Basic Skills for Counselling (Paraphrasing)

A paraphrase is a rephrasing of the client's primary words and thoughts. Paraphrasing requires selective attention to the content part of the message and translating the client's key ideas into your own words.
An effective paraphrase does more than just parrot the words of the client. The rephrase should be carefully worded to lead to further discussion or to increased understanding by the client. It is helpful to stress the most important words and ideas expressed by the client. Look at this example:

Client: I know it doesn't help my depression to sit around or stay in bed all day. 
Helper: You know you need to avoid staying in bed or sitting around all day to help your depression. 

The helper merely parroted the client's message. The likely outcome is that the client may respond with a minimal answer such as "I agree" or "That's right" and not elaborate further, or that the client may feel ridiculed by what seems to be an obvious or mimicking response. Here is a more effective paraphrase:

Helper: You are aware that you need to get up and move around in order to minimize being depressed.


Why do we paraphrase?

It serves several purposes in client interactions:

1. Paraphrasing tells the client that you have understood their concerns and communication. If your understanding is complete and accurate, the client can expand or clarify their ideas.

2. It can encourage client elaboration of a key idea or thought. Clients may talk about an important topic in greater depth.

3. It helps the client to focus on a particular situation or event, idea, or behaviour. Sometimes by increasing focus, paraphrasing can help to get a client on track.

4. To help clients who need to make decisions. Paraphrasing is often helpful to clients who have a decision to make, for the repetition of key ideas and phrases clarifies the essence of the problem. With this skill to emphasize content is also useful if attention to affect is premature or counter-productive.


Paraphrasing Steps:

There are five steps in paraphrasing content:
1. attend to and recall the message by restating it to yourself covertly. "What has the client told me?"
2. Identify the content part of the message by asking yourself: "What situation, person, object or idea is discussed in this message?"
3. Select an appropriate beginning or sentence stem for your paraphrase. It can begin with many possible sentence stems: "It seems like" "It appears as though" "It looks like" "I hear you saying" "From my standpoint" & ...
4. Using the sentence stem you selected, translate the key content or constructs in to your own words, and express the key content in a paraphrase that you can say aloud. Use your voice so that the paraphrase sounds like a statement, not a question.
5. Asses the effectiveness of your paraphrase by listening to and observing the client's response. If it was successful, the client in some way (verbally or non-verbally) confirms its accuracy and usefulness.

Example:

Client, a 40-year-old Asian American woman 
Client: How can I tell my husband I want a divorce? He'll think I'm crazy. I guess I'm just afraid to tell him.
Helper: It sounds like you haven't found a way to tell your husband and you want to end the relationship because of his possible reaction. Is that right?
Client: Yeah--I've decided-- I've been to see a lawyer. But I just don't know how to approach him with this. He thinks things are wonderful, and I don't want to dishonour him by divorcing him.


After paraphrasing we will go through "Reflections"  as another basic skill that we will elaborate more about in later posts.