Self-awareness Group Counseling Model for Prospective Counselors

Abstract

The self-awareness group counseling model is aimed to promote intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness of counseling students. Since self-awareness is thought to be one of the most influential factors in affecting a counselor's profession, activities that promote personal-understanding needs to be a central component in counseling programs. This paper provides a rationale for the need of self-awareness group counseling, as well as the formal education of counseling skills, in national counselor-education programs. The model employs these scopes for the basic self-awareness group model; (1) the scope of self-awareness, (2) self and other perceptions, (3) the discovery of thoughts, emotions and behaviors, (4) the understanding of communication patterns, (5) the ability to give and receive feedback, (6) self evaluations and (7) experiential learning of counseling skills and processes. Each session of the group counseling is structured by psychodramatic activities. Based on the pilot experience, a discussion is made on the perceived effectiveness of the model. Preliminary findings indicate that the counseling students benefit from the group experience in terms of self-understanding.

Defining Self-Awareness in the Context of Adult Development: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Turning to the subcomponent of thoughts and cognitions, several authors referred to thoughts (e.g., Eckroth-Bucher, 2010; Oden et al, 2009) as a component of self-awareness, and only one (Topuz & Arasan, 2014) referred to cognitions. Interestingly, Topuz and Arasan (2014) reference both cognitions and thoughts as separate components, although the rationale for this distinction is not covered in their article. We combined thoughts and cognitions into one component as cognitions were viewed as the mental action of thinking and thoughts (Wessinger & Clapham, 2009).…”

Counselor Candidates' Journey of Self-Awareness: Personality Theories

“…As a result of the analysis of the qualitative data, five themes (awareness of personality traits, awareness of personality development, self-discovery, situational awareness, predisposition to being a counselor), and various categories under these themes emerged. Counselor self-awareness and personality traits are some of the most significant elements of undergraduate and graduate counselor training programs (Hernández et al, 2010;Myers, 2003;Topuz & Arasan, 2014;Uhlemann & Jordan, 1981). Besides, it is considered necessary to increase the personal development of counselors who receive counseling training (Smaby et al, 2005).…”

“…Also counselor candidates stated that they were better aware of the factors that affect the development of their personalities, and they stated that these factors are: family dynamics, genetic, early experiences, environment, and attachment style. Other applications that increase the self-awareness of counselor candidates in the literature are participating in personal therapy (Myers, 2003) or group therapy (Topuz & Arasan, 2014), counselor self-care (Pope & Kline, 1999), supervisory relationship (Pieterse et al, 2013;Vallance, 2004) and self-reflective practices (DiVirgilio, 2018;Pope & Kline, 1999). DiVirgilio (2018) revealed in his study that self-reflective practices of clinical supervision and self-reflective journal writing during graduate years increase selfawareness.…”

“…A group of approaches also highlight that counselors should receive personal therapy to develop self-awareness (McEwan & Duncan, 1993). Other alternative methods for self-awareness in counselor training are personal development groups and self-awareness counseling groups (Topuz & Arasan, 2014). However, there are major limitations in the counseling literature about models and researches for self-awareness training (e.g., Pieterse et al, 2013;Pompeo & Levitt, 2014).…”

Investigating the Usefullness of Counselling Tool to Improve Students’ Self-Awareness

“…Oden, Miner-Holden & Balkin (2009) also concurred that self-awareness is the awareness of one's own feelings, cognitions and behaviors. Similarly, Chin-Yen (1998) illustrated that one has achieved self-awareness when he or she is able to understand, appraise and make meaning of him/herself by reflecting on his or her own feelings, thoughts, behaviors, relationships and personal characteristics (Topuz & Arasan, 2014). Fayez, Sulieman & Denise (2015) identified self-awareness as higher order cognitive function that distinguishes between self and non-self.…”