ABSTRACT
Effective counseling establishes a therapeutic relationship to help clients think, feel, and behave in more self-enhancing ways. This relationship enables clients to work through difficulties (Nugent, 2000), empowering them to cope more effectively with life circumstances and to “enhance their present and future opportunities” (Welfel & Patterson, 2005, p. 1). Wagner (2003) stressed that counselors should not focus only on eliminating problems, but also look for opportunities to facilitate optimal development. In effect, this occurs when the counselor helps clients develop more options for their lives and encourages them to accept more responsibility for their choices and actions (Kottler, 2004). Through counseling clients become more aware, conceptualize their experiences differently, and see themselves and their ways of being more constructively. According to Henderson and Thompson (2011), counseling is “a process in which people learn how to help themselves and, in effect, become their own counselors” (p. 17). This implies that the counselor won’t “fix it” so that the client will feel and act better, but rather, through a collaborative process, the client can be empowered to work through the dysfunctional aspects that interfere with her or his life in order to engage in more growth-producing activities.
