Culley, S. & Bond, T. (2011). Prioritising and focusing. In Integrative counselling skills in action. (3rd ed.) (pp. 78-79). SAGE Publications.
Clients often have complicated lives or multiple problems, as the following example illustrates.
A client, a single woman in her early thirties, presented a concern about how she related to her parents and her sister. She talked about their unwillingness to see her as the adult woman that she is and to acknowledge the changes she has made in her life. She has embarked on a professional training course and tells you about her impending examinations. She reveals that she feels overwhelmed by the workload and frequently panics. She describes her mind as 'going blank' when she is panicking. She is frightened that she will be unable to control her fears and imagines that she will misread the questions and subsequently fail. She adds that exam success was not only important to her career, but will enable her to relate to her parents as an adult. Her practitioner is aware of the interrelationship between the issues the client presents and how the impending exams might be raising her awareness of her family relationships. However, in discussion they agree to focus on exam preparation and techniques and to suspend work on her relationship both to herself and to her family until the exams were over.
It is not possible for clients to deal with every concern at once, and they will often need to prioritise. The following questions provide a checklist for assessing priorities.
Which concern or aspect of the problem:
- is most important to the client?
- is causing most distress?
- is most frequently experienced?
- would, if tackled, lead to the greatest positive outcome?
- requires immediate attention, and which might be left?
- could most could most easily be addressed or resolved by clients and subsequently give them a feeling of control and of success?
- is appropriate for individual counselling help and which would be best dealt with in some other way?
Prioritising means agreeing with clients which of their concerns or aspects of their concern have precedence for them. Ordering priorities will provide an agenda and structure the work. Ideally, priorities should be agreed in collaboration with the client. Some find this difficult and may need help in ranking their issues. However, priorities need to be kept under review. As clients explore what is important to them, their priorities may change. They may also experience positive or unwelcome changes in their lives that necessitate some re-ordering.
