”
• Concerns about Treatment: “Noticing concerns about the treatment plan. What aspects are causing hesitation or worry?”

Why Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication is Important for Healthcare?

Paraphrasing plays a crucial role in therapeutic communication within healthcare settings. Here’s why it’s paramount:

• Enhances Understanding: Paraphrasing ensures healthcare providers accurately comprehend patients’ concerns, fostering better understanding.
• Builds Trust: It establishes trust between healthcare professionals and patients by demonstrating active listening and empathy.
• Promotes Patient-Centered Care: By paraphrasing, healthcare providers prioritize patients’ perspectives, contributing to more personalized and effective care.
• Clarifies Information: Paraphrasing helps in clarifying medical information, ensuring patients grasp treatment plans, diagnoses, and instructions accurately.
• Encourages Open Communication: Patients feel more encouraged to share their thoughts and emotions when healthcare providers paraphrase, promoting open dialogue.

What is the Technique for Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communication?

Mastering the technique of paraphrasing in therapeutic communication involves specific strategies:

• Active Listening: Engage in active listening to grasp the essence of what the patient is expressing.
• Use Empathetic Language: Choose words that convey empathy, understanding, and validation.
• Rephrase with Sensitivity: Paraphrase the patient’s statements with sensitivity, maintaining the emotional tone.
• Seek Confirmation: After paraphrasing, seek confirmation from the patient to ensure accuracy and alignment with their feelings.
• Avoid Distorted Interpretation: Be cautious not to distort the meaning of the patient’s message while paraphrasing, aiming for an accurate representation.
• Adapt to Patient’s Communication Style: Tailor paraphrasing to align with the patient’s communication style and preferences.
• Encourage Further Expression: Paraphrasing should invite patients to elaborate on their feelings or concerns, facilitating deeper communication.
• Offer Validation: Conclude the paraphrase by validating the patient’s emotions or experiences, reinforcing a supportive therapeutic environment.

Tips for Effective Paraphrasing in Therapeutic Communications

• Active Listening: Pay close attention to patients’ verbal and nonverbal cues to understand their message fully.
• Use Open-Ended Questions: Encourage patients to share more details, allowing for a comprehensive paraphrasing response.
• Reflect Emotions: Paraphrase not only the content but also the emotional tone, showing empathy and understanding.
• Avoid Jargon: Use simple and clear language, avoiding medical jargon to ensure patients comprehend the paraphrased information.
• Check for Accuracy: Confirm with patients if the paraphrased statement accurately reflects their thoughts and feelings.
• Respectful Tone: Maintain a respectful and non-judgmental tone while paraphrasing to create a supportive environment.
• Offer Validation: Acknowledge patients’ experiences and feelings through paraphrasing to make them feel heard and validated.

In conclusion, mastering the skill of paraphrasing is pivotal in therapeutic communication, especially within healthcare. This guide explored its significance, techniques, and real-life examples. By fostering understanding, trust, and patient-centered care, effective paraphrasing becomes a cornerstone for building meaningful connections between healthcare providers and patients, ultimately enhancing the overall healthcare experience.

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Reflection (Therapeutic Behavior)

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• Kathryn N. Schrantz 3 &
• Alicia Lyon-Limke McLean 4  

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Active listening techniques ; Affirmation statements ; Directive techniques ; Feelings interpretation ; Feelings validation ; Nondirective techniques ; Psychotherapy ; Reflective statements

Therapeutic reflections are statements used by psychotherapists to restate, paraphrase, or uncover therapy clients’ emotional reactions to situations, thoughts, behaviors, or interpersonal interactions.

Introduction

Verbal and nonverbal reflections are a major component of psychotherapy. Considered as an active listening technique, reflections serve as an important therapeutic tool. Often, reflections paraphrase or restate clients’ feelings and emotions. Therapists also use reflections to help clients examine previously undiscovered or misunderstood emotional reactions. There are various types of reflections that are used to elicit different reactions from clients. Reflections impact the therapeutic relationship and play a significant role in many therapeutic approaches.

Types of...

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Arnold, K. (2014). Behind the mirror: Reflective listening and its Tain in the work of Carl Rogers. The Humanistic Psychologist, 42 (4), 354–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2014.913247 .

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4.6: Techniques of Therapeutic Communication II: Focusing, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

Chapter 1: introduction to nursing, chapter 2: introduction to health, chapter 3: healthcare delivery systems, chapter 4: communication, chapter 5: infection prevention and control, chapter 6: the nursing process i, chapter 7: the nursing process ii, chapter 8: the nursing process iii.

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Here are additional therapeutic communication techniques to improve communication between patients and nurses.

First, it is important that a nurse focuses on the specific details of the conversation and centers it on the key problems.

For example, a nurse educating a patient about insulin self-administration brings back the focus by saying, "Since we have spoken about the diabetic diet, we can now practice insulin self-administration."

Next, a nurse can paraphrase the patient's words to avoid misinterpretation.

For example, if the patient says, "My mind keeps diverting," the nurse can paraphrase:" Do you mean you have difficulty concentrating?".

Next, summarizing helps to analyze and highlight essential communication details, providing a sense of clarification and closure to the patient.

For example, a nurse can summarize diabetes management to a patient by saying, "During our session, we discussed your prescribed diabetic medications, exercise, and diet. Can you briefly review the steps with me?".

Besides these, a nurse may also use techniques like sharing hope, confrontation, empathy, clarifying, and silence to achieve desired outcomes.

