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Chapter 6
OBSERVING AND REFLECTING FEELINGS
The Heart of Empathic Understanding
How can observing and reflection of feeling help you and your clients?
Chapter 6, “Observing and Reflecting Feelings: The Heart of Empathic Understanding,”
may be considered a second anchor to attending. Emotions are experienced in the body
CHAPTER GOALS
Feelings and emotions are underneath the words, thoughts, and behaviors of all people.
The purpose of reflecting feelings is to make these implicit, sometimes hidden, emotions
explicit and clear. Becoming proficient at reflection of feelings is essential to being fully
with the client.
The basic listening sequence could not exist without reflection of feelings—thoughts and
behavior have an emotional base!
Awareness, knowledge, skills, and actions developed through the concepts of this chapter
will enable you to:
▲ Facilitate clients’ awareness of their emotional world and its effect on their thoughts
and behavior.
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INTRODUCTION
This chapter outlines the central concepts of the person-centered skill of reflection of
feeling that has wide use in many other theoretical orientations. You may note that a
major thrust of the text thus far has been to stress through questioning the importance of
facts, feelings, and, to a lesser extent, reasons. Paraphrasing helps us clarify client facts
and thoughts, whereas reflection of feelings helps us understand client emotions. A later
chapter emphasizes the important concept of meaning.
OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTER AND MINDTAP WEBSITE SUPPORT
DEFINING REFLECTION OF FEELINGS
A definition of reflection of feelings is provided. The short case example of Thomas is
presented, and students are asked to focus on identifying his feelings, as well as
paraphrasing the content of the statement. This is followed by a comparison of cognitive
paraphrasing or summarization and reflection of feeling.
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
2. Weblink: Reflecting Skills. Angelfire.com, with hotlinks to pertinent topics.
3. Video Activity: Reflection of Feelings. Mary and Sandra demonstrate reflection of
4. Interactive Exercise: Paraphrase vs. Reflect Feeling. Distinguishing a reflection of
feeling from a paraphrase. Practice how to distinguish these skills.
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DISCERNING THE BASIC TECHNIQUES AND STRATEGIES OF OBSERVING
AND REFLECTING FEELINGS
The vocabulary of emotion is discussed. Sad, mad, glad, scared, disgust, and surprise are
presented as basic emotions. Importance of building positive emotions is emphasized.
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
2. Interactive Exercise: Developing a Basic Feeling Vocabulary. This exercise gives you
3. Interactive Exercise: Increasing Your Feeling Vocabulary. A good way to amplify and
enlarge the vocabulary of emotions initiated in the previous exercise.
OBSERVING REFLECTING FEELINGS IN ACTION
The interview transcript entitled My Mother Has Cancer is presented to demonstrate the
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
1. Interactive Exercise: Acknowledgment of Feelings. A good exercise to learn and
practice brief acknowledgment of feelings.
2. Interactive Exercise: Facilitating Clients’ Exploration of Emotion at Varying Levels.
An exercise to help you discuss different ways to help clients explore their emotions.
PRACTICING: BECOMING COMPETENT IN OBSERVING AND REFLECTING
FEELINGS
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
1. Interactive Exercise: Reflection of Feelings: An exercise to help sharpen your
understanding of this important communication skill. The goal of this exercise is to
responses. After they select the option that best represents reflection of feelings, we
share with them our views regarding each of these options.
REFINING: OBSERVATION AND REFLECTION OF FEELINGS
The specific techniques of reflection of feeling are presented, followed by the importance
of observing both verbal and nonverbal feelings. Reflection of feelings with sensitivity to
diversity is addressed.
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
2. Interactive Exercise: Recognizing Varying Orientations Toward Emotional Expression.
3. Video Activity: Allen and Mary Demonstrate the Four Emotional Styles. Observe the
masters in action, demonstrating four emotional styles.
5. Interactive Exercise: Identifying Skills. My Mother Has Cancer. Classify skills related
6. Interactive Exercise: Becoming Aware of and Skilled with Emotional Experience.
7. Group Practice Exercise: Group Practice with Reflection of Feeling.
8. Weblink: Review relevant sites related to the study of emotions.
DEMONSTRATIONS AND VIDEOS TO SUPPLEMENT ESSENTIALS OF
INTENTIONAL INTERVIEWING, Third Edition
• Live instructor demonstration.
