Study sheet: Self-Awareness and Empathy

📋 Course Outline

1. Foundations of Self-Awareness
2. Self-Concept and Personal Evaluation
3. Values and Self-Awareness
4. Experiential Learning and Reflection
5. Schemas Biases and Stereotypes
6. Gibbs Reflective Cycle
7. Practitioner Self-Awareness
8. CBT Dimensions and Distortions
9. Mindfulness and Value Clarification
10. Empathy Types and Helping
11. Empathy in Person-Centred Therapy
12. Perspective Taking and Empathy Barriers

📖 1. Foundations of Self-Awareness

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Self-awareness : the ability to recognise and understand one’s own thoughts, emotions, behaviours, strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs
• Self-awareness : According to Daniel Goleman (1995), self-awareness is knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.
• Self-awareness : According to Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund (1972), self-awareness is the capacity to become the object of one’s own attention.

📝 Essential Points

• The World Health Organization defines self-awareness as including recognition of one’s character, strengths, weaknesses, desires, and dislikes.

📖 2. Self-Concept and Personal Evaluation

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Self-concept : an individual’s overall understanding and perception of their identity, abilities, personality, roles, and characteristics
• Self-esteem : the value, respect, and acceptance that individuals have for themselves and involves emotional evaluation of oneself
• Self-efficacy : Albert Bandura — an individual’s belief in their ability to successfully perform a task or achieve a goal

📝 Essential Points

• Self-concept develops through experiences, interactions, social feedback, and personal reflection, beginning in early childhood and continuing throughout life.

💡 Memory Hook

Self-concept answers “Who am I?”, whereas self-esteem answers “How do I feel about myself?”

📖 3. Values and Self-Awareness

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Rokeach value theory : Milton Rokeach — enduring beliefs about what is desirable or worthwhile that influence attitudes, decisions, behaviours, and life goals
• Terminal values : Terminal values are desired end goals or life outcomes that a person wants to achieve, such as happiness, freedom, inner harmony, family security, wisdom, equality, a comfortable life, and world peace.
• Instrumental values : Instrumental values are preferred ways of behaving that help individuals achieve terminal values, such as honesty, responsibility, courage, self-control, kindness, ambition, politeness, and forgiveness.

📝 Essential Points

• Rokeach’s theory supports self-awareness through identifying personal values, improving value-aligned decision-making, promoting consistent behaviour, clarifying meaningful goals, and encouraging personal growth.

💡 Memory Hook

Terminal values are destinations; instrumental values are the behaviours used to reach them.

📖 4. Experiential Learning and Reflection

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Experiential learning cycle : David A. Kolb — a continuous process of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and applying what has been learned

★ Must-know

• 🔄 The cycle proceeds through (David A. Kolb):
  1. Concrete Experience
  2. Reflective Observation
  3. Abstract Conceptualisation
  4. Active Experimentation

Further detail

• 🔄 The activity involves:

  1. Drawing a timeline from childhood to the present
  2. Marking important events, achievements, challenges, and turning points
  3. Reflecting on how experiences shaped identity

• Reflection in Kolb’s cycle promotes self-awareness by helping learners recognise strengths, weaknesses, emotions, reactions, learning preferences, and areas for improved performance.

💡 Memory Hook

Do → Reflect → Conceptualise → Apply

📖 5. Schemas Biases and Stereotypes

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Schema : a mental framework or organised pattern of knowledge that helps people understand, interpret, and respond to information based on previous experiences
• Cognitive bias : a systematic error in thinking that affects how people perceive information and make decisions, often because the brain uses mental shortcuts

★ Must-know

📌 Prejudice is a usually negative attitude formed without sufficient knowledge or evidence, whereas a stereotype is a widely held but oversimplified belief about a group that may be positive or negative.

Further detail

• Confirmation bias involves seeking, interpreting, and remembering information that supports existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.

📖 6. Gibbs Reflective Cycle

★ Must-know

• Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle is a six-stage model developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988 to help people reflect on experiences, learn from them, and improve future performance.

• 🔄 The six stages are (Graham Gibbs, 1988):

  1. Description
  2. Feelings
  3. Evaluation
  4. Analysis
  5. Conclusion
  6. Action Plan

Further detail

📌 The Description stage records objectively what happened, where it happened, who was involved, what the person did, and the outcome without analysing or judging the experience.

📌 The Action Plan stage turns reflection into practical future improvement by identifying what to do differently, which skills to develop, and how to prepare for similar situations.