Focusing involves centering a conversation on a message's critical elements or concepts. Focusing is valuable if the talk is vague or patients begin to repeat themselves. Sometimes, when patients are asked about their symptoms, they may go off-topic and try to tell their entire life story. Respectfully, the nurse should bring the conversation back into focus.

This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The nurse can shift the conversation to focus on the pertinent information that the patient provides. Consider a scenario in which a patient casually mentions they are suffering from knee pain. Then, the nurse might find it helpful to concentrate on this question: "How intense is the pain you are experiencing? Rate it from 1 to 10.

Paraphrasing is briefly restating another's message using one's own words. Through paraphrasing, nurses provide feedback informing patients they are actively involved in the search for understanding. Accurate paraphrasing requires practice. If the meaning of a message is changed or distorted through paraphrasing, communication becomes ineffective. For example, a patient says, "I've been overweight all my life and never had any problems. I can't understand why I need to be on a diet." An effective paraphrase of this statement would be: "You're not convinced that you need to make different food choices because you seem to have stayed healthy."

Summarizing is a highly effective therapeutic communication technique that draws attention to the main issues discussed, and the consensus reached at the end of the conversation. A nurse manager working with a disgruntled employee might summarize their interaction: "You've told me why you do not like this job and how unhappy you've been. You agreed to try a few of the solutions we've come up with, and you will let me know if these ideas improve your job satisfaction. We've also thought of some other potential solutions you can consider.”

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How Parroting Is Used in Therapy

An Effective Conversational Technique

Daniel B. Block, MD, is an award-winning, board-certified psychiatrist who operates a private practice in Pennsylvania.

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How to Use Parroting

• Role in Talk Therapy

Goals of Therapy

What is parroting in therapy.

Parroting is a conversational technique used in therapy. The therapist loosely repeats, or "reflects," what the client has just said.

Parroting is an effective tool in therapy. Its goals are to ensure that the therapist has heard what was said correctly, to encourage the client to clarify their thoughts, and to help the client feel heard and validated.

When parroting, don't go too far. It is much better to repeat only the last few words than to attempt to repeat several sentences. Additionally, repetitive parroting can become annoying. It can also make the client feel nervous or edgy.

When used properly, parroting can help encourage the client to talk through all sides of an issue and come to their own logical conclusion.

Parroting's Role in Talk Therapy

Parroting is used in talk therapy, also known as psychotherapy. Talk therapy is based on the core idea that talking about the things that are bothering you can help clarify them and put them in perspective. Some talk therapists follow a specific school of thought, such as cognitive theory or behaviorism. Others use a more eclectic approach , drawing techniques, and principles from several different theories.

If you're seeking therapy , develop a few goals to have in mind. For example, if you're a phobia sufferer, your goal likely is to be freed of your irrational fears. Other goals of therapy are:

• Learn to deal with the disorder. The ultimate goal of any type of therapy is to help the client deal more successfully with a disorder or a situation.
• Make goals specific. The specific treatment goals depend on the individual client, the therapist’s theories, and the situation at hand. The goal may be concrete, such as quitting smoking, or more abstract, such as anger management.
• Overcome and manage fear. When talk therapy is used for phobia treatment, there are generally two goals. One is to help the client overcome fear. The second goal is to help the client learn to manage any remaining fear so that he or she is able to live a normal, functional life.
• Resolve underlying issues: Some forms of talk therapy have a third goal. In psychoanalysis and related therapies, the goal is to discover and resolve the underlying conflict that caused the phobia or other disorder. In interpersonal therapies, the goal is to resolve problems in interpersonal relationships that have resulted from or contributed to the phobia or other disorders.

A Word From Verywell Mind

Parroting is a way for a therapist to make sure they've heard and understood what the client has said, to encourage the client to share thoughts, and to help validate the client. It's also a helpful tool in personal relationships, helping the other person feel heard and cared for.

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Lord SP, Sheng E, Imel ZE, Baer J, Atkins DC. More than reflections: Empathy in motivational interviewing includes language style synchrony between therapist and client .  Behav Ther . 2015;46(3):296-303. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2014.11.002

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Why Are Rephrasing And Summarizing Crucial In Counseling

Table of Contents

Why are rephrasing and summarizing crucial in counseling?

By giving accurate responses through encouraging, paraphrasing, and summarizing, a counsellor can encourage a client to keep talking, open up more freely, and explore issues in more detail. Informing the client that the counsellor has correctly understood what they have been saying by responding in this manner. Clarifying emotions for the counselor and the client is the goal of summarizing in counseling.Counseling is a type of talk therapy. It is a process where a person, a couple, or a family meets with a qualified professional counselor to discuss problems and issues in their lives. Professional counseling is discreet and nonjudgmental.

In counseling, what benefit does summarizing have?

When summarizing, the therapist reflects back the main ideas discussed during the session to give the client a chance to review and correct the therapist if any details seem off. In order to help both the client and the counselor better understand their feelings, summaries are helpful. Summarizing entails expressing an idea succinctly, whereas paraphrasing entails expressing an idea in full using the majority of the data from the original source while maintaining the original meaning.The first and most important step in summarizing is to recognize the key points in the text that are being presented.Both your reading and writing skills will benefit from summarizing. To paraphrase, you must carefully read a passage, identifying the main ideas and ancillary ideas. Then, in a few sentences or a paragraph, you must sum up those ideas. Understanding the distinction between a summary and a paraphrase is crucial.A summary gives the reader all of the pertinent facts, concepts, or arguments from the original source. While written in your own words, a summary still only serves to explain the ideas of another author. It does not serve as a judgment, commentary, or analysis.Therefore, summaries serve three main purposes: (1) they make an article’s content clear so that readers can decide whether or not they want to read it; (2) they help readers organize their thoughts about what will come next; and (3) they help readers remember key details from the article.

