We can test the comprehensiveness and accuracy of our personalized responses to the helpees’ expressions. We begin by simply attending and responding interchangeably. Then we offer personalized responses. We can rate the comprehensiveness and accuracy of our personalizing the helpees’ experiences as follows:
| High personalizing | — Accurately personalized problems, goals and feelings incorporating helpees’ response deficits and assets |
| Moderate personalizing | — Accurately personalized meaning incorporating personal assumptions and implications of experience |
| Low personalizing | — Accurate responsiveness to meaning |
As can be seen, the low levels of personalizing are consistent with the high levels of responsiveness (feeling and content). The moderate levels of personalizing involve meaning, while the high levels involve the problems, goals and feelings.
LEVELS OF PERSONALIZING
We continue to build our cumulative scale for helping. If the helper is attending, responding and personalizing the meaning, problem, goal and feelings for the helpee, we can rate the helper at a fully personalizing level (level 4.0). If the helper is attentive and responsive and personalizes the meaning for the helpee, we can rate the helper at a facilitatively personalizing level (level 3.5).
LEVELS OF HELPING
|
5.0 |
|
| 4.5 | |
| 4.0 | Personalizing problem, goal and feeling |
| 3.5 | Personalizing meaning |
| 3.0 | Responding to meaning |
| 2.5 | Responding to feeling |
| 2.0 | Responding to content |
| 1.5 | Attending |
| 1.0 | Nonattending |
LEVELS OF HELPING—ATTENDING, RESPONDING AND PERSONALIZING
As we move to personalized levels of responding, we are, as we have seen, introducing our own experience. That is, we are going beyond what the helpees have expressed. We must draw from our own experience, our knowledge of assets and deficits, and our understanding of the helpee.
We can practice personalizing by practicing some of the exercises in the student workbook or by forming responses to the case studies in this book. The best practice, however, will come from working with our classmates and associates. Practice personalizing less intense helpee experiences before attempting to use these skills in intense helping situations.
The keys to formulating effective personalized responses are empathy and discipline. This empathy means being willing and able to see experiences from the perspectives of others. This discipline includes building an interchangeable base, using that base to search out the common or dominant themes, and personalizing meaning, problems, goals and changing feelings. The effectiveness of our formulations may be determined by how well the helpees utilize our personalized attempts.
FACILITATING INVOLVING, EXPLORING AND UNDERSTANDING
You now know about attending, responding and personalizing skills. You will need to work most intensely on your personalizing skills because they are the most difficult to learn. Practice until you can formulate and communicate these responses easily, as the helper does in the following case study.
Case Study #3—Skilled Personalizing
Barbara is a twenty-five-year-old graduate student who will complete her master’s degree in physics next semester. However, in the last few months she has become unsure of her desire to be a physicist. She already has several job offers for when she graduates, but has deferred making a decision.
She has sought help from Debbie, a former roommate and friend who is now working in the university’s placement office. The following excerpt takes place after two previous sessions and well into the third session.
More than anything else, then, personalizing is a way of life, a way of growth. We grow when we personalize our experiences in life. We help others to grow when we help them to personalize their experiences. Like any other way of life, you either live it fully or you fail. You cannot fake it! The quality of the study and practice that you give to personalizing will determine whether you grow and become a “whole” person; moreover, it will determine whether you can help others to grow and become “whole.” For personalizing is, indeed, a qualitative dimension! Below level 3, we can learn to attend and respond in quantitative terms. Above level 3, we learn to personalize in qualitative terms. The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our personalizing.
PERSONALIZING—A WAY OF LIFE