“Must have astrology skills for counseling” Astrological consultation is a meeting or dialogue between an astrologer and a client. During the consultation process, the astrologer needs certain communication skills to advance the consultation. The 5 essential communication skills in this article can help us conduct effective counseling. Let’s have a look!
1. Follow: These astrology skills
Effective attention communicates to customers that you are with them and that they can share their world with you. Effective attention also allows you to listen carefully to what your customers have to say. The acronym SOLER can help you show your customers your inner attitude and how much you value respect and sincerity.
S (Squarely) – Direct
Face your customers. Adopt a body position that shows you’re interacting with the client (for some clients, a relative lean may be better, as long as you focus on the client). For example, having a table between you and a client can create a psychological barrier between you.
O (Open) – open
open pose. Ask yourself to what extent your posture communicates openness and undivided attention to the client. Crossed legs and arms might be interpreted as less engagement, or even an inability to engage or alienate, while an open pose might show that you are open to the client and what he/she has to say.
L (Lean) – Lean
Lean toward the client at the right moment to show your engagement and interest. Leaning back, away from your client, may send the opposite message.
E (Eye contact) – eye contact
Maintaining eye contact with a client sends the message that you are interested in what the client has to say. If you find yourself constantly looking away, ask yourself why you are reluctant to deal with this person, or why you feel so uncomfortable in his or her presence.
Note that direct eye contact is not acceptable in all cultures.
R (Relaxed) – relax
Try to be as relaxed and natural as possible when dealing with clients. Don’t fidget or make distracting facial expressions. Clients may start to wonder what’s wrong with you, making you so nervous! Relaxation means you can comfortably use your body as a vehicle for personal touch and expression, making clients feel comfortable.
Effective attention allows the astrologer to listen carefully to what the client says or does not say.
2. Listen: Astrologer’s ability
4 Tips for Active Listening
1. Listen to and understand the oral information of customers
When a client tells you his or her story, it usually includes a mix of experiences (what happened to him or her), behaviors (what the client did or failed to do), and effects (related to those experiences and behaviors) related feelings or emotions).
You must listen to the client’s mix of experiences, behaviors, and feelings that describe his or her problem situation. Also, “hear” what the customer doesn’t say.
2. Listen to and understand customers’ non-verbal messages
Astrologers can learn how to listen to and interpret non-verbal information, such as:
Physical behaviors (postures, body movements, and gestures), facial expressions (smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows, crooked mouth), voice-related behaviors (tone, pitch, volume, intensity, inflection, word spacing, emphasis, pauses, silences, and fluency), observable physiological responses (rapid breathing, transient rash, flushing, pallor, dilated pupils), general appearance (appearance and clothing), and physical appearance (stature, height, weight, skin color).
Learn how to “read” this information without misinterpreting or over-interpreting it.
3. Listen to and understand customers in context
The astrologer should listen to a whole individual in the context of the client’s social environment.
4. Listen with empathy
Empathic listening involves paying attention, observing, and listening (“being there”) so the astrologer can build an understanding of the client and his world. Astrologers should put their concerns aside and be total “with” their clients.
7 obstacles you may encounter
However, active listening is not an easy skill to learn. Astrologers should be aware of the following obstacles to active listening:
1. Lack of listening
If a person allows himself to get lost in his own thoughts or start thinking about what he wants to answer, he can easily get distracted when others are talking. Astrologers are also often distracted by their own problems, feeling uncomfortable, or because of social and cultural differences between themselves and their clients.
All of these factors make it difficult to listen to and understand customers.
2. Evaluative listening
Most people listen to others evaluations.
This means they are judging and labeling what others are saying, either right/wrong, good/bad, acceptable/unacceptable, relevant/irrelevant, etc. Then they also tended to respond evaluative.
3. Filtered listening
Our listening to ourselves, others, and the world around us are often subject to biased (often biased) filters. Filtered listening distorts our understanding of our customers.
4. Tag filtering
Labeling can prevent you from actually listening to your customers. If you see the client as “that woman with AIDS,” your ability to empathically listen to her problems is severely distorted and weakened.