What does summarizing mean at the end of counseling?

Each session should conclude with a summary to help the counselor create a better progress note and facilitate the development of counseling interventions. Additionally, it demonstrates to the client that you two are on the same page in terms of the tasks the client is completing and the objectives the client is achieving. By combining two or more of the client’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors into a single general theme, the counselor creates a summary. When a counselor wants to make connections between two or more topics during choice points of a counseling interview, they typically use summarization as a skill.Key Qualities of a Summary A lead, which includes the title, author, and text type, appears at the start of a summary. In the same way that the text itself develops, summaries are written in chronological order. There are no opinions or conclusions in summaries.Students learn how to identify the most crucial ideas in a text, how to filter out unimportant information, and how to coherently combine the key ideas through summarizing. It helps students remember what they read when they are taught how to summarize. Nearly all content areas allow for the use of summarization techniques.The objective of a summary—of a piece of writing, a chapter, or a whole book—is to restate the key points of the original piece in as few words and in the most concise manner possible.An accurate, understandable, and condensed summary is preferred. Represents the original text truthfully – A summary must always do this. Clear – A summary should be simple to understand for the reader. This entails condensing long or complex texts into writing that is brief and (relatively) easy to understand.

What is the counseling process’s synopsis?

The five fundamental phases of counseling are: 1) Establishing the client-clinician relationship; 2) Clarifying and assessing the situation or problem; 3) Determining and setting counseling or treatment goals; 4) Creating and putting into practice interventions; and 5) Planning, concluding, and following up. Counseling skills are both hard (technical) and soft (interpersonal) abilities that a counselor uses to help their clients work through their personal problems and get past obstacles that are currently keeping them from living a full and happy life.

What are the key components of summarizing?

Compelling summaries are those that are thorough, succinct, coherent, and independent. These characteristics are described below: A summary must be thorough: You should identify all of the crucial ideas from the original passage and list them. The three elements that all summarization techniques have in common are the selection of key concepts, the elimination of irrelevant details, and the replacement of lengthy passages in the original work with a single, well-written sentence. Summarization is the retention, erasure, and replacement of information.Instead of outlining the text by condensing an idea, it is more helpful for the students to group the text’s main points together. Summarizing is an important tactic that helps readers remember text quickly.When: When you want to provide background information or an overview of a subject. You want to discuss information about a subject that you’ve learned from various sources. You want to ascertain a single source’s key points.The two types of summarization are extractive and abstractive. In order to create a summary, extractive summarization chooses a subset of the text’s sentences; abstractive summarization rearranges the language in the text and, if necessary, adds new words or phrases.Finding the main ideas and important details in each paragraph is made easier by summarizing. This is similar to panning for gold. Understanding the main ideas and important details is the key to effective learning.

What portion of summarizing *is most crucial?

Make sure to use your original language and sentence structure while condensing your sentences. Keep the original text’s logical order in mind. Make sure your own point of view is strictly objective (reporting only the text’s content). A summary should not include opinions. A summary should present a concise representation of main points, ideas, concepts, facts, or text in your own words. Summarizing calls for critical reading, thinking, and writing abilities that are essential for success in any course level.A longer passage, ranging from a few sentences to several paragraphs or even more, is summarized by restating the key points in your own words. Compared to the original source, your summary will contain a lot fewer words.Write down the text’s main points and then restate them in your own words and writing style as a summary. A third of the original length or less should be taken up by the summary.The original source of a paraphrase must also be mentioned. The material that has been paraphrased is typically shorter than the original passage because it has been condensed. In order to summarize, you must rephrase the main idea(s) and only mention the main idea(s).A summary should explain the main points of the text to readers who have not read the full piece or watched the presentation. It gives a brief explanation of the main idea or purpose of the essay and summarizes the arguments that support it.

What is the significance of summarizing?

Students learn how to identify the most crucial ideas in a text, how to filter out unimportant information, and how to coherently combine the main ideas through summarizing. Students’ reading retention is improved when they are taught how to summarize. In almost every subject area, summarization techniques are applicable. When you need to offer a quick summary of a longer text, choose to summarize rather than paraphrase. With summaries, you can cut out irrelevant or unimportant details, highlight key points, and make the author’s argument more clear.Summarizing aids in understanding and significantly increases the retention of information in long-term memory in students. One metacognitive strategy that increases remembering and understanding is summarizing. It promotes effective use of mental abilities.Outlines, abstracts, and synopses are the three main categories of informative summaries. Outlines show the structure or skeleton of a piece of writing. Using an outline, you can see how the various parts of the text relate to one another. A chapter’s synopsis is provided here.Summarizing functions similarly to outlining a play’s plot. For instance, if asked to sum up Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you might say: It is the tale of a young prince of Denmark who learns that his mother and uncle have murdered his father, the former king.Outlines, abstracts, and synopses comprise the three primary categories of informative summaries. Outlines display the structure or skeleton of a piece of writing. Outlines display the relationship and order of the various parts of the text. An outline for a chapter on summarization.

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Active Listening Techniques for Psychologists

Active listening means being fully engaged in what a speaker is trying to communicate to you. Active listening is important in building relationships, empathizing with others, and solving problems. It is particularly important to those pursuing psychology careers—understanding clients, developing trusting relationships with them, and helping them resolve their issues are essential aspects of psychology. Understanding active listening and its benefits and learning useful active listening techniques can help you navigate relationships in both your personal and professional life.