• Tapes developed by ourselves and students over the years. Consider the possibility of
awareness of their emotions and better understanding of their stories. Students will
watch seven client statements, followed by three different responses. After they select
the option that best represents reflection of feelings, we share with them our views
regarding each of these options.
• Advanced Microskills and Strategies: Humanistic Therapy by Jeff Brooks-Harris and
Jill Oliveira-Berry will be especially helpful in this section. The authors go into depth
with exploring feelings and advanced person-centered concepts.
useful test of affective sensitivity, the KASS (Kagan Affective Sensitivity Scale).
This well-validated instrument can be a useful source for the classroom and personal
understanding.
CLASS PROCEDURES
The following presents the basic outline of teaching the main points of reflection of
feeling. We follow this model rather closely, as it has proven effective for us time and
time again.
1. Introduction. We like to start with the exercises on developing a feeling vocabulary as
2. Discussion of the role of feelings in the interview. We find that an open discussion of
3. Acknowledgment of feeling and reflection of feeling. We like to do a role-play of
acknowledgment first and discuss its possible value with less verbal clients and those
who may not wish to deal in depth with emotion. Then we like to see students
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5. Multicultural discussion and practice. Weijun Zhang points out clearly that various
groups explore emotions in varying ways. We all have emotions, but we express them
6. Practice. Instructions may be found in the text with suggested topics. Additional
exercises are listed in MindTap.
7. Generalization and self-assessment. See individual exercises and the self-assessment
8. Helping clients express more or less emotional experience. We have found that this
section is helpful to beginning students who worry about “getting in too deep.” It may
9. The Kagan Affective Sensitivity Scale (see Demonstrations and Videos). Norman
10. This is also an excellent time to talk about a frequent issue that many have—that of
“taking care” of the client or “saving” the client. We have observed many students
11. Portfolio of Competence. Perhaps the most important competence exercise is the
ability to sort out and discover the emotions underlying mixed and ambivalent
feelings. Advanced students will soon realize that the model sentence “On one hand
confronting mixed feelings and sorting out value (feeling) dimensions are critical in
decision making, career counseling, and personal counseling.
GROUP PRACTICE WITH REFLECTION OF FEELING
One of the most challenging skills is reflection of feeling. Mastering this skill, however,
is critical to effective counseling and interviewing.
Step 1: Divide into practice groups.
Step 2: Select a group leader.
Step 3: Assign roles for the first practice session.
• Client
• Interviewer
• Observer 2, who gives special attention to interviewer behavior and writes
down each specific interviewer lead.
Step 4: Plan. We suggest that you examine a past or present story of a stressful
experience (bullying, teasing, being seriously misunderstood, an unfair
situation with school personnel, going through a hurricane or flood, or a
time when you experienced prejudice or oppression of some type).
The observers should use this time to examine the feedback forms and to
plan their own sessions.
Step 5: Conduct a five-minute practice session using this skill.
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Chapter 1? As skills and client role-plays become more complex, you’ll
find that this time is not sufficient for in-depth practice sessions, and
you’ll want to contract for practice time outside the session with your
group. Again, it is particularly important that the observers and the
A reminder. The client may be “difficult” if he or she wishes, but must be talkative and
needs to speak about feelings. Remember that this is a practice session, and unless
FEEDBACK FORM: OBSERVING AND REFLECTING FEELINGS
Date: ___________________
________________________________ ___________________________________
Name of Interviewer Name of Person Completing Form
2. Nonverbal indications of feeling states in the client. Facial flush? Body movements? Others?
3. Implicit feelings not actually spoken by the client. Check these out with the client later for
validity.
5. What positive emotions were noted?
Instructions: Write below as much as you can of each counselor statement on a separate
sheet of paper. Then classify the statement as a question, an encourager, a
paraphrase, a summarization, or other. Rate each of the three active listening
skills on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) for its accuracy.