“Solo is a very calm and quiet city. It is not crowded. It is different from Singapore. Are you sure you need counseling? What stress do you have?” Those were some sentences delivered by Mr. Anthony Yeo to start training on counseling principles. Mr. Yeo has been in the practice of psychological counseling with the Counseling and Care Centre since 1972 and has served as Director, Clinical Director and currently as Consultant Therapist at the Centre. He has written books on counseling, stress and marriage and lectured at various institutions of higher learning locally and in various parts of Asia. The training was held on April 26-27, 2009 at Holy Word Christian Church, Solo, incorporated between Discipleship Department of Holy Word Christian Church and PEKA (The Centre of Family and Children Counselling). The training proposed to equip participants with counseling principles to care for others. Mr. Yeo explained that counseling is understanding people. Understanding people means learning to listen. Further he said that there are three basic points of counseling skills. Those are observation, conversation and problem-solving. Those topics were explained in the first day of training.
On the second day of training, he focused on conversational skills, including clarification, reflecting feelings, open and closed questions, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Clarification means come with open mind. Reflecting feelings contain empathy, understanding, connection with the person, and let the person knows that s/he is not alone. Open and closed questions mean to question investigation. Paraphrasing is needed to clarify the problem with the person. And summarizing will help us to identify the whole problem briefly. In the end of the training, he asked the participants to participate in the problem-solving discussion. Problem-solving includes problem definition, attempted situations, desired changes, and intervention plan. To understand those steps, the speaker asked the 50 participants to do some activities.
While in the seminar on managing family problem Mr. Yeo focused his discussion on push-pull approach. There were about 125 participants attending the seminar on April 26, 2009. According to Mr. Yeo, there are forces identified as “push” forces that tend to make distance between husband and wife. There are also external forces that exert a “pull” on both of them. Those are potential to draw them away from each other. The “push” and “pull” forces are present in any marriage. They do not exert equal power on the couple and if the strength of the internal or external forces becomes powerful, it can lead to a marital break-up. Of course there are also positive forces that bind the couple together. These are internal “pull” and external “push” forces. They play the role of keeping the couple in the marital system. Such forces may include whatever is regarded as benevolent to the couple. After discussing the topic, Mr. Yeo also opened session for the participants to ask questions. Some participants used the opportunity to share their problems and ask possible suggestions. Though he could not give much time to listen all of the participants problems, the seminar gave significant benefits to the participants and met the objective of conducting the seminar.
Some participants said that they felt satisfied by attending the seminars and the training. They suggested that similar seminar or training should be conducted again to facilitate and enlighten members of the congregation to care for others.
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