Benefits of Active Listening

Anyone can benefit from sharpening their active listening skills, but those pursuing psychology careers may find that being a good active listener is indispensable. Active listening comes with myriad perks that span well beyond the psychologist’s office, however. For example, it can:

• Establish trust. When you use active listening techniques, the person speaking sees that you are interested in what they are saying and feeling. When you show that you are trying to understand someone’s issues, trust will naturally build between you. In psychology careers, this can help you get an open, honest line of communication with your client. Trust is an incredibly valuable asset in fields like child psychology , family therapy , and behavioral psychology .
• Keep people talking. When people feel like the person listening to them doesn’t care or is not engaged in what they are saying, they may be more likely to stop talking. For psychologists, it’s important to make your clients feel comfortable when they are opening up and elaborating on their feelings.
• Help you understand others’ issues. Listening for the meaning behind someone’s words can help you get a stronger, more nuanced understanding of their feelings and issues.
• Allow for reflection. Because active listening involves checking for understanding, both the speaker and the listener need to have opportunities to hear and process what is being said. Many psychology fields, such as clinical psychology , depend on moments of reflection to paint a holistic picture of their clients and their issues.

11 Tips for Improving Active Listening Skills

Paraphrasing, summarizing, clarifying, and reflecting aren’t the only active listening exercises that you can practice. The following simple, actionable techniques can help you become a better listener, whether you’re a psychology professional or not.

• Focus on what’s important. Listen for the main points, rather than nitpick at minor details that could derail the speaker’s thoughts.
• Choose to be interested. Not everyone is going to talk about things that interest you all the time, but switching your mindset and telling yourself, “I will be interested and engaged because I care about this person,” can help you practice active listening, even when you might not feel like listening at all.
• Ask thoughtful questions. Asking meaningful questions shows the speaker that you care about what they are saying, and are listening to their words.
• Be okay with silences. Letting silences rest gives you time to process what has been said and gives the speaker time to work through their thoughts and figure out how to proceed.
• Listen for meaning. Active listening means analyzing more than just the speaker’s words. Listening for the impact of the specific words chosen and the context of those words can add layers of meaning and understanding.
• Don’t interrupt. Interrupting can indicate that you are more interested in talking than listening, and can discourage the speaker from continuing or make them feel uncomfortable.
• Watch their nonverbal behavior. Pay attention to the speaker’s body language. Their words may not tell the whole story and may even contrast with their body language. Noticing this can help you react and proceed as an empathetic listener.
• Ignore your internal voice/avoid daydreaming. If you are busy with your own thoughts, it’s impossible to be fully engaged in what the speaker is saying. If the speaker notices that you aren’t paying attention, they may close themselves off.
• Withhold judgment. The purpose of active listening is to gain understanding, not to critique or problem-solve. Being open and nonjudgmental allows for more open communication and compassion.
• Demonstrate positive body language that shows you’re listening—this could include eye contact, nodding, smiling, ignoring your phone or the clock, and appearing relaxed. Positive body language can encourage the speaker to continue talking. It’s important that these physical gestures are sincere and authentic.
• Avoid distractions. To be an effective active listener, you should be fully engaged in the discussion. Avoiding distractions can help you stay engaged in the conversation and show the speaker that you are interested in hearing them.

The Best Active Listening Techniques to Communicate Effectively

Mastering active listening takes practice, but once you get the hang of it, it can become second nature. Practicing the four primary active listening techniques—that is, to paraphrase, summarize, clarify, and reflect—can help you hone your skills and start communicating more effectively in professional counseling settings, as well as in day-to-day interactions.

Paraphrasing involves boiling down the essential meaning behind what the speaker has just said and stating it back to them in your own words. The speaker can then clarify or confirm that the meaning you gathered was what they were trying to convey. When paraphrasing, you should strive to withhold judgment and keep your statements neutral and concise. This allows the speaker to hear whether or not you have perceived their words as they intended, without them feeling like they are being attacked, critiqued, or analyzed.

When summarizing, the listener picks out the key points of the discussion and relays them back to the speaker. In a psychology setting, this may occur at the end of your session with a client. Summarizing should be concise and should help you and the speaker connect thoughts and ideas. It can highlight the points that seem most important to the speaker, and give them the chance to confirm the significance of those points, and reflect on their recurrence. Summarizing can also help both you and the speaker see if there are any themes or connecting threads between the main points that could be explored further, and it can be a useful tool for tracking progress between sessions.

Clarifying helps the listener understand what was said and gives the speaker an opportunity to elaborate and assess their thoughts and feelings more precisely. It also shows the speaker that the listener is invested in understanding them, which can encourage the speaker to continue talking further. To clarify successfully, you should strive to ask open-ended questions—closed yes-or-no questions can shut down a conversation quickly. It’s also important that clarifying questions remain neutral and nonjudgmental, using phrases such as “I’m not sure I understand.” Give the speaker time to work through their thoughts and provide more information.

Reflecting involves rephrasing words or sentences to let the client check and clarify the impact of their words. This helps the speaker make sense of the situation and their feelings about it and helps you better understand those feelings. For instance, if a client says, “It made me sad,” you might reflect the perceived meaning of those words by saying, “It made you upset?” Then the speaker could clarify with, “No, not upset, but defeated.” In this way, both you and the speaker reach a more nuanced and precise understanding of the situation. Communication may be eased when both the speaker and the listener have a more solid grasp on the situations and feelings being discussed, and resolutions may be easier to come by.

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Unit 2: Paraphrasing and Avoiding Plagiarism

2 Paraphrasing Techniques

Technique #1: tell-a-friend method.

