Counselling Microskills: Summarizing

This video demonstrates the counselling microskill of summarizing. Summarizing involves pulling together themes from a portion of the client-counsellor conversation (e.g., a series of exchanges, a portion of the session, the entire session). in some cases, the counsellor may add new language to support shared meaning-making with the client (i.e., It was like a runaway train). The purposes of summarizing periodically throughout a counselling session are to encapsulate meanings, values, or beliefs, or feelings the client has expressed; to capture and confirm the bottom-line; or to wrap up a portion of the conversation and sometimes introduce another.

Sandra Collins, PhD