5. Fact-Centered, Not Personal-Centered Listening
Asking only informational or factual questions will not solve a customer’s problem. Listen to the client’s full context, focusing on themes and core messages.
6. Rehearsal
If you mentally rehearse your answer, you are not listening intently either. Astrologers who listen carefully to the themes and core messages of a client’s story know how to respond. Answers may not be fluent, articulate, or “sophisticated,” but at least they are sincere and appropriate.
7. Compassionate listening
Although empathy is useful in interpersonal relationships, it has limited “use” in helping relationships because it can distort the astrologer’s listening to a client’s story. To sympathize with someone is to be an “accomplice” to that person.
Sympathy conveys pity, even complicity, and pity for the client reduces the extent to which you can help the client.
3. Basic empathy
What is empathy?
Fundamental empathy involves listening to customers, understanding them and their concerns as best we can, and communicating that understanding to them, so they may come to know themselves more fully and act on their understanding.
Empathic listening means that the astrologer must temporarily forget his or her own frame of reference and try to see the client’s world and the way the client sees himself as if the astrologer were seeing the world through the client’s eyes.
Therefore, empathy is the ability to recognize and acknowledge the feelings of others without experiencing the same emotions. It’s an attempt to understand the client’s world through temporary “empathy.”
The astrologer must then share his understanding of the client’s world with the client through verbal or non-verbal means.
6 things you need to pay attention to achieve effective empathy
1. Avoid distracting problems
Frequently asked questions by astrologers is to get more information from clients for their own purposes. They do this at the customer’s expense, that is, they ignore the feelings customers express about their own experiences.
2. Avoid cliches
The cliches are hollow, and their message to the customer is that his or her problem is not serious. Avoid saying, “I understand how you feel,” because you don’t.
3. Empathy is not interpretation
The astrologer should respond to the client’s feelings and should not misrepresent what the client says to the astrologer.
4. Be cautious in giving advice
While giving advice has a role in counseling, it should be used with care to respect the value of being accountable to yourself.
5. Avoid mechanical repetition
Just repeating what the client said is not empathy, it’s parroting. Astrologers who mechanically repeat the client’s words do not understand the client, are not “with” the client, and have no respect for the client. Empathy always adds something to the conversation.
6. Empathy does not equal sympathy
To empathize with a client is to show compassion, condolences, and compassion—all qualities of kindness but not much help in counseling.
Avoid conflicts and quarrels with customers
4. Explore or ask questions
Inquiries include statements and questions from the astrologer, allowing clients to explore all relevant topics in their lives more fully. Inquiries can take the form of statements, questions, requests, single words or phrases, and nonverbal prompts.
Purpose of inquiry or question:
- Encourage insecure or reluctant clients to tell their stories.
- Help clients stay focused on relevant and important issues.
- Help clients identify experiences, actions, and feelings that make their story more complete—in other words, fill in the missing pieces.
- Help clients move forward in the helping process.
- Help clients gain a more complete picture of themselves and their problem situation.
When you use inquiry or questioning techniques, keep the following in mind:
- Ask carefully.
- Don’t ask too many questions that will make the client feel like they’re being “tortured.”
- Don’t ask questions you don’t really want to know the answer to!
- If you ask two questions in a row, chances are that one question is redundant.
- While closed-ended questions have their place, avoid asking too many closed-ended questions that begin with “would you,” “have you,” or “isn’t it.”
- Ask open-ended questions—that is, questions that don’t just ask for a simple “yes/no” answer. Start with “how,” “tell me,” or “what.” Open-ended questions are not threatening and encourage description.
5. Summary
The summary is especially useful in the following situations:
- At the start of a new consultation. Summarizing at this point in time can give direction to customers who don’t know where to start; it can prevent customers from simply repeating what they have already said, and it can force customers to move forward.
- When consultation seems to be going nowhere. In this case, a summary might help focus on the customer.
- When the client gets stuck. In this case, a summary can help the client move forward so that he or she can explore other parts of his or her story.