This method involves using a new way to explain the meaning of the original sentence.

• Read the original sentence(s).
• Make sure you understand the sentence(s) completely.
• Cover the original source.
• Imagine you are talking to a friend and try explaining the information to your friend. Write down your explanation.
• Read the original source and make sure you have retained the original meaning.
• (See Technique #4 below: Using AI-based paraphrasing tools to improve your paraphrasing.)

Practice the Tell-a-Friend method using the proverbs below.

Proverb: You can’t judge a book by its cover.

Paraphrase: Things sometimes look different from what they really are.

Match the proverb with its paraphrase. (Answers located below.)

Technique #2: Chunking method

Another way to paraphrase is to break the original into smaller units, or “chunks.” This method can be useful for longer passages.

• Read the original sentence(s) and make sure you understand the sentence(s) completely.
• Divide the sentence(s) into chunks (these are often grammatical clauses). Underline each chunk, focusing on how you can divide the sentence into phrases.
• Re-write each chunk in your own words.
• Combine these rewritten chunks into one or more sentences to create a paraphrase. Think about how the ideas are related to each other; you might need to include additional words (e.g. transition phrases) as you combine the chunks.
• You may re-order the chunks to make the order of ideas different from the original, but if you do, make sure the paraphrase still makes sense.

Chunking examples:

#1 Original: “As more and more people have become increasingly used to sharing and collaborating outside the workplace via social networks, (chunk 1) they are coming to expect firms to be more open and collaborative places too (chunk 2).” From Author Unknown, “Yammering Away at the Office,” (2010), p. 1.

• 1) people have grown more accustomed to using social media platforms for collaboration and sharing ideas beyond their jobs
• 2) there are increasing expectations that companies will encourage more collaboration.

Paraphrase: Workers are expecting companies to encourage more collaboration since many people have grown accustomed to using social media platforms for collaboration and sharing ideas beyond their jobs (“Yammering away at the office,” 2010, p. 1).

#2 Original: “Psychologists have argued that digital technology is changing the way we write (chunk 1) in that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write (chunk 2) because word processing software allows them to edit as they go along (chunk 3).” From David Derbyshire, “Social websites harm children’s brains,” (2009), p. 2.

• 1) psychologists claim that computers and software are influencing the writing process
• 2) students can skip the planning process
• 3) word processing programs help them revise throughout the writing process

Paraphrase: Because word processing programs help students revise their essays throughout the writing process and even skip the planning process altogether, psychologists claim that computers and software are influencing the writing process (Derbyshire, 2009, p. 2)

Adapted from Dollahite, N.E. & Huan, J. (2012). SourceWork: Academic Writing for Success.

Technique #3: Paraphrasing plus Summarizing method

Sometimes you will be able to identify one or two specific sentences to paraphrase. However, it is more common to use information from a longer passage, like a paragraph or two, or a section or sections of an article. To do this effectively, you must combine the skills of paraphrasing and summarizing.

• Paraphrasing: Restating an individual sentence that contains key ideas in your own words, keeping the same length and meaning.
• Summarizing: Expressing an overall idea of a longer passage in your own words, keeping the same meaning, but making it much more concise (shorten it).

Follow these steps to summarize AND paraphrase:

• Identify the original chunk(s) of text that you would like to cite in your paper.
• Read the chunk(s) several times to make sure you have accurate understanding and are able to “tell a friend” what the chunks are about.
• In the margins, identify key words, synonyms, or ideas that describe each chunk (color-coding can help identify similar ideas).
• Think about the most logical sequence of these ideas; you could number them.
• Write your summary, keeping it short (1 to 3 sentences). Set it aside.
• Re-read the ideas in the margins and your summary and rewrite any parts you feel could be improved; repeat steps 5-6 as needed.

The example below illustrates how a student used the skills of paraphrasing and summarizing below to condense a paragraph into a single sentence.

Original: “ The pandemic tested the resilience of colleges and universities as they executed online learning on a massive scale by creating online courses, adopting and adapting to unfamiliar technologies, engaging faculty en masse in remote teaching, and successfully meeting the instructional needs of students. Those experiences and lessons should not be discarded. The next phase for higher education in a post-COVID-19 world is to harness what worked well during the emergency response period and use those experiences to improve institutional practices for the benefit of both internal and external constituencies in the future.” From John Nworie, “Beyond COVID-19: What’s next for online teaching and learning in higher education,” (2021), p. 7.

• 1) valuable lessons learned
• 2) higher education institutions developed large-scale online courses
• 3) as a response to the pandemic
• 4) adapting and overcoming challenges in the process
• 5) should be applied to future education models

Paraphrase: Nworie (2021) recommends that the valuable lessons learned as higher education institutions developed large-scale online courses as a response to the pandemic, adapting and overcoming challenges in the process, should be applied to future education models (p. 7).

Proverbs matching answers: 1-d, 2-a, 3-e, 4-c, 5-b

Technique #4: Using Online Tools

AI-based paraphrasing tools can help you improve your writing. Most tools have free and premium versions, which have more features. Examples include:

The best way to use AI-based paraphrasing tools is to write your own version first and then use the tool to find alternative ways to express your paraphrase. Being able to write a paraphrase on your own will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of AI-generated paraphrases.

Benefits of using AI-tools:

• By seeing how the tool rewrites your text, you can learn to identify where your writing could be improved. You can learn to use more effective vocabulary, or how to structure your sentences in a more effective way.
• You can expand your vocabulary and learn effective collocations.
• You can spot grammar errors you make and learn to avoid and correct them.

