HOW TO BEGIN
What can you do to help your client become free of rigid patterns of tension, patterns of behavior which cause trouble and prevent success?
Listening
The first thing you must do and do very well is to listen, listen with interest, with full attention.
If you will listen in this manner, your client will be encouraged and enabled to talk about himself, about his patterns of distress. He may relate them to you in terms of difficulties or he may relate them as experiences that occurred.
Many light tensions seem able to be unraveled because your client is enabled to think about them much more thoroughly if he or she can talk about them to an interested listener.
Asking Questions
The second thing you can do to help your client is to ask questions.
These questions are not designed to obtain information for you as counselor, although the client may think that is the point. These questions are
First: To reassure the client of your interest;
Second: To steer and guide her attention.
Permit and Encourage Discharge
Much of the time with your client will be spent seeking an opportunity for her to discharge emotional or physical tension in one or more of the precise ways we've discussed above.
You will be directing your client's attention to where such discharge is likely to occur and will encourage the discharge if it begins or shows signs of being able to begin. When discharge slows or stops, you will persist time after time to directing the client's attention once more to the point where the discharge can continue.