ABSTRACT
You have learned that empathy is the counselor’s ability to enter and experience the client’s world and yet remain detached from it (Rogers, 1961). Basic empathy means counselors offer unconditional acceptance and understanding of feelings, behavior, and thoughts. So far, you have learned to express basic empathy by responding to content. The critical element of empathy is the ability to track the client’s feelings in the moment. If a client is aware of a feeling and expresses it directly, the counselor responds to the feeling directly. This kind of response is in reality little different than responding to content:
Example
These responses, although conveying basic empathy by addressing an emotion, somehow miss the mark.