Follow these guidelines when using AI tools for writing paraphrases:

• Write the paraphrase on your own first. Then paste your paraphrase into the AI with a clear prompt to check its effectiveness.
• When using AI to support your writing, always review the original text to ensure the AI accurately maintained the meaning of the original passage.
• Some tools only change the words and not the overall structure. If they tool only uses synonyms, you must change the grammar yourself.
• Always check the citation format. Do not assume the tool will use the correct citation.

To learn more about how to cite your use of AI Tools see the UW Libraries’ Research Guides on Citing Generative AI.

Knowledge Check

Exercise: take the paraphrasing quiz below..

From Excelsior Online Writing Lab, Paraphrasing – Try it Out

Academic Writing I Copyright © by UW-Madison ESL Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Five Effective Paraphrasing Techniques You Should Know

Table of Contents

Effective paraphrasing requires understanding the material and writing it in your own words . Students, content writers, and bloggers frequently need to incorporate ideas from several sources into their own work.

If you want to paraphrase, you have to change while retaining the original meaning. This article covers five effective paraphrasing techniques for writing better content for your website, blog, or academic paper.

What Does Paraphrasing Mean?

Paraphrasing is the process of restating someone else’s ideas or other information in your own words while preserving the meaning. A paraphrased text is sometimes shorter than the source. For effective paraphrasing, you must change the words and structure of a sentence.

However, a summary should not be confused with paraphrasing. A summary only includes key points of a text rewritten in your own words. The summarized version is usually much shorter than the source text.

Five Effective Paraphrasing Techniques

The key to effective paraphrasing is how you manage to phrase ideas creatively. You must make your sentences flow in a way that’s beneficial for the readers to grasp the concept easily.

Paraphrasing will demonstrate your ability to write sentences from a different angle after authentically experiencing the same idea from someone else.

Here are five effective paraphrasing techniques for you to consider for your next assignment.

1. Use Synonyms

One of the most common ways to make your writing sound less confusing is to take familiar words and replace them with synonyms.

If you need to change the meaning of a word, you can also replace it with a similar word. These substitutions will make your writing more interesting and fresh, not confusing.

Original Text: The students illustrated their presentation slides with stories.

Paraphrased: The students explained their presentation slides with stories.

2. Change the Word Class or Form

It is easy to spot the difference when you copy words or sentences directly from a book. We all have different writing styles, and yours will be distinct from those of the authors you’re reading.

Changing the word class or form of words is a good approach to make your text sound significantly different. You can replace the verb of a sentence with a noun from the same word family or change an adjective with a noun.

Original Text: The supervisor played a significant role in the success of the project.

Paraphrased: The supervisor played a significant role in the successful completion of this project.

3. Modify the Sentence Structure

One way to effectively paraphrase a text is to shift the sentence structure. This can help address the unclear wording of the original text and make it easier to understand.

Change the sentence structure using a verb from the second half of the sentence as your subject rather than the first half. Moving something up in the sentence or moving it towards the end of the sentence could change its meaning substantially.

Original Text: The wedding photography package price includes travel fees, taxes, and editing costs.

Paraphrased: The travel fees, taxes, and editing costs are included in the wedding photography package.

4. Change the Grammatical Structure

To paraphrase, you need to change the grammatical structure of the original sentence. One way to do this is by utilizing a different tense. When you use this technique, the statement will be in the past tense but in the active voice. This can create a lot of impacts when communicating.

Original Text: A cake is being baked by Laura

Paraphrased: Laura is baking a cake.

5. Use Different Techniques To Work Together

Improve your ability to paraphrase by using several complementary paraphrasing techniques. For example, you can use passive voice, synonyms, or different word forms to convey similar ideas.

These techniques work together to help you effectively paraphrase an original text without any risk of plagiarism. Your paraphrased text will sound like a completely new and unique idea.

Paraphrasing can be quite helpful when writing or speaking, and it is important to possess the skills required to do it effectively. With the proper technique and format, paraphrasing can help make your writing or speech more memorable and understandable .

Everyone needs a little help on occasion. But with just a few small changes, your audience’s perception of you will be enhanced, and so will your impact.

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

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StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

StatPearls [Internet].

Person-centered therapy (rogerian therapy).

Lucy Yao ; Rian Kabir .

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Last Update: February 9, 2023 .

• Continuing Education Activity

Person-centered therapy, also referred to as non-directive, client-centered, or Rogerian therapy, was pioneered by Carl Rogers in the early 1940s. This form of psychotherapy is grounded in the idea that people are inherently motivated toward achieving positive psychological functioning. The client is believed to be the expert in their life and leads the general direction of therapy, while the therapist takes a non-directive role. This activity reviews person-centered therapy and highlights the role of the interprofessional team in improving care for patients who undergo person-centered therapy.

• Identify the core conditions of person-centered therapy.
• Explain the therapeutic process of person-centered therapy.
• Describe the benefits and criticisms of person-centered therapy.
• Review the efficacy of person-centered therapy in the treatment of common psychiatric illnesses.
• Introduction

Person-centered therapy, also referred to as non-directive, client-centered, or Rogerian therapy, was pioneered by Carl Rogers in the early 1940s. This form of psychotherapy is grounded in the idea that people are inherently motivated toward achieving positive psychological functioning. The client is believed to be the expert in their life and leads the general direction of therapy, while the therapist takes a non-directive rather than a mechanistic approach.

