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Importance of self-awareness for the counsellor

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Self-awareness is a very significant part of a counsellor and it is argued that self-awareness is as important as micro-skills. It can be thus said that without self-awareness a counsellor will not be able to play an important role in the life of a client. Self-awareness is a concept that helps a counsellor in differentiating thyself from the client. It is very necessary that the counsellor shall be able to distinguish between the feelings and values of the client and themselves. This is only possible if s counsellor knows about self-awareness. Self-awareness is also related to self-disclosure. For a counsellor it is important to enhance the self-disclosure

ability of their clients and for that they also need to do self-disclosure. The counsellor shall know the extent to which self-disclosure for their side is required so as to motivate the client for self-disclosure (Bond, 2015). But, first of all it is very necessary to know about the selfawareness and its importance to a counsellor.
For a counsellor it is not possible to know someone else until and unless they know
themselves. To understand the meaning of self awareness there is a very good framework provided by Ivey and this framework is in acronym of ‘respectful’. If these acronyms are elaborated then it makes religious/spiritual identity, economic class background, sexual identity, psychological maturity, ethnic/racial identity, chronological challenges, various forms of trauma and health of well-being, family background and history, unique psychological characteristics and location of residence and language differences. These are the aspects that help a counsellor in self-awareness and knowing the client well. Selfawareness is something that grows over the time with more exploration. Self-awareness helps a counsellor in opening the heart and mind to the experiences of inner selves. This will help the counsellor to communicate more easily with their clients by reflecting on their thoughts
and values. Self-awareness has a big role to play in differentiating between one’s own values and other’s values. This is very important for a client to differentiate the values of client with his own values and only then the counsellor can provide better guidance to the client (Taegtmeyer et al., 2013).Without self-awareness it is nearly impossible for a counsellor to provide non-judgemental suggestions and help to a client. Self-awareness helps counsellor to know more and more about themselves and if they will not know enough of their personality and nature it will not be possible for them to help others. Just because of self-awareness the
counsellors are able to know the nature of clients and then act as per the requirement of the client. At the same time self-awareness also helps counsellors in using their skills and knowledge in a better way.
Self-awareness is a tool that helps counsellors in clear perception about their personalities, strengths, beliefs, thoughts, emotions and motivation. It also helps counsellor to understand how clients perceive them. This also helps in making changes in the thoughts of clients. The most significant aspect of self-awareness is that a counsellor is able to make changes in the thoughts and interpretations that he makes in his mind. Changing these interpretations enable a counsellor to change their emotions and this is something that is very significant in achieving success as a counsellor. There are a number of results of self-awareness and these results are very positive to the clients. It helps in making positive changes in the lives of clients. With the help of this a counsellor can enable the client to perceive their problems in a different manner. This also helps the client in better understanding the issues through which they are going. Self-awareness has a tendency to make counsellor more competent and understand an issue from all the perspectives and this is very much required to get succeeded. It further enables the counsellor to facilitate the client with new ways of learning and relating to others. In this manner self-awareness is very vital for a counsellor to do their job effectively and without self-awareness there is no possibility of understanding the actual issues that the client is facing.

Author bio: Amy is a full-time associate professor at a reputed university in London. He also provides students with reviews at Assignment.reviews. Amy loves to bake pastries in his free time.

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