Chris McNulty Reflections on the Effects of Rapport and Affect on group counseling The relationship between the councilor

and the client they are treating will make or break treatment effectiveness. The two pieces that seems to have the most effect are the councilors general affect, this being the position they take and the rapport that the councilors have with their clients. These relationships are further compounded when added to a group counseling setting. Group counseling is a type of therapy that has multiple clients attend treatment at the same time. The goal of this is that the clients will draw strength from each other. This term I was fortunate enough to attend PA Treatment and Healings after school session five times a week from around the middle of January until the end of April. In these session there were anywhere between four and thirteen students attending at one time with a total of four and five councilors. While I was there I observed the massive effect that both councilor affect and rapport had both on the students they were talking to at the time and how this effected how they were viewed by the students. There are many types of affects that a councilor can have. In this paper I will specifically examine those that were most prevalent by the staffers at PATH in their group settings. The first type of affect that I saw was a strict no nonsense form of counseling. The second was a more sarcastic and witty approach in which the councilor would employ a type of humor to deal with their clients. The third and final approach seemed to be a more nurturing approach that tried to earnestly listen to the students and their complaints. I will go into a bit of detail about each type of affect and the effect that I saw that it had on students. I will start with the strictest affect. The councilor who employed this was considered the law and was the main source of discipline for the students. He takes no excuses from any of the clients, even

if those excuses were good ones. He was also the strictest with grammar and didnt accept common grammatical slang such as students asking if they can do something as opposed to asking if the may do something. This often put him at odds and ends with the kids and I have seen many of their faces drop either in frustration, anger, or sadness after a conversation with him. In other forums most of the kids even state that of all the councilors, he is the one they like the least. From his words and behaviors it would be easy to assume that he didnt care. These assumptions however would be off base. I recall several incidents where he has sided with students over councilors and while he never conflicted with the staffer who was in the wrong in front of the kids he did try and help the student by giving them advice to avoid similar situations in the future. Also while he is the strictest this does not mean that he does not also enjoy the students company. When March madness occurred he encouraged all of the students to fill out their own bracket promising to take the winning student out to dinner. A man who didnt care would not do these things. That said I believe that he does get easily frustrated with the behavior of the students and he seemed the most pessimistic of the staff and he lets these beliefs influence his actions. However I now know he would do anything he could to help his students and upon weeks of reflecting on his behavior I actually think I find it necessary now. He once heard him talk about how much he actually hated having to be the law but felt it was good for the students to know someone was there that would put them in their place if they stepped out of line. As a result of this more negative affect it seemed that the individuals in the group had a more negative rapport with most of the students, though there was the most respect given in his dealings as well. The next affect I am going to talk about is the more open and supportive affect. One of the staffers never seemed to mind when students came to talk to us and always seemed to listen politely until they were done talking before making any kind of comment and while she would occasionally need to lay down the law and tell the students that they needed to do something, she was by far the most soft spoken which even before I started my internship here I believe was the best attitude for students.

At the beginning of my internship this was the affect I actually most expected to see and was a bit surprised when this was not the case. There are some down sides to this affect, while the staffer who presented this affect was perhaps the most personable to the students, it meant that all the students, not just her clients would want to come and talk to her. This puts a large strain on her limited time. Then there is the problem that as she is the most polite and most soft spoken staffer I noticed that sometimes the students would find very small ways to take advantage of her kindness even if this only lasted for a moment. For example if a student was supposed to be in seclusion during their meals for whatever reason, they are still allowed to talk to staff and as a result several students have come out to try and have regular conversations with her and to a lesser extent myself, to temporarily get away from this seclusion. This tactic was also used when a student no longer wished to do the chores they were assigned. This tactic only worked for a short while as both her and I would remind the student of what they were supposed to be doing and insist that they return to their task the small amount of time they used in the conversation was a victory for them as they were able to bend the rules in a way that they would not try with other staffers. The effect of this affect is that by and large this staffer has a more positive rapport with most of the students even those who were not a part of her case load. Finally is the more witty and sarcastic affect presented by one of the other staffers. With this affect by and large seems to be the most effective as it used humor to point out flaws with the students arguments and complaints. The thing that made this humor especially effective was that it was a give and take. The staffer realized that she made mistakes and allowed the students to poke fun at her in appropriate moments for her mistakes. Most of the time this give and take of humor made the students realize they were being silly with their question and when serious this staffer was more a realist and a bit authoritative in dealing with the students. While the realist bit sometimes seemed harsh on the outset and may hurt the students in the short run I feel that it probably saved the students from a good bit of pain in the long run. The reason for the more authoritative approach of because I said so seems to

be because by and large the students actually seemed to have a real issue with accepting the reasoning behind the rules as several times I observed her attempt to explain why the rules were how they were and the student just stood there and argued until she said thats just how it is or because I said so. Some of the kids just need to here that sometimes the rules just are, if they are not willing to accept the reasoning behind them. (Find research on this) As with the others this style is not perfect and there were some downsides to this. The major one being that while most of the time the humor was effective it could and did sometimes frustrate the students who came to talk to her. Also the problems that come with authoritative parenting might also be present here and while frustrating the student might learn more if the staffer stuck it out and had the longer conversation. She was an interesting case as some students had an overwhelmingly positive rapport with some of the students and a more negative one with others. At PATH three types of affect were made apparent to me that resulted in three specific effects. The first was a more negative affect in which the councilor took a hard lined approach and allowed for no nonsense. This resulted in him being perhaps the most respected but also the least liked by the clients as a whole. The second affect was a more caring and nurturing one. While this leads to greater client approval it does have the issue of the practitioner sometimes being taken advantage of in treatment. Finally the more sarcastic effect of one of the councilors seemed to have a lesser version of both advantages and disadvantages as the councilor with this affect was fairly well liked though her wit annoyed her students at times. An important thing to note is that PATH does include individual therapy in tandem with its group therapy and I was not able to observe any individual sessions so it is possible that the councilors affect may have changed during those sessions in ways that I am not aware which could have impacted how they were viewed overall by the students.