The therapist's role is to provide a space conducive to uncensored self-exploration. As the client explores their feelings, they will gain a clearer perception of themselves, leading to psychological growth. The therapist attempts to increase the client's self-understanding by reflecting and carefully clarifying questions. Although few therapists today adhere solely to person-centered therapy, its concepts and techniques have been incorporated eclectically into many different types of therapists' practices. [1]

• Issues of Concern

Origins of Person-Centered Therapy

Person-centered therapy, also referred to as non-directive, client-centered, or Rogerian therapy, was pioneered by Carl Rogers in the early 1940s. His ideas were considered radical; they diverged from the dominant behavioral and psychoanalytic theories at the time. Rogers' method emphasizes reflective listening, empathy, and acceptance in therapy rather than the interpretation of behaviors or unconscious drives. [1]

In the 1960s, person-centered therapy became closely tied to the Human Potential Movement, which believed that all individuals have a natural drive toward self-actualization. In this state, one is able to manifest their full potential. According to Rogers, negative self-perceptions can prevent one from realizing self-actualization.

Rogers postulated that a state of incongruence might exist within the client, meaning there is a discrepancy between the client's self-image and the reality of their experience. This incongruence leads to feelings of vulnerability and anxiety. [2]  

Person-centered therapy operates on the humanistic belief that the client is inherently driven toward and has the capacity for growth and self-actualization; it relies on this force for therapeutic change. [3]  The role of the counselor is to provide a nonjudgmental environment conducive to honest self-exploration. The therapist attempts to increase the client's self-understanding by reflecting and carefully clarifying questions without offering advice. The therapist functions under the assumption that the client knows themselves best; thus, viable solutions can only come from them.

Direction from the therapist may reinforce the notion that solutions to one's struggles lie externally. Through client self-exploration and reinforcement of the client's worth, person-centered therapy aims to improve self-esteem, increase trust in one's decision-making, and increase one's ability to cope with the consequences of their decisions. [4]  Rogers did not believe that a psychological diagnosis was necessary for psychotherapy. [2]

The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Rogers identified six conditions that were necessary and sufficient to facilitate therapeutic change. [2]

• Therapist-client psychological contact: the therapist and client are in psychological contact
• Client incongruence: the client is experiencing a state of incongruence
• Therapist congruence: the therapist is congruent, or genuine, in the relationship
• Therapist unconditional positive regard: the therapist has unconditional positive regard toward the client
• Therapist empathic understanding: the therapist experiences and communicates an empathic understanding of the client's internal perspective
• Client perception: the client perceives the therapist's unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding

Core Conditions

Rogers defined three attitudes on the therapist's part that are key to the success of person-centered therapy. These core conditions consist of accurate empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. [3] [2]

Accurate Empathy

The therapist engages in active listening, paying careful attention to the client's feelings and thoughts. The therapist conveys an accurate understanding of the patient's private world throughout the therapy session as if it were their own. One helpful technique to express accurate empathy is reflection, which involves paraphrasing and/or summarizing the feeling behind what the client says rather than the content. This also allows clients to process their feelings after hearing them restated by someone else.

The therapist transparently conveys their feelings and thoughts to genuinely relate to the client. Within the client-therapist relationship, the therapist is genuinely himself. The therapist does not hide behind a professional façade or deceive the client. Therapists may share their emotional reactions with their clients but should not share their personal problems with clients or shift the focus to themselves in any way.

Unconditional Positive Regard

The therapist creates a warm environment that conveys to clients that they are accepted unconditionally. The therapist does not signal judgment, approval, or disapproval, no matter how unconventional the client's views may be. This may allow the client to drop their natural defenses, allowing them to freely express their feelings and direct their self-exploration as they see fit.

Critics have contended that the principles of person-centered therapy are too vague. Some argue that person-centered therapy is ineffective for clients who have difficulty talking about themselves or have a mental illness that alters their perceptions of reality. There is a lack of controlled research on the efficacy of person-centered therapy, and no objective data suggests its efficacy was due to its distinctive features. [1]  People have asserted that the unique qualities of client-centered therapy are not effective, and the effective aspects are not unique but characteristic of all good therapy. [5]

• Clinical Significance

Indications for Psychotherapy

Clinicians may initiate or refer a patient to psychotherapy for reasons not limited to the following:

• Treatment of a psychiatric disorder
• Help with maladaptive thoughts or behaviors
• Support during stressful circumstances or when a chronic problem impairs functioning
• Improve a patient's ability to make positive behavioral changes, such as healthy lifestyle changes or increasing adherence to medical treatment
• Helping with interpersonal problems

Person-centered therapy can be used in various settings, including individual, group, and family therapy, or as part of play therapy with young children. There are no set guidelines on the length or frequency of person-centered therapy, but it may be used for short-term or long-term treatment. Person-centered therapy may be a good choice for patients who are not suitable for other forms of therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBPT) or psychoanalysis, which require homework assignments and the ability to tolerate high levels of distress that may occur when elucidating unconscious processes. [6]

Person-centered therapy relies on the client's active participation and may not be appropriate for individuals who lack motivation or insight into their emotions and behaviors.

To examine the efficacy of person-centered therapy in the treatment of various psychiatric conditions, this article will include recent studies using any form of non-directive counseling based on Rogerian principles, including person-centered therapy/client-centered therapy (PCT/CCT), non-directive supportive therapy (NDST), and supportive counseling/therapy (SC/ST).

Important limitations exist as NDST is not a popular focus of most researchers in the field. It is often only included as a control for nonspecific therapeutic conditions, and therapists may not have administered optimal treatments. Consequently, the researcher's allegiance to a specific therapy could skew results. [7] [8]  Additionally, given the inherent vagueness of this type of therapy, there could be differences in how NDST/SC/ST was defined and implemented.