💡 Memory Hook

Describe → Feel → Evaluate → Analyse → Conclude → Act

📖 7. Practitioner Self-Awareness

★ Must-know

• An effective practitioner recognises personal strengths and weaknesses, including abilities and limitations relevant to professional practice.

📌 Counsellors must recognise their personal beliefs, assumptions, stereotypes, and judgments so that they do not influence clients unfairly.

📌 Maintaining professional boundaries requires counsellors to understand their roles, responsibilities, and limitations and to avoid helping clients beyond their professional role.

Further detail

📌 Self-aware counsellors manage emotions such as sadness, frustration, and anxiety professionally while remaining emotionally present and supportive.

📖 8. CBT Dimensions and Distortions

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• CBT model : Aaron T. Beck — a model proposing that thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are interconnected and can be changed through awareness of unhelpful patterns
• Cognitive distortion : an unhelpful pattern of thinking that interprets situations inaccurately or irrationally

★ Must-know

• The dimensions are:
  • Thoughts
  • Emotions
  • Behaviours
  • Physical reactions

Further detail

• The listed distortions are:
  • All-or-nothing thinking
  • Overgeneralization
  • Mental filter
  • Discounting the positive
  • Mind reading
  • Fortune telling
  • Catastrophizing
  • Should statements
  • Labeling
  • Personalization

💡 Memory Hook

Thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and physical reactions interact, but they are not the same dimension.

📖 9. Mindfulness and Value Clarification

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Mindfulness : paying full attention to the present moment with openness, curiosity, and acceptance without becoming distracted by the past or worrying about the future
• Value clarification : the process of identifying and understanding the personal and professional values that guide behaviour and decision-making

★ Must-know

• The key elements are:
  • Present-moment awareness
  • Acceptance
  • Attention
  • Non-judgment
  • Compassion

Further detail

📌 Acceptance of difficult thoughts means acknowledging unwanted thoughts without suppressing, avoiding, or fighting them and without treating every thought as true.

💡 Memory Hook

Acceptance allows difficult thoughts and emotions to exist, whereas suppression attempts to eliminate them.

📖 10. Empathy Types and Helping

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Empathy : the ability to understand and share another person’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences from their point of view while maintaining awareness that those experiences belong to the other person
• Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis : C. Daniel Batson — Batson’s Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis states that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation to help another person even when there is no personal reward or benefit.

★ Must-know

• The types are:
  • Cognitive empathy
  • Emotional or affective empathy
  • Compassionate empathy

Further detail

• 🔄 The process proceeds through (C. Daniel Batson):
  1. Empathic concern
  2. Perception of need
  3. Altruistic motivation
  4. Helping behaviour

💡 Memory Hook

Empathic concern → altruistic motivation → helping behaviour

📖 11. Empathy in Person-Centred Therapy

★ Must-know

• Person-Centred Therapy was developed by Carl Rogers as a humanistic approach based on the belief that people can grow and develop within a supportive and accepting environment.

• The three core conditions are (Carl Rogers):

  • Empathy
  • Unconditional positive regard
  • Congruence or genuineness

📌 In Person-Centred Therapy, empathy means entering the client’s world and understanding it as if one were the client without losing one’s own identity. — Carl Rogers

Further detail

📌 Empathy creates understanding through perspective-taking and listening, whereas sympathy expresses pity or sorrow and may move too quickly toward reassurance or advice.

💡 Memory Hook

Empathy + unconditional positive regard + congruence

📖 12. Perspective Taking and Empathy Barriers

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Perspective-taking : the ability to understand a situation from another person’s point of view without assuming that their experience is exactly the same as one’s own

★ Must-know

• The barriers include:
  • Personal biases and prejudices
  • Lack of self-awareness
  • Poor listening skills
  • Emotional over-involvement
  • Cultural differences

Further detail

📌 Poor listening can obstruct empathy through interrupting, giving advice too quickly, or failing to pay attention.

📌 Cultural differences in language, customs, values, or beliefs can lead to misunderstandings that obstruct empathy.

💡 Memory Hook

Empathy understands another person’s perspective; sympathy expresses concern without fully entering that perspective.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Self-Concept Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy

Notion	Central question	Meaning
Self-concept	Who am I?	Beliefs and perceptions about identity, abilities, and characteristics
Self-esteem	How do I feel about myself?	Value, respect, acceptance, and emotional evaluation of oneself
Self-efficacy	Can I do this?	Belief in the ability to perform a task or achieve a goal