36. Residential Counselor 101 pt. 3 - Co-Regulation & Empathic Listening
Release Date: 04/24/2024
57. Supervision13 - Meeting Fundamentals
Becoming Centered
I’m very excited about Episode 57 of the Becoming Centered podcast! It provides guidance in an area that most human service agencies simply can’t fit into their training programs; how to design and facilitate internal staff meetings. Middle managers, such as Unit Directors, are tasked with running some of the most technically difficult meetings. With only the training provided by their own experiences, they are responsible for a program structure, that if you were to add up the hourly wages of all the participants, is an incredibly expensive use of time for agencies...
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56. Supervision12 - Resilience pt.2
Becoming Centered
Episode 56 of the Becoming Centered podcast is part two of a two-part arc focusing on the concept of resilience. Resilience is the ability to stay centered even in the face of various stressors and triggers. It's related to, but different than, self-regulation which is the ability to become centered when emotionally dysregulated, cognitively disorganized, behaviorally chaotic, and physiologically / neurologically elevated. There are four qualities that support emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological / neurological resilience. A sense of belonging. A sense of purpose. A...
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55. Supervision11 - Resilience pt. 1
Becoming Centered
Episode 55 of the Becoming Centered podcast focuses on the concept of resilience. Resilience is the ability to stay centered even in the face of various stressors and triggers. It's related to, but different than, self-regulation which is the ability to become centered when emotionally dysregulated, cognitively disorganized, behaviorally chaotic, and physiologically / neurologically elevated. There're four qualities that support emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological / neurological resilience. A sense of belonging. A sense of purpose. A sense of agency. A sense of...
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54. Supervision10 - Choices, Breaks, Support Center, Physical Intervention
Becoming Centered
Episode 54 concludes a four-episode arc, within the Unit Supervision Pathway, that presents the 10 techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Interventions. This episode focuses on how to implement these interventions in a way that goes beyond surface behavior management to supporting the development of self-regulation in children and youth. This episode particularly focuses on the Forced-Choice and related Weighted-Choice techniques. These interventions leverage a program's consequence system to help child-clients make choices that determine whether or not they receive a...
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53. Supervision9 - Change Environment and Limit Setting
Becoming Centered
Episode 53 reviews the first four tools and techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Interventions (Distraction, Engaging, Verbal Redirection, Labeling) and presents the next two steps in the Hierarchy, Changing the Environment and Limit Setting. A major emphasis is placed on using these techniques to not only manage behaviors, but also to help clients develop their abilities to self-regulate. Behavior Management is a necessary component of providing Care to troubled children and youth. All kids sometimes exhibit behavior problems. However, kids in residential treatment,...
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52. Supervision8 - The Aspect Compass and Labeling
Becoming Centered
This episode is the second in a three-episode arc that presents the Hierarchy of Interventions. This grouping of 10 interventions forms a core curriculum of counseling skills used by residential staff to encourage the development of kids' self-regulation abilities. Last episode focused on using Distraction, Engaging, and Verbal Redirection to interrupt and prevent kids from going down an off-track path toward increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dysregulation. This episode introduces the Aspect Compass model of the human mind. Understanding this metaphor for...
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51. Supervision7 - The Hierarchy of Interventions
Becoming Centered
This episode on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway moves away from a focus on managerial skills and switches to a focus on counseling skills to be taught to direct-care Child Care Counselors. It presents 10 interventions, or techniques, for Counselors to use with kids when they become off-track, dysregulated, and uncentered. Skillful use of this package of interventions starts with understanding the ways in which they can be thought of as forming a hierarchy. That includes the higher up interventions being increasingly disruptive to the group environment of the residential...
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50. Supervision6 - Leader, Superior, Boss, Mentor
Becoming Centered
This episode is the sixth on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway. It’s also the third of a three-episode arc that focuses on how to structure an individual supervision meeting. It also goes beyond the supervision meeting and explores the seven different roles Unit Supervisors have with their Supervisees. As a Counselor, the Supervisor is concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees. As a Teacher, the Supervisor keeps a checklist of subjects (primarily policies, procedures, practicies, and training topics) that are reviewed with each Supervisee over the course of...
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49. Supervision5 - Supervisor as Teacher and Coach
Becoming Centered
This episode continues to present a model for how to structure a supervision meeting. Last episode focused on how a Unit Supervisor sometimes functions primarily as a Counselor. In that sub-role, the Supervisor is most concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees. Although that can fill the entire supervision meeting, generally, after five to ten minutes the meeting agenda will usually move on to the Supervisor sub-role of functioning primarily as a Teacher. Being an effective Teacher means having an organized curriculuum that typically draws from your...