There is evidence in the literature to support the efficacy of non-directive therapy as a treatment for depression. Three meta-analyses conducted within the past decade concluded that ST/NDST is an effective therapy for adult depression but may be less effective than other forms of therapy. [7]  [Level 1] 

Importantly, the authors mention that researcher bias may have played a role in the superiority of the other psychotherapies. After controlling for researcher allegiance, the differences in efficacy between non-directive therapy and other psychotherapies disappeared. This was true for all three meta-analyses. One study also notes no significant difference in effect sizes of non-directive supportive therapy versus full person-centered therapy. However, this was only based on two studies. [7]

A 2021 randomized, non-inferiority trial comparing person-centered therapy with CBT as a therapeutic intervention for depression found that person-centered therapy was not inferior to CBT at six months; however, person-centered therapy may be inferior to CBT at 12 months. The authors suggest that there needs to be continued investment in person-centered therapy to improve short-term outcomes. [9]  [Level 1]

In adults with depression over the age of 50, one meta-analysis found non-directive counseling to be effective, with effects maintained for at least six months. However, non-directive counseling was less effective than CBT and problem-solving therapy. [10]  [Level 1]

A 48-week randomized control trial compared nonspecific supportive psychotherapy with cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy (CBASP) in patients with chronic depression that were unmedicated (n=268). Both groups demonstrated a reduction in depressive symptoms. Patients who received nonspecific supportive psychotherapy had a lower response rate than patients who received CBASP. [11]  [Level 1]

However, there were fewer severe adverse events with nonspecific supportive psychotherapy. [12]  [Level 1] Follow-up two years posttreatment found the benefits of the two treatments were comparable on multiple measures, including the number of asymptomatic weeks. [13]  [Level 1]

Bipolar disorder

One randomized controlled trial (n=76) compared ST/SC to CBT in treating bipolar disorders and observed no difference in relapse rates. [14]  [Level 2]

Non-directive psychotherapy may be comparable to CBT and other forms of psychotherapy in treating generalized anxiety disorder in older adults. [15]

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In the treatment of PTSD, non-directive therapy may be an effective treatment. [16]  Person-centered therapy may be comparable to evidence-based treatments for PTSD, with fewer dropouts. [17]  Trauma treatment research consistently shows lower dropout rates with person-centered therapy compared to other types of treatment. PCT may be a reasonable option in settings without the resources to provide the high levels of training required in other therapeutic modalities for PTSD.

Despite mixed evidence of its efficacy compared to other forms of psychotherapy, person-centered therapy is consistently recommended as a viable option, given the rising demand for psychological therapy. [9]  The literature suggests an important role for PCT in low-resource communities where the training and supervision of more technical psychotherapies may be less readily available, and access to mental healthcare is limited. [17] [18]

• Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes

It is estimated that 1 in 5 adults living in the United Kingdom and the United States suffer from mental illness. [19]  Most patients receive treatment for a nonpsychotic psychiatric disorder in a primary care setting. In recent years, mental health care in children and adolescents has increased more rapidly compared with adult mental health care. Again, most of this mental health care has been provided by non-psychiatrist providers. [20]  

In response to this rising need, there have been recent efforts to integrate behavioral health and primary care—an interprofessional care strategy will result in the best outcomes. The Collaborative Care Model employs a team-based approach emphasizing collaboration between different providers and has demonstrated improvement in depression outcomes compared to the usual care that persists for at least 24 months. [21]  [Level 1]

Compared to other forms of psychotherapy, person-centered therapy has the advantage of being more readily available and more easily implemented in other healthcare roles. [11]  Rogers himself stated that professional psychological knowledge is not required of the therapist; the qualities of the therapist and their experiential training are more important than intellectual training. [2]  

In a small randomized controlled trial comparing various psychotherapeutic interventions of PTSD in a low-resource setting, all participants experienced symptom reduction regardless of the intervention. Importantly, nurses felt that supportive counseling was the most transferable to their respective work environments. [18]  [Level 2] Another pragmatic trial (n = 228) found that non-directive counseling provided by public health nurses is an efficacious treatment for post-partum depression. [22]  [Level 3] 

Non-directive supportive counseling has a broader application beyond behavioral health. Healthcare providers can employ these principles to help patients make informed decisions about their physical health; however, more research is necessary to assess the impact of this approach on healthcare outcomes. [23]  [Level 1]

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Disclosure: Lucy Yao declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Rian Kabir declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

• Cite this Page Yao L, Kabir R. Person-Centered Therapy (Rogerian Therapy) [Updated 2023 Feb 9]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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• Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work. [Front Psychol. 2019] Managing Distress Over Time in Psychotherapy: Guiding the Client in and Through Intense Emotional Work. Muntigl P. Front Psychol. 2019; 10:3052. Epub 2020 Feb 19.
• Data mining techniques in psychotherapy: applications for studying therapeutic alliance. [Sci Rep. 2023] Data mining techniques in psychotherapy: applications for studying therapeutic alliance. Mosavi NS, Ribeiro E, Sampaio A, Santos MF. Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 29; 13(1):16409. Epub 2023 Sep 29.
• Predictors and moderators of between-therapists and within-therapist differences in depressed outpatients' experiences of the Rogerian conditions. [J Couns Psychol. 2016] Predictors and moderators of between-therapists and within-therapist differences in depressed outpatients' experiences of the Rogerian conditions. Zuroff DC, Shahar G, Blatt SJ, Kelly AC, Leybman MJ. J Couns Psychol. 2016 Mar; 63(2):162-72.
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