Deck 1: The Power of Basics: Explore the Ingredients of Successful Helping

Question 1

Which of the following is/are the primary goal(s) of helping?

A) To help clients become better at helping themselves in their everyday lives
B) To help clients manage their problems in living more effectively and developing unused or underused resources and opportunities more fully
C) To help clients develop an action-oriented prevention mentality in their lives
D) All of the choices are correct.

Answer 1

All of the choices are correct.

Question 2

What two basic issues cause most people to seek the helping process?

A) Problem situations and unused opportunities
B) Depression and alcoholism
C) Missed opportunities and anger
D) Problem situations and anxiety

Answer 2

Problem situations and unused opportunities

Question 3

A therapist is focusing on a client's current difficulties of adjusting to college by helping the client manage her problems with time management. The therapist's approach involves teaching the client to manage her own time and to be proactive preparing for class. Which principle of outcome-focused helping is missing from this approach?

A) Producing life-enhancing outcomes
B) Developing a prevention mentality
C) Learning how to help oneself
D) Dealing with crises when they become critical

Answer 3

Producing life-enhancing outcomes

Question 4

Helping is about ________.

A) constructive change that leads to results
B) confronting and understanding one's childhood
C) bringing the unconscious into the conscious
D) teaching the client to follow professional advice

Question 5

A client has come to see a professional because s/he is not living as fully as s/he would like. Which of the following would be the best starting point for working with this client?

A) Focus on accepting life as it is.
B) Focus on working through the client's most immediate issue.
C) Focus on what has gone wrong in the past.
D) Focus on missed opportunities and unused potential.

Question 6

Though there are many ingredients in helping, what is ultimately one of the most key predictors of successful therapy?

A) The client's ability to clearly understand the problem
B) The client's freedom from emotional baggage
C) The client's development of cognitive and behavioral skills
D) The client's participation in the therapeutic endeavor

Question 7

An advantage to helping a client develop an action-oriented mentality in his or her life is that it helps him or her to ________.

A) overcome disabling depression
B) feel aligned with the helper
C) prevent future problems
D) overcome all of life's problems

Question 8

According to the research, what is the second most important ingredient in successful therapies (after client factors)?

A) Therapist factors (e.g., experience)
B) The quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist
C) The timing of therapist interventions
D) Scientifically based approaches to helping

Question 9

Feedback is an important ingredient in the helping process. What typifies best practices regarding feedback?

A) One-way feedback from the client to the therapist about how therapy is going
B) Two-way feedback between the client and the therapist about how therapy is going
C) The awareness that feedback may be needed in some cases, but not in others
D) Frequent feedback early in therapy, and the reduction or elimination of feedback later on in therapy

Question 10

Decision-making is a common factor that is important in the therapy process. What are the four keys to decision-making?

A) Information gathering, analysis, making a choice, and follow through
B) Information gathering, analysis, contemplation, and reanalysis
C) Expert advice, decision-focused thinking, openness, and reanalysis
D) Expert advice, analysis, contemplation, and intuition

Question 11

According to the text, there are hundreds of different treatment models. Which of the following statements is the most accurate regarding the effectiveness of these different approaches?

A) There are clear differences in the outcomes among the bona fide treatment models.
B) There are clear advantages of some bona fide treatment models for some disorders (e.g., depression).
C) There are no clear differences in the outcomes among the bona fide treatment models.
D) There is evidence indicating that the treatment model is the primary driver of therapeutic success.

Question 12

Uncertainty in decision-making and in the helping process

A) is unlikely to be an issue in most cases.
B) can be avoided in order to increase the efficiency of the therapeutic process.
C) can be a place to find unlimited possibilities.
D) should be avoided at all costs.

Question 13

An important principle of dialogue in therapy involves

A) convincing clients that their experiences are abnormal.
B) convincing clients that the therapist knows best.
C) co-creating an experience and the outcomes with clients.
D) explaining to clients the impact of childhood experience on present and future conditions.

Question 14

The ability to understand how the helper, client, their relationship, and the helping process itself can go wrong is the first step toward managing ________.

A) counselor cynicism
B) client transference
C) the shadow side of helping
D) the translator-practitioner syndrome

Question 15

Which of the following is true of effective therapists?

A) They are aware of other people's feelings, needs, and concerns.
B) They have a solid set of interpersonal skills.
C) They are flexible in their approach with clients.
D) All these choices are correct.

Question 16

Define and discuss the characteristics of problem situations by identifying how problem situations arise and the conditions that cause an individual to seek professional help with these situations. Explain the concepts of unused potential and missed opportunities in a counseling context. Compare and contrast clients seeking help with problem situations to those seeking help for issues related to unused potential and missed opportunities.

Question 17

What is positive psychology? What did Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) mean by the phrase "nurturing what is best," and how has their work contributed to the development of positive psychology? What concerns have arisen with respect to positive psychology, and how did Lazarus (2000) address these concerns?

Question 18

What is "client-directed and outcome-informed" (CDOI) helping, and what unique perspective does it bring? List the three principal outcome-focused goals of helping, and illustrate each of these goals with examples that demonstrate how CDOI is applied.

Question 19

List and discuss the ingredients of successful helping, and explain how they are "interdependent, fluid, and dynamic." For this question, focus on two aspects of successful helping: problem management and the importance of morality and ethics. How are the key questions of problem management embedded in people everywhere as well as in a therapeutic context, and how do they relate to decision-making? How do the beliefs, values, norms, ethics, and morality of the client relate to successful therapy?

Question 20

Discuss the uncertainties associated with the ingredients of helping and characterize the "shadow side" of helping. Define wisdom in this context and evaluate its importance.