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48. Supervision4 - Structuring the Supervision Meeting
Becoming Centered
Today’s episode, which is the fourth on the Unit Supervisory Learning Pathway, focuses on a model for how to structure the typical supervision session. In the context of working on a residential treatment unit for children and youth, there are many sub-roles that define an effective relationship between a supervisor and their supervisees. A Supervisor encompasses the roles of Counselor, Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor. This episode focuses on starting supervision meetings with the Supervisor focuses on the role of Counselor. In that role, the Supervisor...
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Posture: The parts of the brain that control the physical body (the inner Warrior) and the parts of the brain that operate in terms of emotions (the inner Artist) are tightly linked in the brain. Changes in one automatically trigger changes in the other. So, getting kids to become more aware of their posture, and to habitually adopt good posture, supports being in a positive emotionally state-of-mind. The art is being able to frequently help kids improve their posture without it becoming obnoxious.
Co-Regulation: When you synchronize your nervous system and a client’s nervous system. This is most easily done through high energy activities such as playing an active game together; however, it can also happen in quieter moments such as watching something engaging together. When kids co-regulate with a relatively organized adult, they are exercising the same parts of their brain that are involved in self-regulating. If they get skilled enough at self-regulation, they still may require treatment, but would no longer need to receive that treatment in an institutional setting.
Empathic Listening: The goals of Empathic Listening are two-fold. The first is to create a co-regulating experience for the client. The second is to leave the client feeling like their feelings are understood by you. That’s the heart of empathy – being able to feel what another person is feelings.
There’s seven steps to Empathic Listening:
1. Mirroring – match the client’s general body language and speech (speed and tonality). Slightly lead the client toward lower and slower physiology and speech.
2. Intense listening – use body language, gestures, and small verbal cues to convey that you are intensely listening. One “trick” you can use to help yourself slip into conveying intense listening is to speak and carry yourself as if you were trying to memorize what the client is saying.
3. Ask clarifying questions in a non-judgmental fashion – convey that your interest is in understanding the client. Do not just repeat what the kid has said; rephrase the highlights or key points, taking care to not distort the meaning.
a. Can I just clarify? You're saying that …
b. Am I understanding you correctly; you’re saying…
c. Let me make sure I've got this right; you're saying …
d. A lot of times people use the same word a little differently. What do you mean by…
4. Focusing on emotions – ask clarifying questions to inspire the client to share the emotional content of what they’re saying. Take care to not tell kids how they are feeling. Often times, adopting an air of curious confusion can be helpful for getting kids to elaborate on their emotions. Adopting a non-judgmental tone is again crucial. Remember, feelings don’t have to be logical, they just are. You’re trying to get the client to talk about their feelings.
a. When you said that made you “angry”… what do you mean by that? Is that something you feel in your body?
b. When you say you’re “upset”… I’m not sure I really know quite what you mean? Help me understand better….
c. When you say “it’s unfair,” I could kind of guess at what exactly you mean, but I don’t really want to guess. Could you explain that?
5. Avoid problem-solving – it can be incredibly tempting to steer the conversation into problem-solving. Don’t do that. That shifts the kid from speaking from an emotional place to using the more analytical parts of the brain. That’s a key point of Processing, which is a separate tool, from Empathic Listening. The goal of Empathic Listening is to create a sense of connection and a therapeutic alliance. It’s much more powerful, and in most situations more therapeutic, to simply leave the client with a feeling of being understood, and sitting together with the feelings, than thinking that your role is to help them solve some problems.
6. Avoid the “empathizing equals agreeing with” trap – sometimes an Empathic Listening session can include a kid complaining about other adults. It is wise to be explicit that while you think you understand what they’re saying, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you agree with their characterizations of others. Done skillfully, if you’ve established a rapport, this distinction will be accepted by kids without breaking the rapport you’ve established.
7. Plug the client back into program structures – while it’s not necessarily “wrong” to end an Empathic Listening session with Problem Solving, that can take away from the power of the Empathic Listening. Instead, it is often times preferable to end the session by acknowledging that the emotional issues that were shared are not something that can be solved, and then directing / assisting them to engage in whatever scheduled structures are currently the group’s focus (e.g. “I really appreciate you sharing some really difficult feelings with me; I hope on some level you also found that helpful. I think the best thing to do now is to switch gears to the schedule, which right now would be bed prep.”).